American Pyrographs
Robert Sherer is an internationally-recognized artist who studied the two-dimensional arts of painting, drawing, and printmaking at Walker College (Jasper, Alabama), the Atlanta College of Art, Georgia State University, Rhode Island School of Design, and Edinboro University (Edinboro, Pennsylvania) where he received his MFA degree in Fine Arts in 1992. He represented the United States in the Biennale Internazionale dell Arte' Contemporanea (also known as the Florence Biennale) in Florence, Italy, in 2001. In 2002, he represented the United States in the Triennale Internationale d'Art Contemporain (Paris, France). Over the past 25 years, Sherer has exhibited in numerous group and solo shows including the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia, the Center for AIDS and Humanity (Atlanta), the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, The City of Atlanta Gallery, The State Museum of Pennsylvania (Harrisburg, PA), The Butler Institute of American Art (Youngstown, Ohio), the National Arts Club Gallery (New York City), the Birmingham Museum of Art (Birmingham, Alabama), and The AIDS Cure Project (Atlanta). Over the years, the artist has also contributed works to numerous auctions in support of AIDS services, including the Elton John AIDS Foundation, the ArtCare Auction (Atlanta), ArtFest '97 (Atlanta), the Birmingham AIDS Outreach Auction (Birmingham, AL), and the AIDS Support Group of Cape Cod (Massachusetts).
The artist was born and raised in northern Alabama, outside of Birmingham, and currently lives near Atlanta, Georgia. Mr. Sherer is a Professor of Art at Kennesaw State University in Atlanta. According to the national organization, People for the American Way, he is also one of the most censored artists in America
In December of 1994, Robert Sherer was contacted by Jennings Rountree, director of the Barnwell County Museum, to submit an exhibition proposal for the Spring 1995 roster. Sherer agreed to a March 5, 1995 show date. The Barnwell County Museum is a public museum within the environs of the affluent Savannah River Nuclear Power facility. It maintains a picture gallery specifically for traveling exhibits.
On March 7, two days after the show opened to the public, the museum board chained and padlocked the doors to the Sherer exhibition and covered the windows with paper. Ann Haygood, chair of the museum board, and Ann Loadholt, a member of the county council, stated to the press that the show was “too sophisticated for the museum” and demanded that Sherer retrieve his work immediately. On March 9, after threats of forced removal from museum board members, Jennings Rountree contacted the American Civil Liberties Union who then contacted Sherer with an offer to provide legal representation. Within two days, the ACLU filed a ten million dollar First Amendment violation lawsuit in federal court.
These slides introduce two series of Sherer's work that deal with strikingly different topics. The first, American Pyrographs, explores male adolescence and sexuality using wood, paint, and a burning tool familiar to anyone who has taken a summer-camp class in arts and crafts.
Adam and Steve
Sherer, whose work has drawn the ire of Christian fundamentalists for years, created the gay Eden in Adam and Steve as a response to the familiar homophobic saw, "It wasn't Adam and Steve--it was Adam and Eve."
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American Martyr
American Martyr simultaneously draws upon traditional Renaissance depictions of the martyrdom of Saint Sebastian and Sherer's recollections of his youth: "I remember several times when my friends and I tied guys to trees and shot them with rubber suction-tipped arrows...we always chose the most beautiful guys for this faux martyrdom."
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Submarine Game
Sherer remembers the submarine game as one of his favorites. "As with any rite of passage," he says, "this one has an element of surprise. You never knew what the guy underwater might do to you--you might be pinched or groped or poked or grabbed or worse: ignored."
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Fountain of Youth
Fountain of Youth is an attempt to accurately reconstruct an erotic attraction Sherer remembers from his youth. "Whether thunderstorms or scorching Alabama sunshine, I would ride my bike for miles in the hopes of seeing him shirtless washing that stupid car."
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Daddy's Little Fascist
The artist finds the parallels between the Hitler Youth and the Boy Scouts "amazing," especially the "fascist salute, the institutionalized discrimination against homosexuals, [and] the preparation for future militarism."
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Geysers II
Geysers II intentionally lends itself to multiple interpretations. The process of interpretation or "revelation," Sherer says, is "entirely dependent upon the inclinations and emotional baggage each person brings to the viewing experience."
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Nocturne
Of his life, Sherer says, "the greatest moments were always when camping with a best friend. How quickly the defense mechanisms and male competition fall aside when two friends know that they are truly alone together."
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If you enjoyed this short display of Robert's work visit his website to view the entire collection.
http://www.robertsherer.com/index.html
The William Way LGBT Community Center in Philadelphia is telling one of the Holocaust's least-known stories - the Nazi persecution of homosexuals.
