Notebooks are my friend.

No, I don't mean digital notebooks, I mean college-ruled notebooks.

I'm the self-proclaimed queen of lists. At all times I have a list of the following; Groceries I'm running out of, things I need to do for work, what to clean in my house, wedding day list, cleaning supplies list, errands to run, things to remember. See! I even list my lists!

Growing up, my siblings and I were responsible for cleaning up the dishes after dinner. The first time we did this, my mother was dissatisfied with the job we did. It's not that we didn't do the dishes properly, it's that we didn't wipe counters down, clean the sink with hot water and soap, sweep the floor and take out the trash. From a young age, I learned that "doing the dishes after dinner" involved much more than just doing the dishes.

Something clicked in my brain. Picking up my room no longer meant just straightening my bed and making sure things were off the floor, it meant that it needed to be vacuumed, dusted, movies listed in alphabetical order, hangers all facing the same direction, clothes organized by type, length and color, shoes lined up perfectly, drawers that no one could see into had to be organized just so.

I wouldn't go so far as to call it obsessive compulsive. It probably has more to do with self worth. As a first born, there is a need to please. Having not completed a chore to my Mother's standards made me disappointed in myself. She didn't yell, and I wasn't in trouble, she just simply asked me to do more than do the dinner dishes. I just felt bad about not doing it properly. Thus, it stuck with me and translated into adulthood.

Now don't go thinking this girl here is crazy :) Right now I'm curled up in my zebra print blanket on the couch and there are dishes that need to be done and some other chores that need to be tended to. Thing is, I just don't feel like it. Then again, it is after 3am. I don't itch if something is out of place and I don't wash my hands 100 times a day.

Funny thing is, when my significant other and I got together, I snuck over to his apartment to clean his bedroom when he was camping with the boys. Believe me, it was necessary. If any Government official saw it, the place would have been condemned. Typical bachelor mess. He had zero problem with it and was blissfully happy that he wasn't the one that had to do it.

We now have a long standing joke about it though. Apparently, in the midst of organizing his things, I misplaced a couple of his Zippo lighters. Now, when I get the urge to re-organize something and forget where I put it later, he always says, "It's probably with the Zippos."

Is there a habit you have that some think is abnormal? Maybe something your significant other loving laughs at you about for doing? I'd love to hear about it!

Often I hear, "Wow, it must be so much fun to travel all over having your picture taken and getting your hair and makeup done."

Yes, it's actually a lot of fun to be at shoots. More often than not we have to do our own hair and makeup and bring wardrobe, but that's not the issue.

When you have wisdom teeth that you need removed and put you in so much pain that you can't eat anything that requires chewing, you sometimes wish that you worked a 9-5 job with health insurance.

When a cyst bursts and you're faced with a 5,000.00 emergency room bill, you wished you had health insurance. You contemplated just waiting. Kept telling yourself, "this will pass." Then, you got so scared because you didn't know what was wrong and thought that you really might be dying, that you said screw what this will cost and went anyways. You really wish you had health insurance.

When you blow both your knees out, you wished you had health insurance.

Maybe someone should start a group that offers some sort of naked girl health care plan :)

On the flip side, the fact that we don't work 9-5 means we have more time than the average person to do what we want. Have sex for instance.

Sex releases endorphins that make you happy. So when I have a terrible migraine in the middle of the day and nothing will help, I have plenty of time to just get down and dirty to relieve the pain in my head. It's usually in this case that I'm glad that I don't have insurance. That I have the time due to lack of a 9-5 job to go ahead and take care of it myself. You just have to take the good with the bad.

In college I learned art should evoke feeling. Some sort of feeling; good, bad, indifferent. Just something. I then learned other things dealing with art galleries. Art should preferably be abstract, use contemporary designer colors, and if figurative (not abstract?!?) should never carry the name of a person. In other words, in the real world, art should be detached, inexplicable, and never clash with the drapes. Maybe sterile, but what sells is the opposite of what college taught me. Fuck college right? Well, maybe not.

I've always named my works. They include still life, portraits, aircraft, very little abstract, and quite a few figures.  Each figure piece has a name, a person's name, often chosen by the model, which turns out to be a real show killer in an art gallery. Any suggestion of the image of the body as the image of a real person is really, really bad for business. There is an obsessive objectification of subject in the art world oddly missing in other venues of nakedness, such as, oh, you know, porn.

