Some local artists are
inspired by Florida's waterside vistas or by the state's rich cultural heritage. But
for Keith Theriot, inspiration comes from within—literally.
Theriot's latest collection, New
Blood, consists of paintings the HIV-positive artist created
using his own blood as a medium. Theriot came up with the idea to
use his own hemoglobin in his paintings when he cut his finger
while stretching a canvas in 1995. The new work, the third series
in which Theriot uses blood, will be exhibited at The Office
Gallery (47 E. Robinson St., Suite 205) from April 17 to May 15.
"I
don't paint constantly, but when I do, well, every couple of
months, I'll paint 20 or 30 of them [paintings]. Definitely when
I'm painting, I'll work on more than one at the same time. I'll
have the paper lined up all the way across the wall and then
pretty much splatter the blood all the way across. It's very
much a stream-of-consciousness idea," the 47-year-old
explains. "When I'm painting, I let the paint tell me where
the figures will emerge, and with the blood, I find the figures
in the shapes. I mean, this one here, you can see a torso,"
he adds, pointing to an amorphous bloodstain on a sheet of
watercolor paper in his west Orlando home studio.
"Whatever
is in my mind is going to come out [on the canvas or paper], and
the more I try to filter it, the more problems I have," he
says. "But it always seems to do what I want it to do; I'm
lucky in that way."
Theriot
points to another shapeless bloodstain. "If you've ever
seen a viral particle, this drip right here, it definitely looks
like a viral particle," he says.
Theriot,
who has participated in several clinical trials and has worked
for HIV/AIDS service organizations for over a decade, has seen
his share of viral particles under microscopes. In his native
Louisiana, he worked for and received experimental medication at the
Tulane University clinical trials unit. Here in Orlando, Theriot continues earning his living by helping other
HIV-positive people.
"Right
now I work with the city [of Orlando] as a grantee for a HUD program. We work throughout the
Orlando area to provide housing and housing assistance for people with
AIDS," Theriot says. His team worked to rebuild two of the
St. Francis program's houses, which give homeless and indigent
men living with AIDS stable places to reside. Theriot tells me
he's always worked a full-time job to support his artistic
pursuits.
"I
got a degree in Baton Rouge and then went to Manhattan," Theriot recalls. "I worked for the Robert Miller
Gallery as a bookkeeper and had a studio downtown that I shared
with a fashion designer. I was really, really lucky to get a job
there. At the time, the late '80s, it was the
premier gallery. The gallery represented all the big names:
Mapplethorpe, Andy Warhol, Lee Krasner. Getting out of school
and then falling into this, with all these people I'd just
studied, it was a really intense experience."
New
York proved to be intense on more than just the artistic front for
Theriot.
"I
just remember bits and pieces," Theriot says of partying at
legendary nightclub Studio 54. "I remember walking down
this hall and waking up somewhere else entirely. The club scene
was really intense."
Theriot's
contacts in the Big Apple's thriving club scene helped him land
a solo gallery show at one of Manhattan's most popular art spaces.
"When
I first got there [to New York], I met someone and fell in love, and his close friend was a
club promoter. He got me a show at a club called Area, which was
an art-installation club in New York. They would change out the interiors every six months. In the
two years that the club ran, they had three shows dedicated
exclusively to single artists: Keith Haring, Andy Warhol and me,"
Theriot says, seemingly still surprised that his pieces hung on
the same walls as the work of the late gay art legends. "I
was really lucky. I was a baby," Theriot adds, chuckling.
"I don't think I realized at the time how important it
was."
Theriot
continued his bookkeeping job until the demand for his work
became so great that he decided to concentrate solely on
painting and selling his art from his 14th Street
studio. A gallery in Baton Rouge represented him down South, and he also showed his work in Washington,
D.C. Theriot's career was at its peak. But then tragedy struck. AIDS
hit New York.
"My
friend got sick, my partner got sick—suddenly my whole
circle of friends got sick. People were dying left and
right," Theriot says. "I remember I lived on 25th Street, and the gallery was on
14th Street, and I couldn't even make it 10 blocks down the street without
someone telling me, 'So-and-so died.' I spent so much time at
funeral homes and in hospitals. By the end of the '80s—when
you do something creative, you really open yourself up—it was
just too painful. I took a break and went to house-sit for a
friend back in the prairies of Louisiana, in a Frank Lloyd Wright house."