It's a story of men and women who were arrested and often sentenced to hard labor for what were called indecent acts. The victims were mostly men. Some faced judicial proceedings and criminal charges. Others were simply picked up by SS officers and locked away in concentration camps.
Through Friday, the center is displaying "Nazi Persecution of Homosexuals: 1933-1945," a traveling exhibition of 32 large panels featuring reproductions of historic photographs and documents. It is organized and circulated by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.
The exhibit debuted at the museum in November 2002. It has since been on view twice in Los Angeles and once in Pittsburgh, Chicago, Atlanta, and nearly two dozen other cities.
Having the exhibit in Philadelphia "has been really rewarding," said Candice Thompson, director of center service at William Way, a nonprofit organization that has been providing advocacy and support services for 30 years.
The panels around the perimeter of the display room, in the center's second-floor ballroom, detail why the Nazis saw homosexuality as a danger to society and how they tried to eliminate it.
It says the Nazis believed homosexuality was a threat to the Aryan race, could be transferred genetically, and was contagious.
The Washington museum contacted various organizations here just over a year ago about hosting the exhibit. The center jumped at the opportunity, Thompson said, seeing an opportunity to educate people both in the LGBT community and outside.
"Education is so important," Thompson said. "We've been a silent minority. We are now able to look at our history, and reflect and understand it better."
One panel details Paragraph 175, a law banning homosexual behavior in Germany. Ted Phillips, the exhibit's curator in Washington, said it had grown from a law in Prussia in the 18th century.
"When Germany unified those states in 1871, it became the law of the German Reich," he said. The law was named Paragraph 175 in 1935 when the Nazis revised it.
The original law, Phillips said, was interpreted narrowly by the courts, and specified "unnatural relations between men." The Nazis rewrote the law in "such a way that Nazi courts interpreted the law extremely broadly," Phillips said. "Any kind of act between men could become criminal. The original law was difficult to prosecute. The new law was very easy."
By 1938, even looks or touching between men could be criminalized.
Phillips said punishment under the original law was up to two years in prison. Punishment under the Nazis ranged from sentences of three or four months to longer sentences, which usually meant hard labor. But some homosexuals were sent to concentration camps without judicial proceedings.
The law did not mention homosexuality between women. Thompson said that was because gay women can still procreate. Lesbians were also seen as less of a threat because women did not have much political power.
The last set of panels discusses the aftermath of the Holocaust.
"It's shocking," Thompson said. "Even after liberation, Paragraph 175 was still on the records. Homosexuals were taken from concentration camps and rearrested."
Phillips said that after the war, East Germany went back to the original version of Paragraph 175, but West Germany retained the Nazi version until 1969. After 1969, "watered-down versions" were implemented, Phillips said. It wasn't until Germany's reunification that the law was abolished.
The number of homosexuals persecuted by the Nazis is difficult to pin down, Phillips said. It is estimated that from 5,000 to 15,000 were in concentration camps.
At one point in the war, "men held in penitentiaries were shifted to concentration camps because [the camps] were a major industrial force, labor force," Phillips said. That exact number can't be identified, either.
Thompson said the exhibit had been well-received. More than 200 people attended its opening reception last month.
"One of the surprising parts for me is how many people outside the community were really interested and thankful we have the exhibit," Thompson said.
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In honor of Memorial Day and with just days remaining before June (Official Gay Pride Month) I wanted to share with you the history of how the Gay Pride Rainbow Flag came to be. Not everyone in the Gay Community knows the story of our our Gay Pride Rainbow Flag so I wanted to share the story with you so you may share it with others.
Kaushal Niroula, prime suspect in the Gay Grifter murder case, in which a group of high-living San Francisco nightlife denizens allegedly killed and robbed a retired gay Palm Springs art dealer, collapsed in court Monday and was taken to the hospital.
The late Diana, Princess of Wales, and former South African President Nelson Mandela are two of the personalities identified as “Gay Icons” in an exhibition bearing that title that will open in July in London, England at the National Portrait Gallery. US actor Joe Dallesandro appeared in several of Andy Warhol's films and is shown here to the left.
I see lots of stuff about sock puppet engineering that has been going on in here. I've been briefed pretty well by reading all the discussion threads. I kinda get the idea this fellow must be seriously mentally ill. In any event I'll keep a watchful eye out and assure that the puppet show doesn't get much latitude to disrupt our activities. I've discovered that the best medicine for crazy people is to simply ignore them and go on about your activities and don't give in to paying them any attention. It's the attention that feeds them and when you take the bread off the table the flies go away. No Attention = No Apprehension.
