The Sweat Shop

It’s baffling how challenging it was finding a model back in the early 1990’s.  I was living in North Jersey, working in Manhattan and it was still difficult.  You might think gay men would jump at the opportunity to take their clothes off, be paid for it and do nothing more than be photographed, right?!  Not the case.  I took advertisements out in all the Manhattan gay weekly publications and had flyers hung at the gayborhood gyms, which turned out very disappointing results.  Where were all the good looking men who would lose their clothes in a New York minute??

After receiving one disappointing submission after another, I was literally wiped out, frustrated and ready to throw in the towel.  Some submissions had amazing bodies, but not such great faces.  Some guys had handsome faces, but the body wasn’t what I was looking for.  I could not find the total package.  I could not find my Pete Kuzak.  One afternoon, I was in a bar in the West Village when the bartender’s boyfriend showed up to bring him dinner or something.  The boyfriend was stunning.  He had an adorable face.  He was also handsome and rugged.  The bartender introduced us, we said hello and after dropping off whatever it was he was there to drop off, the boyfriend left.  Since I knew the bartender (my then partner was the weekend manager of the bar) I asked him if he thought his boyfriend might model for me.  He said, “I don’t know, but I’ll ask him.”  As it turned out, the bartender’s boyfriend did model for me and in the next few posts, you will see what I created based on that photo session.  A contract was signed and the photos were taken in early December 1993.  It was a legitimate business transaction where the model was paid for taking (most of) his clothes off and then photographed.  I was very happy.  I had found my total package.

This post, “The Sweat Shop”, was originally painted back in 1994.  However, what you see here is a bit of a hybrid.  The black line work was painted in 1994, but the color was applied recently using Photoshop.  The coloring was kept the same for nostalgic reasons and also to keep the original copyright in place.