Art is, to us, a lifelong quest to find understanding and to express ourselves, regardless of the chosen medium. --And by presenting creative work for the consideration of an audience, whether that audience is a friend, a teacher or the general public, you are putting yourself in a vulnerable position, in effect exposing yourself. Thus, we are all Naked Pilgrims. (Actually, I just thought of the name in college as a possible goofy band name...)

We welcome feedback on this site and its contents and we enjoy corresponding with other up-and-coming creative types (and big entertainment moguls who want to pay us $$$...).

Return to top

The first "credited" Naked Pilgrim Production was a short video project I did at Columbia University, "Someone For Everyone", and the name stuck for all of my film and video projects, including my first 16mm short, "Inspiration". Additionally, I've now recorded two alternative pop/rock CD as The Naked Pilgrims", and have serveral more in the works.

Born and Raised in Austin, Texas, John was your typical intelligent underachiever who spent all his free time playing D&D and electric guitar until he took an art class and a theater class in his senior year of high school...

At Southwestern University, he had four primary interest areas, and tried to pursue them all, ending up with a BA with three majors (Studio Art, Theater and Computer Science), and a minor in music. In hopes of brining together what were originally disparate interests, he went on to receive an MFA in film production from Columbia University.

To date, he's worked on more than 30 student and low-budget film and video projects, and owns a Pro Tools project studio which he's used to edit and mix sound for over 20 short films/videos as well as produce/record/mix music and complete theater sound design projects.

He's also worked on over 30 theater productions, many as sound designer, and has performed extensively as a musician. His favorite performance role to date was as the lead guitarist in Buddy: the Buddy Holly Storyat Zachary Scott Theater in Austin, Texas in 1994.

After moving to LA, he began working as the web developer, designer and coder and continues to split time between business and entertainment focused projects. (See www.johnakin.com for more info.)

Since being in LA, John completed the second Naked Pilgrims CD, "Five Years in New York" and is working on the followup... He's also spent a lot of time working on re-editing his videos from Columbia and has many of them up on the internet...

Email John... - Return to top