Face it. Porn is all about creating feeling. It may be a single, one dimensional, fleeting and actively physical feeling, but feeling is what it's all about. And connection to something seemingly real, is a strong component of the emotional evocation. It's a fantasy constructed through careful imagery and ancillary detail, including, however unlikely they may be, performer names. After all, who would buy a picture or movie featuring "nude 126 mixed media?" Dulls the fantasy a bit, eh?

So, when you think about it, porn is nothing more than pro wrestling. An overacted fantasy performed by people with fake names, all for the base pleasure of an audience. Wrestling, if you're into it, can get you wound up with excitement, and so can porn. But nothing in any sterile art gallery ever got my hard on, or made me want to punish the Iron Sheik.

OK, that's not true. There is plenty of emotion in art galleries (museums, too), and if you've ever experienced the intense detail of Goings, or the grand photographs of diCorcia you know it's there. If you've seen the Mona Lisa in person you know art can make you feel love. If you've stood before Guernica, you know it can make you cry. But sexual titillation is taboo, and most nudes I've encountered seemed calculated to avoid any suggestion of sexuality. Yes, there are exceptions to the rule, but they are rare, and I leave it to you to find them. Here is a good place to start. Or here.

A quick survey of figurative photography on the Internet reveals a black and white world where shadow is king and genitals don't exist. All of which is fine, technically fine, and you will find plenty of similar style here at FigureBaby. But there exists little else between the academic nude and the pornographic nude, so you have a world where subjects are well lit with little or nothing exhibited, and a world of big flat light with everything exhibited for no discernible reason.  We ask why we can't we have the best of both worlds? Why not light something broadly and show more than the shadowy suggestion of form, and have an identifiable reason, however ridiculous, to do so? Why not create something that titillates, but also exists for other reasons?

Face it, FigureBaby pictures won't be found in any gallery, not now, not ever. They are intended to stir the viewer, and I've already fought that battle over my artwork. We're not trying to create memorable images worthy of the New Yorker, earn space at the Met, or have people write about us in trade journals alongside advertisements for acrylic paints. We just want to make people smile. If you need explicit porn, there are plenty of places to find it. We don't need to do that. If you want classic figure studies, you can find them ad nauseum. If you want something in between, something not too arty and not too porny, FigureBaby is here for you. If you like it, share it with your partner, and feel. It would prevent me thinking my expensive education was wrong.



image by Tony M, graphite on bristol, 18"x24", 2005

Aside from emails from photographers about shoots, I will occasionally get an email that makes me question the sanity of people. Photographers who email me about wanting to work together and then asking me to figure out how to market and sell the images so that they can make money too. I dislike being mean, but it's not my job to make you money dude. You are not my pimp and I am not a prostitute.

Nice emails come along with admiration of the photos, and that's always flattering, but the ones that come in asking if they can pay you to take you to lunch or take you on a weekend ride on their motorcycle into the back country always scream stalker to me.

Regardless of your profession, it's a good rule of thumb not to email people you don't know asking them to come up with a way to make you money or to take them somewhere where no one can potentially hear them scream for help. You know, in case you aren't trying to scare them off or anything. :)

Sometimes, it's hard to come up with things to write about. People will often say that there are not enough hours in the day. What I find is that my days tend to run together and I have a hard time keeping track of all the fun and entertaining things that happen, things worth sharing.

Figured it would be fun to compile a short list of funny thing that have happened recently, and some random facts about this Figurebaby model so that you can get to know me better :)

-My dog likes to lick people's faces until they can't stand it. The other day, he had his paws on my face licking my forehead and he lost his footing. It resulted in his....area....touching my face. No bueno.

-Yesterday, I gave myself open, raw sores on my kneecaps. That's what I get for trying to have some spontaneous adult time!

-Yes, I do actually own one of those "As Seen On T.V." blankets with arms that everyone thinks is ridiculous. It's zebra print and I LOVE it.

-I probably haven't had a glass of water in at least a year. I only drink soda.

-I bake. From scratch.

-Obsessed with: turquoise, jeans, high heels, organization, reading, purses, candles, and dental floss.

