It seems to be taking me forever to get anything done today. I feel like I am in a kind of jet lag state of mind after yesterday’s events for Kelly Jo’s memorial and not getting much sleep last night. The memorial service was held in the Superior High School Gym and was packed with about 500 people dressed in a wave of maroon and silver for the Montana Grizzles athletics and blue and white for the Superior Bobcats athletics. It felt like a giant tailgate for one of those supreme game days where everyone is out to just have fun. I don’t think I have ever experienced such a joyous event. As the Superior School fight song began to play, people rose to their feet in an electrified uproar of cowbells and noisemakers as if the team was just about to score the game-winning touchdown for the championship. This time there was no team, but the adoration of fans for a small woman of 4’ 11” who was being given the most spiritual send off of her life. I saw so many faces I have not seen in decades, many I no longer recognize. It has been 31 years since I left that home in the mountains.

Jesica, Kelly Jo’s daughter, with such strength and grace did an amazing tribute to her mother’s lively hood to paint a beautiful legacy of her mother’s heart and soul. I kept glancing over at Kelly Jo’s son, Tanner who had to most infectious smile on his face through out, and could see Kelly Jo’s light linger in his eyes. Afterwards we all moseyed on over to the 4-H building, about half a block away to continue the celebration. I have never seen so much food. It was the longest table of food I ever seen, extending 42 feet of the finest homemade dishes a community could offer. An extraordinary feast filled with so much laughter and joy.

I somehow ended up in my old stage management role by running music and video for the service. My heart raced into my throat as it all began. The way I used to feel when I was about to push the button at the old Stand Theater when I was a projectionist for this same community 3 decades earlier. Many things had not changed as I was once again mistaken for my brother Mark by most everyone there, though he was also in attendance. What a healing effect such an event can have on such a fractured community. As I wandered the halls of that old high school and found the class pictures of that era, my mind was flooded with a greater fondness than what I remember leaving it with. Mick was a few years ahead of me, Kelly’s ex-husband and alleged killer, and Kelly two years behind. Both families a beloved part of this small community, both sides feeling the bittersweet emotions of this unfortunate series of events; everyone trying to reunite without judgment. I felt a pride welling within me through out the day and I thankful to have this all a part of my heritage. For all the joy, laughter and, tears rose in the usually quite sleepy small town of Superior sending a thunderous celebration toward heaven.

I am a quivering mass of curly headed protoplasm filled with so much emotion and feeling that it just comes pouring out. This is possibly the best description anyone will ever know of who I really am. It is the sum of me. Today I face fears that have remained suppressed for decades and will be looking into the mirror of myself as a gangly kid growing up in a small town that I so desperately wanted to flee so long ago. I was an emotional kid growing up which didn’t bode well for growing up in small Montana communities. I have always been very tender hearted and compassionate toward others.

This journey with Kelly’s murder the past couple of weeks has stirred a lot of deep feelings within me. It feels like my constant project this week has been creating this presentation of Kelly’s life for her memorial today out in Superior. I have been connecting all week with all kinds of people from my past that I have forgotten. In fact much of my life in Superior going to high school is a blur. It was such an uncomfortable time for me. I was not a very good student and always felt out of place like I didn’t really belong. I wasn’t gay then; well not that I was really aware of, not in the sexual sense anyway. I think everyone else saw it within me before I could see it in myself and just assumed. I do remember that strong attraction to other guys and not sure what it was. I tried to date girls, but that didn’t quite go anywhere either. I just lingered somewhere in between. My brother Mark and I were in the same class together. He was an all sport athlete, curly blond hair, piercing blue eyes, filled with extraordinary humor and charisma. He was the one everyone saw and idolized. Though I am a year older, I failed the first grade and we ended up all through school together. I retreated to my little art projects, loved to read, tried to write, but was an atrocious speller and I still am, creative, non athletic. Lingering in his shadow.

On my past visits to Superior I have remained private, not wanting to socialize, perhaps a bit afraid of others seeing what I have become. Others judging me for the lifestyle I have chosen. Today I will rejoin and become come a part of that small community again. I have been received with warmth from those peers the past couple of weeks since I began writing about Kelly’s disappearance. There was an outpouring of people that had read the Ode to Kelly Jo piece, so they have seen what I do. I do feel I have been a bit more careful in choosing my images this week because I know a whole new group of people have been looking at me. But today this is who I am and this is what I have become. I am an artist who examines his life and feelings and expresses all those things others keep locked so deeply within. I know I will face so much within myself today. Today the circle comes complete. I return to where I once began. I think it is odd at this age to have such doubts about confronting the past, to step back into the impressions that framed the beginning of my existence. I have spent a lifetime overcoming that anxiety. Perhaps I am harder on myself and all this phobia is merely internalized. I don’t want to step back to that painful period in my life and be that person anymore. Today I am something much more and I know today is a day to let go of those old ghosts what still haunt my distant past. Here I stand before me, The Naked Man.

