Hello, Everyone . . .

[william.scherk]

William, I've been wondering about the history of the development of your aesthetic tastes.

It is difficult to reconstruct the development, Jonathan, and not so very important, but I will try.

I have always been able to articulate why I liked this or that piece, and I thought I was reasonably well-informed for a run-of-the-mill ignorant northerner -- until 1979. I was recruited to model for a Jeff Wall Cibachrome, and got to see the 'critical theory' of art-making from the inside. Wall was associated with the Ian Wallace group at the Vancouver Art Gallery -- a moderately grotesque theoretical stance that borrowed the sludgiest, stupidest lingo from Lacan and Derrida and yadda yadda. The huge transparency was me on an orange couch with headphones on, nude.

I suspect that, like most people, you began with Objectively Normal tastes

Nope, I was off the scales on Pollyanna. Sound of Music. Gush. Happy. Anne of Green Gables. Heidi.

-- that, as a child, you had a preference for images of things like benevolent fluffy bunnies, happy bursts of sunshine

Oh golly. I drew at a young age, and seem to be stuck on Princesses and Queens and things around age 5. I very much enjoyed depicting the female form and face.

In my middle school years I developed an inclination for Veronica and Archie comics, of which I attempted to copy the style of the figures. I then added outfits to the female forms, a la Rei Kawakubo pre-manga ultra-fashion uniform.

My esthetic life exanded in Grade 12, when I was seventeen and had an art teacher in a lab coat who drove me patiently through a number of media and techniques. Beside me in class was The Horse Girl. She is probably now an Aspergery Objectivish person, and selling lavishly detailed Horse Portraits to the valley equestrian set for 8 grand a pop.

and people displaying their joy by leaping through the air or otherwise physically exploding as a means of visually delivering overtly joyous "ought-to-be" messages

Ah, well, I got Darwin in Grade seven, so I thought the only physical explosion worth alluding to was the loins straining to achieve Maximus.

Evolution taught me that we humans, among oh so many species, have powerful, almost continuous sexual urges. The dominant message from the organism is to do the thing that gets more folks who will do the thing. The hokey-pokey.

As you can see from my six-year old self beaming at the camera below, I did have a sunny disposition. My sense of life is generally sunny. I look at life as at a massive spectacle, almost always beyond comprehension, but wonderful, wonderful.

(which never come across as creepy)

Oh, the primal urges and senses cannot be creepy to me. They simply are what they are. One can project anything onto the object of attention, any thrill up the spine or queasy feeling. I get queasy around Banal Art. Much of the sludge produced by Critical Theory Bumpkins was dull to the point of suicide, but accompanied by such lofts of blah that the spectator was forced to provide all the meaning. Mine, most often, repulsion. Dead, banal, forced, trite-yet-Ultra-Cool, pretense as stiff and unyielding as a ditch full of putty.

Here's a few snaps from a video exploring a few of my 1985-86 pastels. What sense of life this?

-- but then you read Kant's third Critique, and it became the foundation of your aesthetic evil.

I don't use the word evil, and I don't use the word evul lightly, but no, I heard zip from Kant until well into middle age. Of course the evul may well have drip fed through the intervening years by a magical kind of Eternal Soup Of Evul that grew more thick and loathsome and deadly as the centuries passed.

Am I right?

Oh, you are wrong, quite wrong, but wrong in a good way, wrong in a seeking, an upward striving, ever higher to the inneffable heights of Mankwaman way.

Wrong, but thrillingly, excessively, boisterously and triumphantly wrong.

Or did Kant cause you to become evil less directly?

Uh, can't stand reading the sludgy Kant. My favourite philosopher is the straight-forward "critical common sense" Susan Haack, who tidily demolishes pretense. She tallies evidence and comes down on the side of a modest but robust empiricism.

Edited April 26, 2010 by william.scherk

[Newberry]

this post

William, I liked this post for lots of reasons. And I liked that you included your pastels--they come across to me as impatient and direct. Technically, I like how you vary some of the shadow tones and colors, such as in the hand holding the glass, or the gray purple shadows of some of the figures in the first one.

How do I feel about them? A little dark, a little confused, a bit dirty, fleeting, a bit anxious.

[william.scherk]

this post

William, I liked this post for lots of reasons. And I liked that you included your pastels--they come across to me as impatient and direct.

Yeah, I will use that phrase in the PR for my installation come January: "Impatient and Direct." Not-so-oddly, that captures an aspect of my character that is pretty much inexpungible.

Technically, I like how you vary some of the shadow tones and colors, such as in the hand holding the glass, or the gray purple shadows of some of the figures in the first one.

My work is based consciously on some of what I call "Impact Images" -- scenes in my mind that have a combination of emotionaly clarity and inchoate events. I sometimes get haunted by feeling/images and by sound/images. The first may be redirected entirely into prose, the second into a song. I rarely get busy on the canvas or bristol and so when I do hit the paints or pastels I am usually in a hell-bent fury to get some of the things that haunt me out into view.

How do I feel about them? A little dark, a little confused, a bit dirty, fleeting, a bit anxious.

This is one of a suite of feelings that the pictures should engender if my aim was true: I was exposing the darkness of addiction to my peers. I wanted their vanity and self-destruction to lurk in the images, I wanted pride and hubris to be apparent to the folks whose lives led to the hauntings underlying this series.

[william.scherk]

I had posted these snaps from Doreen Grey and Jeremy Gluck's video project, and asked "What sense of life this?"

Here is the video from which the snaps came.

[william.scherk]

I post the first in my series of Youtube commentary titled "Bill's Morning Makeup Tips."

Now I looked up how to embed, here is the new number two. Still creepy, still fun.

[9thdoctor]

So in Vancouver the way to spot a gay guy is to look for someone in a mid to late 80's Dr. Who costume?

Thank goodness for regeneration.

[9thdoctor]

Here's some contemporary queer couture on display:

How about a cover version? Turn it into a punk anthem?

Edited May 4, 2010 by Ninth Doctor