-My hair is a natural, lion king poof ball!

i think i have swine flu...or i guess they're calling it h1n1 flu now. i feel like total shit...all i want to do is stay in bed - but i can't! i have homework to do and then tomorrow i have family coming in from out of town, staying at my house - i'm going to get them all sick ::evil laughter:: poor me.

aside from feeling like death, i've been working on a few art projects. i am making an inflatable sculpture out of a shopvac, plastic and tape. i'm basically making an exact replica of the shopvac in plastic and having them attach with the original shopvac inflating it (did that make any sense at all?) i feel like its sort of a statement on positive and negative or maybe even birth. i'm also planning a performance piece, but i'm not totally sure what i'm going to do yet - all i know is i want to wear a shit ton of make up (practically drag makeup) and go somewhere, like the gym, or the supermarket in sweats and see how people react - do they laugh? stare? blah blah blah

anyway...i just made some tea so i'm gonna drink up for good health! (i hope)

talk to you soon! xoxo

Oh glorious internet, I've missed you!

So what has this Figurebaby model been up to? Well, a lot.
It seems as though the leisurely Summers of childhood are long gone. This season came and went much too fast. It was crammed with trips to San Francisco, San Jose and San Diego. I ran from shoot to shoot and was lucky to get more than four hours of sleep.

For the times I was home, it was a game of playing catch up. I'm really an old fashioned girl when it comes down to it. I enjoy cooking and cleaning. A lot. Some would say that it's a little compulsive. The last few months though, it hasn't been quite as enjoyable. It's been something I have to hurry up and do in order to pack and leave again. I miss my cleaning supplies, brownies and candles. I missed home.

I'm also a big fan of riding quads, camping, rafting and boating. Was able to squeeze in one rafting trip and one camping trip the entire Summer. It's pretty much the only time of year that is appropriate to do the outdoor activities that I love. Sorry for the hiatus, it was a much needed trip to the dunes.

What's going on now that I'm back? Next weekend, its back to Seattle. Two weeks after that, it's time for Phoenix, Arizona for almost a week. November brings Tampa, Florida. Spending a lot of time booking, networking and now trying to get sand out of everything I own :)

Anyone who's spent time with FigureBaby may have noticed our love of jazz.  You can see it in some of the pictures where we use recognizable album covers or jazz age trinkets as props, and if you read the shoot notes you'll occasionally find musical references.  But it's not all about music. The Jazz Age, a reference to the 1920's, is about fashion, style, music, dance, design, and various nostalgic cultural items of a romantic time that can all be re-imagined and photographed. Picturesque past? Sure. But why not? Art moderne is timeless, and the slightly androgynous flapper fashions can be quite contemporary.  Obviously we don't reject the modern, as you can see in most of our work.  But we do love jazz, a good sidecar, and the Charleston.

Ladies! Ladies! Ladies! I have some absolutely fantastic news. Really wish I would have known this before. It's very possible that a lot of you already knew this, in which case, I feel stupid. Nonetheless, it's good to learn something new everyday. You ready?

Forget the Pamprin and Midol!

Did you know that masturbating and reaching orgasm helps alleviate cramping pain?

Yes!

The next time you're having woman problems and can't hardly stand, let alone go to work, stay home. Stock up on the batteries and lock the doors! Reproductive pain has always been just that - a pain. At least now we can turn it into something positive.

Yay. I'm so glad that we finally have a blog going for figurebaby. It's been such a process, the whole time exciting and creative, and it's just great to be sharing some of the things in our lives now through this. Sweet.
So, right now, I'm up in BC, and planning on coming back to FB hometown(are we anonymous? not sure)  to do some shooting this month. I'm excited as I get to work with some of my friends, and some new models I haven't met yet.  Shooting video for figurebaby is a riot.  My favorite part is no doubt shooting behind the scenes stuff I get of the women here.  It's hilarious! Tony is often saying things like, 'Lily, grab the camera! We should be taping this!!!', because, frankly, girls are more crude than guys.  The updates, the stories, can be so off color that it would definitely make some of you more innocent people blush!
So, I hope you enjoy our blogs and a little taste of our personalities here; it's certainly a fun experience for us, hope you think so too!