I met Erich in the summer of 2009 while on sojourn in Berlin, Germany. We became fast friends and maintained over time and distance an honest friendship, wrought with pending Berlin adventure through my summer visits. In July 2019, I invited him to my awarded artists residency, where he spent one week alone with me on a small island while I built a human-sized bower between two mature trees there. Fire Jupiterwings (his radical faery name) fast became the subject, a rare bird, to model in my bower that year. These are excerpts from our week together. Each photo is its own story; a lifetime I’ll never forget.
FJ was a special person. I’d never met someone so self-educated, sexually liberated, and self-convicted in my entire life. I became enamored with his confidence and the style of which he lived, as I wanted so badly to become fearless. He taught me how by doing, and then he flew too high to the sun. His wax wings melted and he plummeted to earth.
Bound by an oath for material form, no man is above natural law.
