Body Paint / Black Light

Head in the Clouds

Designs & Drag

Summer 2017 Drag Experimentations

Makeup, Hair and all that goes into the world of beauty is definitely an art. Drag makeup is taking the level of art to a new height. Granted, some men are easier than others to makeover into the guise of a woman but it's still fun to see gender bending transformations and exciting when I'm the one transforming. Luckily for myself, I'm not what one would necessarily call "rugged" or particularly "masculine" to begin with. My features lend themselves to drag and I love it. I love messing with people's minds. And there's a reason they say females are the fairer sex.

I live for the reactions I get from doing this. So far it's been mostly shock and I'm just like... really? This shocks you? Especially coming from me? I pride myself on being androgynous; living for the ability to swing back and forth between my masc and femme sides. I may dress up like a woman but I still have many typically masculine traits; aside from my male-identified mind and emotions, I'm also athletic and can get down and dirty with the boys. That's why I've always loved strong women- they show that being feminine and strong or even aggressive aren't mutually exclusive traits. I love being femme but I'll never be prissy- ditzy maybe but never prissy.

 Mostly, even more than masculine or feminine, I consider myself an artist and this shoot is a combination of art forms. Photography is a thoroughly modern art form and arguably the future of art (until society collapses and we go back to cave paintings). Fashion Photography is the combination of two of my favorite artistic loves. I love illustrating fashion as well as shooting fashion photography, so to see a design that I conceived through an illustration come to life for me to shoot is even more inspiring than usual; it's literally a dream come true.

'Kennedy' Dress 

Spike + Harmony Collection 

                     

 Spike + Harmony is a fall collection and it hinges on the idea of a bad boy being with a bad girl; sexy, grungy and glam rock. 

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When a purse brings out the free spirit's wanderlust

'Daydream' Dress

Essential Bohemefreaks Collection

Essential Bohemefreaks is a Spring Collection, with the Daydream dress being one chosen design to represent the collections artful and whimsical nature. The final garments are often different from the original illustration/design in certain aspects like the fabric or even the actual design itself because a lot of my fashion designs are more artistic than practical. 

I felt like Carrie Bradshaw from Sex and the City in this dress, which may be fitting because I was told I look like a streetwalker in these shoes. However, I was also told that I look like I'm ready for work in the office but also to go out for drinks afterwards and that is exactly the idea intended with this particular piece. The entire collection and Bohemefreaks line is about being an Urban Hippie Artist.

Male Model? He-She? Fabio Rock star Wannabe? Dirty Hippie?

Call me what you will, I'll still happily be me. 

"When a straight man puts on a dress and gets his sexual kicks, he is a transvestite. When a man is a woman trapped in a man's body and has a little operation, he is a transsexual. When a gay man has WAY too much fashion sense for one gender, he is a drag queen."

-To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar

I don't want to BE a girl; part of me mentally already feels like a girl- just in how I'm attracted to men and am a feminist. That doesn't mean I want to actually become a woman like a transsexual person. I don't want to cut my junk off and fully transition into a woman- I LOVE BEING A GAY MAN! This is just pure art for me, and a perfect (easiest) way to model my dress designs. I live for being a photographer and especially shooting my designs on models (models to me can mean anyone that is willing and fits into the garment- doesn't have to be a professional model). However, there's also the fact that I would be crazy to be in this body and NOT do drag!! 

Doing this drag photoshoot, I wanted to explore the duality of not only masculine and feminine but "good" and "bad". I don't know how true it is that we all have good and evil within us, but personally I feel it to be true. I believe that I am a good person deep down but we all have our "sins". I'm neither totally bad or totally good which is how it is with most people I'd imagine.

My pure side is genuine and fun-loving, peaceful, kind, sweet and carefree.
My sinful side is bitchy, impatient and condescending- the part of me that gets road rage, loves to fight, always has to get the last word in and will read a bitch for filth.

I like to think that the pure side is more of who I really am, and the sinful side is part of who this fucked up world has made me.

I read that someone said gay men only design dresses that they want to wear; while I still don't think that is 100% true, it made me question whether there was any truth to that at all. I never used to specifically design a dress with myself in mind as the model however, it's possible that subconsciously, I was expressing my feminine side through the designs. 

