I have actually been lucky enough to have posed for this fine man and very correct artist Gareth Hendee a few years ago at the weekly Leslie-Lohman Prince St. Project Space Wednesday evening drawing class. He really drew me that tiny. but totally recognizable. The double edged sword of being a photographer that also collaborates as a model / muse / style exile allows me to experience so many different artists happily distracted by their creative process. For some reason I connected with Gareth while holding a 10 minute pose and for the next 3 hours he was where I focused my attention while posing nearly naked on a wobbly platform in front of 30 or so assorted artists / illustrators / sketch artists / some who are well known and hovering near cult status, others that are simply lovers of the male form and regardless of their talent, feel the drive to express themselves on paper. I have mostly worked with other photographers and painters and the whole nude art model situation had somehow evaded me which is ironic when you consider that my google images search is mostly of my cock & balls lol. The Leslie-Lohman class is very serious and an unspoken but deeply inspired energy pervades and having masters like Chuck Nitzberg, Dan Romer and Joel Handorff honoring you with a portrait is the real pay-off. It is suggested, strongly, that at the end of the models 3 hours of holding poses escalating in minutes that your last pose be nude and jacking off with a hopefully worth waiting for 3 hours money shot. I was super nervous, again ironic because that word never even occurred to me during my 8 years hustling in L.A. & San Francisco. So I locked eyes with Gareth and did not break my gaze until the familiar spill of warm spunk on my fist snapped me out of my trance. I remember a brief splatter of applause and actually made a fierce tip in addition to my model fee. I will completely come clean and admit that I was completely lusting over Gareth because he’s majorly handsome and you would have to be a monk not to notice it. plus I’m a photographer so I always look for the first person I would want to photograph when I’m in a room of somewhat strangers / art stars / pervy old men and a dude like Gareth. Imagine my correct surprise when I actually looked at his brilliant drawings and realize that this is no ordinary handsome man. He’s uniquely talented and completely original in a way that is hard to find in the wake of digital / photo-shopped / filtered / overly manipulated / copy of a copy art culture that thrives through social media like a petulant pop kultured virus of visual dis-assimilation. What Gareth does is so precious and personally surreal as the almost microscopic scale of his work can be conveyed in endless ways.The most awesome aspect of being an independent publisher of Vaczine Magazine is that I get to introduce our readers to those that I consider to be the best artists of their generation. It’s not about art stars and $ as cliche as that may seem, It’s about actual, visceral, passionately inspired talent that thanks to social media has the ability to present their work and be judged, hopefully honestly, maybe not get hated on / shamed / disillusioned lol by their peers whose opinions don’t have a sales percentage, therefore there is no need to curb their enthusiasm, or lack there of. There are so many vastly gifted and correctly inspired souls who have never been in a gallery, sold a picture, give everything they have ever made in their life away to those that they love or feel connected to. In the nu rage world of exceedingly queer social media based artists that look at pixels like Picasso looked at canvases and thanks to blogging becoming the virtual diary of increasingly transparent social media fueled millennials, getting a re-blog on tumblr is a currency not necessarily associated with $. We live in an age of likes, shares, tweets, instagram moments of counterfeit astonishment and overly emoji-fied, never not on line followers who have more friends than they know what to do with or could actually really like. A re-blog is akin to YouTube views. Once you hit a 1000 you are officially viral and a picture you took while you were semi stoned in your underpants with old man socks and a twice broken to Bukawski effect nose is suddenly being passed around on line like a post punk PokeMon card with Warhol undertones and Basquiat / David Wojnarowicz / Haring / Sherman/ Mapelthorpe / Goldin / Meyer / Yaeger / Arbus / Avedon / Penn / schooled collectors of images that are constantly being re-posted in the global virtual village. Anyway that’s why I’m hoping Vaczine becomes a rare printed place where each page introduces something that makes the reader stop for a second and lose themselves in the visual distraction. Vaczine #3 is out late September 2016. Deadline is June 1st. We’re at 225 pages and I could keep going as long as those surprise submissions of stellar correctness keep coming in.