Yesterday I meet with a young photographer and filmmaker who brought a film he is working on by to the get my feedback. This kid is 27 and could see sparks of brilliance in what he was trying to produce. We talked for several hours and I began to realize this kid was me 20+years back. I began to steer the conversation toward the advice I wish someone had given me when I was at that stage of my creative development. You see, it was always my dream to become a filmmaker. I have always had a fascination with cinema. Beginning as a projectionist for our small town theater inspired great ideas. In many ways I retreated from the real world and lived in the fantasy of the flickering celluloid on a giant screen. Being an oddball kid who knew he was different, those feelings of social awkward interaction leading to a painful youth filled with angst and confusion.

It somehow seems our dreams of our youth always seem possible and alive and ignite a passion. But so often that dream fades because we don’t know how to pursue them or the steps in finding our way. I think back to so many people I went to school with in the arts, who once they graduated, did take a step beyond the University. I think the biggest part of youth is the lack of self-confidence in ourselves. We are exploring a world we don’t always comprehend. I know for years, as I worked in silence alone, I was never quite sure I was good enough to succeed, so it become a dabble here and there. I know with this Naked Man Project I had not shown many of these images from a decades worth of work until last year. Now I am seeing and finding the value in a world that I may have let perish without anyone ever seeing. It begs the question how much really powerful art or artists are never seen because they live behind a mask of self-denial of where their passions truly lie. I have always known what I wanted to do, but it has taken me a lifetime to get to that point of self-acceptance. But the driving force that has kept me constant is that I have at least kept up with the work. I have constantly explored lots of avenues. I worked in theater and was swept away by the passion of live events. I have worked with musicians and know the world of entertainment well. I am a great lighting designer. I have dabbled in painting, with not too much success. I have been a landscape designer, which I totally fell in love with. I have designed my own studio space and love architecture. I have been a fairly successful photographer. And yes I have been a filmmaker. I have several short films that I drag out every once in a while and say, wow I did accomplish my dream. Looking back I don’t know if the diversity of my life is a curse or a blessing. I feel like I haven’t yet become really successful at any one thing that has dominated my life, that I can be recognized for, or that can sustain my future and perhaps I will end up a greeter at Wal-Mart. I was hoping this blog would generate customers for my photo business, but it has morphed into something I never imagined. Right now, all I know is that my passion is still vibrant and exudes with enthusiasm. Somehow I don’t think this will ever really change. Yesterday this kid’s excitement for film ignited my own passion for film making again and it became infectious. Now I want to make a film. This is becoming my lucky year. I have been revising all the things that have driven me to this point of my existence.

As we began to talk I started to feel the whole of my creative life force begin to pour out. My points of reference were well informed and articulate. I realized that this kid just needed that outside creative push or perhaps pat on the back that confirms he is heading in the right direction. The process of creativity does not happen over night. We are rarely instant successes. But we do know and recognize when those hallmark moments illuminate themselves in our process. I could see the light begin to emerge from this young filmmakers eyes as we talked and a smile began to curl from his lips. My advice to him was put it out there, stop judging what you are doing or supposed to do. Never stop the process because you don’t think it’s good enough. It won’t begin to evolve until you let it go. You are holding so much too tight. You are a very talented man, but talent needs to be shared with others, fearlessly. This is the lesson I needed to so desperately needed to hear at that age. But I guess it has all turned out in the end as I am now at the peak of discovering my true creative nature, as I will have to put off the doors of Wal-Mart a few more years.

Being from Montana, our communities don’t see much violence. In a way it feels like we are kind of in a buffer zone, insulated from such things. When it does happen, it’s almost like it becomes a complete shock to the system and we absorb the violation as if it were our own. Violence becomes a smoking gun that leaves a dark unknown residue in its wake. That touches us all.

