This drawing is of my late husband, John Callahan. It is dated July 11, 1993, which would have made him 47 years of age, 10 years younger than I am now.
I call this piece, “Keeping Score”, as I drew it on a sheet of scratch paper as I kept score during a game I and my late husband, John Callahan, were playing, probably Scrabble. Also, it’s kind of a double entendre as the guy depicted looks like a gym coach.
Another archived sketch, done on the reverse side of Celebration Theatre stationery, inherited from my late spouse, John Callahan, though he was still alive at the time (1988/89).
Mister Clean, waiting for service. This sketch was drawn on the back of a piece of “Celebration Theatre” stationary; we had a lot of it around at my house as my late husband, John Callahan was the artistic director of Celebration Theatre for several years. In case you don’t know, Celebration Theatre was (is?) one of the, perhaps the, pioneering LGBT theatre in the country, founded by Chuck Rowland in the 60’s or 70s or 80s. If you’re curious, look it up on Wikipedia.
This is the last drawing I did in the Daily Derriere series until July 12, 2013. I dunno whazzup with the funking date on the drawing; I did it in February, not January.
As mentioned in previous posts, my spouse, John Callahan died of metastasized prostate cancer (metastasized to his skeletal system) on February 17, 2013. On the day I did this drawing, I didn’t know when he would die, only that he would. But there was no way to know if it would be in a week or a month or 6 months or a year. He had been given a prognosis of 6 months to live in October of 2010 and outlived it by so much that he was kicked out of the hospice in July of 2012. John want to die at home so we were doing what we could do grant his wish.
So on the morning of Friday, February 15, 2013, I entered our house through the back door (my bedroom was in the detached garage) and immediately shrieked at the sight of John, lying in a large pool of his own blood. It seems he had gotten up to go to the bathroom and lost his balance, striking his forehead on the way down. I struggled to get him back into bed and staunch the bleeding. John chortled at the scream I gave out upon seeing him. I then called the hospice, and by 11:00 AM John and I were meeting with the hospice social worker, chaplain, and nurse to discuss John options; obviously from this point onward he would need 24/7 care. John dozed in the middle of the conference and I kept waiting for him to wake up so I could get his feedback.
He never woke up. On Saturday morning he started making weird rasping noises as he breathed, so I called the hospice, described it to the nurse who said that John had about 2 days to live; these were “death rattles”Sure enough, John passed at
around 7:00 PM on Sunday night, February 17, 2013, surrounded by friends and
loved ones.
These two drawings seem to be part of a series. The drawing on the right is a sketch of Richard, my boyfriend at the time (now my husband, subsequent to the death of my spouse, John Callahan, and my recovery from my nearly fatal stroke on April 2, 2013. Complicated, isn’t it?) I would have thought I would have done the drawing on the right FIRST, and abstract the drawing on the left from the more realistic drawing. But the dates tell a different story. Hmm.
The dating on the Daily Derriere drawings I’m culling from is going to get wonky from this point onward. That’s because my life was getting out of control (not that it was ever IN control) as my spouse, John Callahan, was nearing the end of his life in the beginning of 2013. John was dying of metastasized prostate cancer, having been diagnosed as terminal in October 2010. He passed on February 17, 2013. During those couple of months (and the period afterwards) it became hard to keep a daily drawing schedule, especially after I had a nearly fatal stroke on April 2, 2013. So I’m filling in the gaps with other drawings, many of which have nothing to do with derriere.
JANUARY 1, 2016
This is the first post of “THE
DAILY DERRIERE”, taken from scans of my “DAILY DERRIER” sketchbook. Like my
previous series, “THE DAILY DICK”, these are done in “The American Express
Appointment Book” for 2012. I started the series on January 1st,
2013, but was derailed from my daily schedule by life (or death) happening, in
this case my spouse, John Callahan, losing his prolonged battle with
metastasized prostate cancer on February 17th, and my near-fatal
stroke on April 4th.
Categories
THE DAILY DICK
THE DAILY DICK
This is a first installment in a
daily blog (to be published daily going forward).
I started doing the work
last year around this time, late August 2012. My dear departed spouse, John
Callahan, http://www.ageofconsentrap.com/asked if I wanted his 2013 American Express Date Book. (He was still
alive at this point.) I accepted his kind offer. It occurred to me that it
would be a low-pressure way to do artistic play—I would be working on really
crappy paper already printed with clanedrical (is there such a word?) crap.
This would free me of worry about doing good art, and I could cut loose.
It was actually reminiscent
of my first one man show, at The One Way ( a leather bar in Silver Lake that
has since gone defunct after losing its liquor license toward the end of my
show’s run) in the summer/fall of 1989. That show was entitled “Recycled
Erotica”. All the art was drawn on the back (or front) of found Xerox copies,
or painted on grocery bags I disassembled and gesso’ed on one side for this
purpose.
This new project served the
same artistic purpose, except the new art would receive even less exposure than
“Recycled Erotica”. I was working in such a way as to make reproduction or
scanning difficult so as not to be tempted to do precisely what I’m doing now:
posting it on my blog. I simply couldn’t deal with it: I had too much going on
in my life, not the least of which was my spouse’s impending death from
metastasized prostate cancer.
Anyway, John died on
February 17 and I had my stroke on April 2. My beloved boyfriend, Richard R.
moved in with me upon my release from the hospital on May 18. The last 3 months
have been all about getting my life and my health (and my
drawing/painting/writing ability) back. Only now, on the eve of my September 2nd
resumption of paying work, do I feel the need/ability to start posting this
rather extensive archive of work. I’ve no doubt I’ll be kicking myself as I
start trying to reproduce scan… but what can you do?
This
is the cover of the volume. The black paper cut-out penis is glued down with
Elmer’s Glue. Last Saturday,when I took it off the shelf to show it to friends
(Joe Flazh! And Sid Lanier, of the now defunct Flazh! Alley Gallery, in San
Pedro), I found the penis was becoming unglued (“It’s hard to keep a good dick
down”, Sid quipped), I revisited the adhesion, this time (over) using Nuetral
PH Adhesive, by LineCo.