This shoot is only the second time I've ever dressed in drag. The first time was with my friends, filming for 'Snooki & Jwoww' Season 4 (I believe) and none other than Miss. Fame (Rupauls drag race Season 7) did my makeup! I truly felt like a different person after she did my makeup because it was so extreme. The makeup was extreme yet somehow soft and still really beautiful and glamorous. It was inspiring to have the best of the best paint my face. My makeup skills are nowhere near the level of Miss. Fame and I'm definitely what they'd call a messy queen but everyone starts somewhere. This probably isn't the last time we've seen 'Zoey'.

Girls can wear jeans and cut their hair short
Wear shirts and boots 'cause it's okay to be a boy
But for a boy to look like a girl is degrading
'Cause you think that being a girl is degrading
But secretly you'd love to know what it's like wouldn't you?
What it feels like for a girl

Madonna, What it Feels like for a Girl

Selfie / Self Portraits

In this modern day and age when technology is increasingly overtaking our lives, it is for better or worse all too common to be flooded with "selfies" of those on social media. It can be entertaining and fun or annoying and boring depending on who exactly is behind the selfie. In my opinion, what makes it entertaining and fun is when people either don't take it too seriously and have fun with it (but are not boring/basic with it) OR take it very seriously and have KILLER selfies. 

I work as a professional photographer and have been studying specifically the art of photography since 2003. In that time, I've fallen in and out of love with photography and then back in love just a few years ago. I had a meaningful affair with painting and fashion illustration, but photography still stands as the glorious artistic holy grail- especially when paired with modern technology, it is an instrument for great, beautiful works of art to be created. 

There is nothing wrong with loving yourself, appreciating your life and appreciating your body and that is what having portraits taken of yourself can do. They can capture not just certain moments, but a certain time in your life. You and your family- descendants that you may never know will be able to look back on the pictures you had taken and reflect on how truly beautiful you were at that time in your life.

I love photography and I love fashion, so obviously I LOVE (Some might say I LIVE) for fashion photography! Just like why I love fashion illustration- fashion photography can capture fashion as art. The aesthetics of illustration vs. photography is vastly different in so many ways, but for photography, I use digital manipulation very similarly to how I use classic art supplies to render proportion and depth in illustrations. It is fun either way but photography and digital art is more forgiving and allows for an even wider range of creative possibilities.

Of course, part of the fun of digitally enhancing photography into art is creating a fantasy world. Part of my fantasy is being on the cover of Vogue! Hey, it could happy. Until it does, or even if it never does, in my fantasy world it already has so I'm happy! I have this image to not only satiate my thirst for glamour, high fashion and art but to document myself as I am today. 

I've never loved myself more than I do today, at 30 years of age. I love the fact that as you get older, you get wiser and more comfortable in your own skin; I appreciate that fact and will be happy to get older until it's time for my spirit to leave this hot little body and float into the afterlife. 

I like to think that I will age gracefully and when I actually GET wrinkles, I won't airbrush them too much (if at all). I honestly respect age and hate the way society values youth and beauty more than age and wisdom. I understand the lust for beauty in this world (Libras love beautiful things), but I also understand that beauty in this world is fleeting and as hopeless to hang onto as earthly possessions that you'll leave behind when your life ends. Instead of loving beauty and things we should just love other people, ourselves and the earth!

So simply to commemorate this time, as I start my fourth decade of life, and to pay homage to the original master of the self-portraits Rembrandt, this post is to show that I was here in 2017 and that I loved myself. 

Was Rembrandt ahead of his time? Did he foreshadow a narcissistic culture of selfie obsessed people or did he simply embody a primal narcissistic trait in all of us that has always and will always exist? 

                                                   Self Portrait as a Young Man c. 1628

From Wikipedia: The dozens of self-portraits by Rembrandt were an important part of his oeuvre. Rembrandt created approaching one hundred self-portraits including over forty paintings, thirty-one etchings and about seven drawings; some remain uncertain as to the identity of either the subject (mostly etchings) or the artist (mostly paintings), or the definition of a portrait.

Self Portrait  c. 1634

The self-portraits create a visual diary of the artist over a span of forty years. They were produced throughout his career at a fairly steady pace, but there is a gradual shift between etchings, more numerous until the 1630s, to paintings, which are more common thereafter. However, there is a gap in paintings between 1645 and 1652. The last three etchings date to 1648,^[5] c. 1651,^[6] and 1658,^[7] whereas he was still painting portraits in 1669, the year he died at the age of 63

                                                      Self Portrait at the age of 63  c. 1669

Rembrandt is "with the possible exception of Van Gogh, the only artist who has made the self-portrait a major means of artistic self-expression, and he is absolutely the one one who has turned self-portraiture into an autobiography."- Kenneth Clark