You would think that growing up gay and being from Montana, people would be more homophobic and we would be more prone with violence directed toward us. But from my lifetime of experience of being from here and growing up here it has turned out to be the exact opposite. I have found much of the community both from my small mountain hometown of Superior to Missoula to be open, warm, compassionate, and considerate. Several years ago Tom Bezucha come to Montana to film his movie Big Eden that I think really captured the essence of how life in rural Montana actually functions. I premiered this film in Missoula as part of a festival I was involved in at the time and he come to stay with us. In many ways I felt like the film was the story of my life. The actual movie was filmed just north of Missoula about 70 minutes away in Lakeside. Missoula has always been a liberal city and in a sense is looked upon as the gay mecca of Montana. Though we do not have any bars here, we do have a thriving community that often seems fairly tight knit. We tend to know or know of each other. There is a community center that I think does fairly well, though I have not actually been involved in activities with but have supported in fund raisers efforts. In many ways I felt I have led an open and out life with no repercussions or ever feeling threatened and for the most part have felt very healthy being here.

I have also spent a great deal of time in big cities and worked as a bartender in a very big gay bar/restaurant in Washington DC in the Dupont Circle area. Many of my friends and co-workers in this area were constantly being bashed, hurt, maimed, or cut up. I have personally known and had dated someone killed by such a violent act, so I have felt it’s powerful impact. You learned to stick together with your friends when you went out, which was always hard for a boy from Montana, because we are used to wandering alone. But I felt like I have always had a tough kind of intensity about me that people didn’t really want to mess about with, well at least on the exterior, though I may have been a softy on the inside. Thinking back there was an incident in Montana that happened when I was just coming out in the mid eighties. A group of my gay friends and I decided to go out to a place called the Rustic Hut, a country dance bar in Florence, just south of Missoula. There were six of us and we began dancing together. Some of the locals became upset, knocked the table out from under us in a threatening manner. Most of the guys scurried to the car, but me and another kid stood our ground. Blows were not exchanged, but an unwelcome intensity filled the air as we were peacefully asked to leave the establishment, but this was not a community in which we were known. Since those times I have danced with my partner in open public places without any fear of harassment.

The Matthew Shepard murder was a shocker and sent a tidal wave of terror to small communities that were like Laramie Wyoming such as Missoula. I remember so much anger and outrage and the entire community gay and straight gathering in vigil marching through our streets. As the time I was very involved in a community magazine and did a photo story on it’s impact. It created a solidarity amongst us and a greater sense that we needed to look out for each other. I am a peaceful person who believes in peaceful means. It is really the core of my nature and always has been.

Kelly’s death by the hands of her ex-husband seems to be hitting my old home community very hard. A senseless crime of passions that has awakened the sleeping giant, bringing the reality of our sense of community back together. I have connected with so many people I have not talked to in a long time.

It is raining yet again today in Montana and the skies are very gray. Which brings to mind one of the most fundamental elements of photography; an understanding about 18% gray. The idea that has been around probably since the beginning of photography. It is the shade of neutral gray that balances light for the camera to create a near perfect exposure. Our world is made up of many tones, some light, some dark. Your camera meter reads and their sensors or films stocks record the reflectance of light off of subjects. For instance dark objects, such as a black cat, absorbs light and does not emit much reflectance, whereas a man in a white shirt has a lot of reflectance and shows up lighter or brighter, skin tones fall somewhere in between. The great photographer Ansel Adams spent a life time establishing and defining these shades into 10 distinctive tones called the Zone System. This basic principal of photography was that when all these tones from light to dark and all the various gradations in between were combined they most often resulted in an overall 18% gray tone. Camera meters were calibrated with this principal in mind, and still remains the standard into the modern digital era.

When I first began my process of photography I carried around a gray card in my camera bag. I could set this gray card up in any lighting situation, point my camera at it, take a meter reading, lock that reading into the control, and know that I would always get a perfect exposure. I particularly used it in color slide films, because the latitude of tones the film could actually read was so narrow, that it was easy to mess up the exposure and destroy an entire roll of film. Once I became familiar with the quality of those tones, I could begin to balance them in my head. Look at a scene, evaluate the dominance of tones and adjust accordingly. For instance: on a beach, or in the snow, the overall tones of a scene are brighter. So bright I would need to add 2 more stops of light to make the exposure come out correct. The modern cameras with all the multi-facetted means of reading multi-points of reflectance now adjust for this accordingly and most people get great exposures only relying on automatic. But they are still far from perfect. After all it is only a mechanical device. It still takes a human eye, to see the remarkable range of tones and adjust for them.

Most cameras have a built in exposure compensation on them, even in automatic mode. The next time you take a picture and you look at it in your view finder and it just doesn’t seem right, play with adding or subtracting just a little more light, it will indicate a + or – on the camera and you will know the principles of 18% gray are at play and your images will suddenly pop and you will know you are right on. Most people don’t realize such a simple feature is on their cameras, generally very simple to access or work, and give you one more step in refining your creative vision.