His name was Floyd. He figured, fully and frontally, in a veryvery -- awkward day in my life.
It was 1983, or so, in a UB undergraduate drawing class. Mostdays, we drew things we found lying around old Bethune Hall --cardboard boxes, ropes, crumpled sheets of foam rubber.
But one day, we walked into class and saw an old man there,wearing only a robe.
"This is Floyd," our instructor said. Then Floyd stepped onto a platform, and he dropped the robe.
We could not look at him. Fidgety, desperate, a group of usducked around the corner to the pencil sharpener.
The teacher followed.
"Why does everyone's pencil need sharpening?" she teased us. "Getback to work!"
Over the next weeks, the embarrassment passed. We drew Floyd fromevery side as he twisted into an array of poses. I chalked up the experience as just another weird college adventure.
Then a couple of years ago, in Cafe Allegro on Hertel Avenue, Iran into Floyd, or at least his image, again. The cafe's art showfor the month was a display of drawings of Floyd.
That day, I learned that Floyd was legend. But also, unknown.
Recently, I went looking for him.
A Google search -- "Floyd, Buffalo, nude model" -- led me to a picture of Floyd Baker -- a dapper, white-haired man dressed in black, with a stylish hat, dancing with an elegant woman. Funny, I did not remember Floyd having such panache. Then again, I never saw him with his clothes on.
Contacted via Facebook, Floyd Baker mentioned other thingsbesides modeling that he was into. He taught tango. He had led thenoble, lost fight to save the Canadiana, the old Crystal Beachboat.
Who knew Floyd was involved in such romantic pursuits? This wasnot the Floyd I remembered.
There was a reason for that.
"I know it's hard to believe, but there were two of us," Baker wrote.
He broke the news gently: The Floyd I had known was named Floyd Burd; he died in February, at age 89.
A rite of passage
It is a drama unchanged for millennia. Greek sculptors, Dutch masters, Italian Renaissance painters -- they all learned to draw the human figure the same way we do today: gathered around a real, live nude person.
Old as the setting is, it can still be jarring.
Artist Kristina Laurendi Havens lives in Georgia with her husbandand children, but at Buffalo State College, she drew Floyd many times. For her, as for many art students, it was a rite of passage.
"The model almost could have been anyone -- male, female, youngold -- the first time's going to be awkward," Havens says. "I just think it was funny. I dated a guy shortly after that -- he said, 'Please, tell me Floyd was not the first naked man you ever saw.'"
He was. And yet Havens did not know his last name. Few peopledid. It was hard to find someone who could simply confirm his name,and his death.
Dennis Barraclough, fine arts director at Daemen College, finallyconfirmed both.
"I always referred to him as the godfather of models," said Barraclough. "He modeled everywhere -- at UB, Buff State, Daemen College, NCCC.
"Everyone knew him."
But no one, it seems now, knew him well. There were rumors thathe had a staid state job -- as an IRS agent, some whispered. "Iheard that," Barraclough said. But though they chatted, and helearned that Burd enjoyed traveling, he added: "I don't know muchabout his personal life."
Floyd Baker, 71, heard about Burd after he began working as an artists' model about 15 years ago.
"Someone was talking about another Floyd [who modeled]. Icouldn't believe it! I never met another Floyd in my life," hemarvels. "The coincidence was pretty far out."
"He was 'Old Floyd.' I was 'Young Floyd.' We even modeledtogether not long ago at Daemen College. They messed up thescheduling and we both showed up."
Still, his eventual acquaintance with Burd also was only skindeep.
Baker says that, besides being Old Floyd and Young Floyd, theywere Short Floyd and Tall Floyd. And Floyd 1 and Floyd 2.
Baker, aka Tall Floyd and Floyd 2, laughs about the day theyposed together. "We were leaning against each other's backs."
Teaching the tango
If anyone is set to inherit Old Floyd's mantle -- or, better still, robe -- it is Young Floyd. Besides the name, they share a freewheeling quality. Their stories offer insights into what it takes to let a group of strangers study every fold of your figure.
A Monday night finds Floyd Baker in the living room of the Cheektowaga home he shares with Carol, his wife of 51 years. He is teaching a tango lesson to a handsome young couple from Russia, Dmitry Bosykh and Dasha Fleyshman.