Six
months later, Theriot moved back to New York. This time he went to work for a motion picture film lab that
processed the film for movies by directors such as Spike Lee,
Michael Moore and Woody Allen. But Theriot's social circle
continued to dwindle as AIDS took the lives of many gay men. In
1989, Theriot himself was diagnosed with AIDS.
"It's
almost like I didn't have time to get sick," Theriot says.
"There was just so much time spent in hospitals. There were
no services at the time—I mean, Gay Men's Health Crisis was
there, but their services were, like, a buddy program where
someone would only come out if you were very
sick, and—I'm not making this up—a knitting class in the
afternoon. And there were a lot of quacks and scams at the time.
Everyone was just grasping at straws. AZT was prescribed at the
time, and anyone who was taking it, well, it made
you sick. People didn't get tested [for HIV] back then—there
wasn't anything to test for.
You'd get Kaposi's sarcoma or you'd get pneumonia. People always
hoped for KS, because it meant you'd live longer, whereas with
pneumonia, you'd be gone in two weeks. My partner died, and then
my best friend from Louisiana
who'd lived with me in New York
died. So I decided then to move back to
Louisiana. I didn't want to get sick in
New York and go to the hospitals there."
So
Theriot moved to New Orleans. A friend who worked at Louisiana State
University
got Theriot involved with the Tulane clinical trials unit just
as his health was seriously declining.
"She
was one of the women who was instrumental in saving my life. I
was getting Disability [payments], and I weighed about 130
pounds. And then I met this one," Theriot says, motioning
to his partner Rob Guenther, who is sitting at a nearby desk
surfing the Internet. "We started as roommates and then
fell in love. I used to joke that when we first met, he probably
thought, 'Oh, I'll only have to put up with him for a year or
two,' and now we're going on 15 years."
Theriot
says other women played pivotal roles in helping him regain his
strength and get healthy. He and Guenther became particularly
close to a lesbian couple in New Orleans—one half of the
couple was the nurse who administered Theriot testosterone,
which he says saved his life—and the foursome visited Orlando
together for Gay Days Weekend.
"He
[Guenther] really fell in love with Disney," Theriot says.
Within months of the couple's first visit to Florida in 1999, they decided to move to the City Beautiful. Guenther
had landed a job here while they were still living in New Orleans, and Theriot quickly got hired by the HIV/AIDS service
organization Centaur once the couple arrived. But Theriot says
it was difficult moving from New Orleans
to Orlando, and he had some trouble adjusting initially.
"They
had mental health counselors at Centaur, and again, a woman
entered my life, Katharine Johnson, an amazing
mental health counselor," Theriot gushes. "She really
helped get me through the first year here."
Theriot's
new exhibition is a first for the artist in that all the
paintings are of women, which Theriot says is a tribute to the
many females who have made an impact on his life.
"I
felt like I really needed to focus on women this time," he
says. "There's an Alice Cooper song called 'Only Women
Bleed,' and I just thought it was an amazing song. It was a lot
about violence against women in abusive relationships, and it
affected me really strongly at the time. Then I thought about
all the women at the places where I go to speak, and I always
tell people that [HIV/AIDS] has never been just a gay man's
disease. And women have always been there to care for us and
support us along the way—women of color, white women, lesbians
especially. When you talk about AIDS, that's not a group that
immediately enters the picture. It wasn't necessarily a
lesbian's fight, but they were there, carrying us along the way.
I really felt like I wanted to put some light on that."
See
+ Hear
What:
New Blood, works by
Keith Theriot
Where:
The Office Gallery, 47 E. Robinson St., Suite 205, Orlando
When:
Thursday, April 17-Thursday, May 15
How:
For more information, visit www.KeithTheriot.com
or call The Office Gallery at 407-843-3172. There is no charge
to visit the gallery.
Copyright © 2008, Watermark Online
Art courses through
painter Keith Theriot's veins