<Begin Segment 37>

RS: I, probably one of the biggest changes for me was teaching myself how to silkscreen, because I probably had the poorest printmaking education in the history of art in this country, having gone to the University of Washington where nothing but the Collagraph was introduced. Glenn Alps wouldn't allow any kind of printmaking to -- I think the first printmaking course other than calligraphy was when John Dowell taught a lithography class. And then that was wiped out, and never to be heard from again until Bill Ritchie was hired to teach silkscreening. But in any case, I taught myself how to silkscreen and started to silkscreen on canvas, and then fell under the spell of the whole pop movement and Andy Warhol, which was logical in a sense because being so influenced by the funk ceramics movement, which was so anti-intellectual in so many ways, the pop movement kind of provided me with that sort of intellectualism that was almost required being on the East Coast. And being at a school that really stressed the academic aspects of art-making, working with Laurence Schmeckebier who was a, an art historian that insisted that we be able to talk about our work, and forced us to write weekly papers in this graduate seminar, and to do all these things that was really unheard of, I think, in most places on the, on the West Coast.

And so, anyway, I ended up using pop art to provide a sort of an intellectual framework for the work that I was doing at the time. Unfortunately, what happened was that I think I became overly stimulated by Andy Warhol and, when I look back and look at the paintings that I was doing in my graduate thesis, you know, were just third-rate Andy Warhol paintings. They were huge pop repeated images, things from Euro-American culture, and -- but maybe one of the most important things I did was, for my final presentation in this seminar, I did this multimedia presentation on Andy Warhol and the whole pop culture. And what I did was, I think I used eight slide projectors that were all hooked up showing slides and I faked 'em, an Andy Warhol movie. I claimed that I went to the New York Public Library and discovered this Andy Warhol movie that had been previously unidentified. And I was able to go to New York and talk to Andy Warhol about it. And of course I made this all up. And he told me what it was about, and I shot this movie in sixteen millimeter film of one of my students standing naked in front of this window looking at himself and for six minutes that's all he did. He just kind of, you'd see his head sort of move like this and the movie was shot from his back. It was called "Back." And it was filled with flash frames and everything, everything was left in there, which was typical -- it had all the texture of a Warhol film. It was a beautiful forgery. And so I, I introduced that movie into this presentation I gave and I told everybody, the whole graduate class there, and the dean and all the faculty and everything, I just lied through my teeth. And then I faked an interview with Andy Warhol. And I had this record that was a party record of one of Andy Warhol's parties and Viva and Ultraviolet, and all these superstars from the Factory were there, and the tinkling of glasses and all this party talk. I played that in the background and I got one of the graduate students in sculpture to be Andy Warhol, and I asked him all these questions had him give me all the answers that supported my case about Andy Warhol, in fact, the whole presentation. And so, during the, in the process of doing this presentation where all these slides were flashing in this room and I'm speaking through this microphone that distorts my voice, and then I introduce this movie that I discovered on Andy Warhol, and then the capping glory was this interview with Warhol that substantiated all my findings. And of course everybody bought every part of it and thought it was just brilliant. And Larry Bakke, who was my advisor, thought, this is absolutely brilliant, and why is this guy a painter? He ought to be an aesthetician. And he had no idea that I was just lying through my teeth and... so, after this, this great, great, successful presentation, I was approached by the TV station. And they said, "We want to broadcast this on WCNY TV, all through upstate New York." And I says, "Okay, let's do it." And just naively thinking there'd be no problem. And we're at the station and they started asking about copyrights. And I started thinking, "Copyrights. What about copyrights?" 'Cause I just saw this thing as just being sort of art, an original act. And they said, "No." And I says, "Well, listen, that movie and that interview," I said, "I just constructed myself." And they said "What?"

MT: When were you going to reveal that? That hoax?

RS: I wasn't. I just saw all of that as, as just being all sort of part of the original piece. I mean, I was very naive. And, well, maybe not that naive, because I would probably still try to pass that. I might argue that today. But, in any case they, when they found that out they decided well, okay, we're gonna eliminate the movie, we're gonna eliminate the interview. What's left? And what was left was this very sort of dry presentation on Andy Warhol and the pop culture. But they decided there was enough information there that was still new and scholarly and, and, they broadcast it. But I remember it was a totally different piece. And when the word got out that it was on TV, everybody watched it and said, "Well, where's the good stuff?" And then they found out that I had lied and, you know. And then in some ways it became bigger than life because I had pulled one over everybody's eyes. So that was, maybe the, the early forays into performance in some ways, was that piece that I did.

AI: Well, when you were creating that piece, were, in your mind, was this a joke? Did you create the film and the interview as a, out of humor?

RS: I didn't want to joke, I think it was sort of a rebellious act. And in a way, maybe there was a part of that sort of, that influence of that funk art thing, the anti-intellectualism, being in that climate, that I felt like I could, if found out, I could justify this. I could play their game as well as critique their game.

AI: And especially with Warhol as a subject.

RS: Right, right, sure. So that, that made it, it was perfect in some regards. And in some ways it worked out that way as well.

AI: So you did have, in some ways, some very serious intentions?

RS: Yeah.

AI: Throughout the creation of that.

RS: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, 'cause I ended up writing my thesis and we had to write this rather scholarly thesis, not like at Kansas and most schools, we have students write a one-page to three-page statement about their work. I wrote a sixty-five page paper on Andy Warhol and the pop movement, so that sort of terminated my, my graduate experience.

One interesting story, for our final thesis exhibition, and we, all of the students had pieces in one show. We decided as a sign for that exhibition we built this tombstone outside that had all of our names stenciled on it. We built this fake graveyard with artificial turf and white picket fence and everything. And there was a cemetery nearby campus. And plastic flowers were the only things that were allowed in this cemetery, whereas it's the opposite here. You have to have real flowers. And so, but daily they would throw these plastic flowers away into this sort of garbage heap and we would go there, and these big wreaths on easels, we would get those and we'd bring 'em over to this grave site that we had constructed and we put them down. And our, the plan was to go all the way around the city block, around the entire art building plus all the other buildings. And there were enough of these that we were able to do that. And so, one day my best friend at Syracuse, Joe Pacheco and I were out there filling up my van with these flowers. And we discovered a license plate. And we pulled it out and Joe said, "Oh my God." He said, "I hope this isn't a portent." And I said, "What is it?" And it was a Kansas license plate. And we were both in the process of searching for jobs. And I said, "God, I hope it isn't, either," because we, all we would do is talk about where we wanted to teach, where we wanted to get jobs. And so we threw the license plate away. Well, as it turns out, I end up at the University of Kansas and he got a job at Kansas State University. Now isn't that wild? [Laughs]

<End Segment 37> - Copyright © 2003 Densho. All Rights Reserved.