I made latex for myself, it was always part of my lifestyle. But I finally met someone who was proud of me, and wanted to try and promote me, take pictures etc, for my skills in making, and it seemed like natural progression to make it sell. Back in those days I was deluded with the idea that there was a market, and sector big enough to support my lifestyle (so far an expensive hobby).
But it was one hell of a learning curve. It was in learning how to expose myself in public – I mean as in my image, modeling! Modeling was a learning curve, I only wanted images good enough to last a rubber sale on ebay at the time. I thought that was my only target. I was at the point in the beginning, where I could not see how wide the market was, or what was on the other side of the hill. It was a shared learning curve in for him too; lighting latex, learning how to work with someone – which I never really learned anyway, because familiarity bred some kind of photographer bashing contempt when I was in rubber >:-]
I guess I kind of realised in the end my creativity wasn’t in just the rubber, it was in everything I did, and I wanted control of every level of that chain, from making through to the final image. If you never really get it, you’re never really 100% happy with the result.
I am looking back at the results nostalgically. So many of the designs were lost, sold over time, pictures on corrupted hardrives, stolen hardware, and it’s really hard to find original pictures… I will need to take some more snaps at home of my work to catch up with the inventory of STUFF. The pictures served their little task at the time of selling on ebay, but that is not where my market is so I left it behind. One day I might put a couple of items up there, but it wont be anything like trying to make a living out of sweatshopping my making skills again.
I see some people still do it on ebay, and I am glad they do cos I can’t be bothered with it all! I am such a lifestyle perv like any other, I keep an eye on any ebay bargains for rubber.
BUT, living latex, IS an expensive hobby, like any hobby is really. I have the lucky talent of being able to ‘make do’, ‘invent’, ‘make new’, and it was this ‘Talent’ out of reclaiming and saving expense that got me into making my own rubber in the first place…
I had converted my gallery boutique into a collection of rubber making, and it did not survive the mini economic market of the island. Sweat shopping my skills for an online presence to maintain the gallery in a cuthroat ebay audience took it’s toll. So I lost the boutique, and bottled out of internet selling, back into my own latex lifestyle. I do miss having the shop badly sometimes. It was base camp for my art. I do remember lots of island pervs coming out the closet to camp out on my time in the boutique while this madam got bored with their tales of Island repression.
Like I really give a shit. I have always acted free and unrepressed in my rubber, and particular pervism. These little wankers obviously never had the balls to live their life outside my shop. I even gave them opportunities to party in pervism on the Island by headlining the Island Fetish events which I started organising. There seemed to be an opportunity since so many people were delighted with my bizarre boutique. Unfortunately I left that behind too. Without the shop as base camp to run the events from, I was no longer tethered to the island, and found business elsewhere enough to take my mind off hosting parties there. Shame, no one really carried it on.
Actually I think I have a lot to thank for the original photographer who started me off on this train. He still supports my ideas now, and we’ve learned together through much of the picture sharing experience, that I might leak some of the more intimate ones out another time.
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