Baker has tangoed at Gusto at the Gallery and looms large in the Buffalo tango world. "We went looking on the Internet," says Fleyshman, "and he is the best."
He got into tango dancing after he had a health scare and doctorsadvised exercise. He got into modeling because -- well, he was a natural.
"My wife and I are nudists," he declares, right off.
And nudists, he says, are not as rare as you think. "Everyone whoowns a pool has gone skinny dipping. They all think they're the only ones."
So comfortable is Young Floyd with nudity that he objects when bashful students leave strategic blank spaces. He said as much to Daemen professor Dana Hatchett.
"I told Dana he should deduct points," he says. "It's a complex piece of anatomy that they should draw. I said, what if they were drawing a face and left out the nose?"
Candidly, he admits that his openness has led to some mistakes.
"I would walk off the stage and not have my robe on," he says. "Iwould walk up to the students and look to see what they were doing. That's a different thing. I don't do that anymore. I put on sweats to walk around."
'Floyd, are you OK?'
Barraclough had heard a rumor that Old Floyd, like Young Floyd, was a nudist. In any case, Old Floyd was equally comfortable in his skin.
"He was not thinking, this is beneath him," says Buffalo Stateart professor Lin Xia Jiang. "And as a male, for an artist, for hisbody type, he had clear definition. Also he was not shy about his body, pretty comfortable for nudity. He was a real person, basically. No pretense."
In many ways, Old Floyd, remains an enigma.
"Old Floyd was very, very private," Barraclough says. "He didn't have an agenda. He was a character. He'd be willing to try anything. Wear a costume? No problem, he wore the costume.
"His strength as a model is that he took his job very seriouslyand thought of himself as a professional. One day in drawing class,(Old) Floyd was on the podium, doing a standing pose. ... His leg must have locked up. It was a fairly tall podium, two feet off the ground. I could see him ready to fall. I tried to dash over and catch him -- but he flopped on the floor nude.
"He shook himself off, got back in the pose. I said, 'Floyd, are you OK?' He said, 'I am a professional. I actually practiced falling at home so I would be ready to fall.'"
Havens recalled a pose that was a specialty of Old Floyd's that boggled her young mind.
He would lean back on his hands, his derriere in the air. Heraised one leg, balancing on the other leg. "He could hold thatpose for five minutes," she says. "It was crazy."
Her admiration for Floyd has grown now that she teaches art and hires models of her own. The models' wages are not high. Private instructors might pay $20 an hour. Colleges generally pay $8 to $10.
"It's good work, and it's hard work," Havens says. "There shouldbe pride in being a good figure model. They're hard to come by."
The award that is forever
Old Floyd modeled almost until the end. Dan Maritato, the winner of Daemen College's 2003 Floydie Award for Best Student Figure Drawing, drew him just a few years ago.
"He was at least in his 80s," Maritato says. "He looked as if he could move around a bit. He was still pretty agile."
But the old man was winding down. "At the stage of his career I drew him, I think you could do more with the younger Floyd," Maritato says. "We used to have (Old Floyd) sit a lot more, take it easy. The younger Floyd was a little more flexible."
However, the Floydie Award ensures Old Floyd's immortality.
"It'll be with us forever," Barraclough says.
Maritato features it on his resume. "You carry it around like theStanley Cup," he says. "Then you pass it to the next winner."
Young Floyd, meanwhile, might find himself a different kind of immortality. His modeling has led him to try his own hand at drawing.
He had an unartistic youth that included a year at FatherBaker's. Now, as he shyly shows off his sketchbooks, his talent isstriking. One sketch shows a nude woman standing by a tree in hisback yard.
Havens, in Georgia, would understand. She is still pursuing the journey she began when sketching Floyd Burd 16 years ago.
Drawing the human figure, she says, is endlessly fascinating.
"Everyone can connect to it," she says. "Every time someone looksat a human being, you're connecting it to yourself.
"I'm in the portrait business. I think there's something very different about a painting or drawing versus a photograph. I don't want to discount photography. But I think there's a different life to that piece. That's why portraiture is still a viable career today. There's a different energy about it."
The generations of artists who did not know Floyd Burd will, she suggests, keep his spirit alive.
"He was standing there in front of us," Havens says. "He wasliving and breathing in this room, and this [the art work] is whatwe saw."
e-mail: mkunz@buffnews.com
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