At first glance, the artwork of H.D. Ivey appears to be colorful and playfully whimsical — which it is — but a closer inspection shows a depth and seriousness to the work not seen from afar.
An activist and artist, Ivey has been involved in fighting the good fight since his early days with ACT UP and the anti-war movement. His artwork has been showcased in both solo and group exhibitions in Philadelphia, New York City and Texas, including the group show “Witness: 30 Artists Respond to 30 Years of the AIDS Pandemic,” curated by activist and former Portrait subject David Acosta. The two have united once again to present an upcoming exhibit of Ivey’s work. Titled “M.A.D.,” the exhibit will feature a wide variety of his work, most of it never seen in public before, at the Crane Arts Gallery. The opening reception is July 9 and the exhibit runs through July 31. The exhibit is being presented in collaboration with Casa De Duende and the Physicians for Social Responsibility and marks the 70th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A special event on July 20, “Where are We Now?” features renowned nuclear-weapons expert Dr. Ira Helfand.
PGN: Tell me a little about H.D. Ivey.
HI: I was born in Texas — West Texas — and I have a twin, so we were both born there. I spent the first 10 years of my life there. I was born in January 1949 and in August of that year, the Soviets successfully exploded their first atomic bomb, so I’m part of that first generation of people who grew up under the threat of nuclear weapons. When I was about 6, my father actually built a fall-out shelter in our backyard. They told us that it was a tornado shelter and, because we lived right in Tornado Alley, it was plausible, but I learned later it that was a bomb shelter. That was in the early ’50s and the country was going crazy over fear of Russia and the bomb.
PGN: They just did a retro segment on “CBS Sunday Morning” showing the old “Stop, drop and cover” ads showing kids how to hide under their desks in case of nuclear attack.
HI: Yes, duck and cover. We had to do that.
PGN: What’s an interesting fact about the family?
HI: Hmmm, not sure what to say. My twin sister, Cheryl, still lives in Texas. I don’t have any children of my own but my sister had two children and I have great-nieces and great-nephews. My niece served in the Iraq War and did three tours of duty there. Her husband did four and her stepson did five. They’ve all suffered from PTSD. When she came back, her husband was really off the deep end and then her son came back from Afghanistan and was having a difficult time as well. We thought she was doing OK, but that summer she committed suicide. It’s been tough for everyone. The good that came out of it is that it’s brought the family together and I think we’re closer now than we’ve ever been.
PGN: What’s a trait that you share with your twin and what’s the biggest difference?
HI: Well, she’s not artistic at all, so we don’t share that. What we do share is a similar sense of humor. We like to joke around and tease each other. We talk a few times a week.
PGN: If I punch you, will she feel it?
HI: [Laughs] No, no. But I think there is a kind of twin communication that we’ve always had. We can look at each other and know what the other is thinking without having to verbalize it. But we haven’t had any psychic events yet! If I want to know how she’s feeling, I still have to give her a call.
PGN: How would you describe little H.D.?
HI: I was sort of the brainy kid. I was put in special programs for gifted students all through school — advanced math and physics, etc. My sister was the more social one so it was a nice balance.
PGN: Was she the first person you told when you came out?
HI: Uh, no. That was a hard one. She might have known; I think the whole family knew I was gay before I did. But things were different back then, especially in Texas where such things weren’t talked about. Texas still has a bad rap because of the politicians there, but the people have actually come a long way. I’m grateful for that fact.
PGN: What did the folks do?
HI: It was Texas — they both worked for oil companies. When I was 10, we moved to South Texas and my mother started working for a wildcatter, someone who goes out and looks for oil. So we grew up in the oil patch.
PGN: When did you first leave home?
HI: Probably when I went to college, but my grandparents had 12 kids (one died in childbirth) so I had a large extended family, lots of uncles, aunts and cousins, so we spent a lot of time traveling and staying with each other’s families.
PGN: Where did you go to school?
HI: I went to the University of Texas for both undergrad and grad school.
PGN: How did you become involved in activism?
HI: I’ve always been an activist artist since I was very young because of my mother. She’d bring home painting sets and we’d sit and paint. It was nice because the gifted classes I was taking were all very structured and regimented, but in art I got a chance to do what I wanted to do and it was very freeing. It’s interesting because my artwork now is fused with all the things I learned in my childhood: science, math, physics, it’s all in there. I became interested in politics when I was 15. It was 1964 and my family got transferred to Baton Rouge, La., because my father was working on the big intercontinental pipeline that went from South Texas all the way to Philadelphia. Because we were academically advanced, they put my sister and me in high school. It so happened that it was the first year that the courts ordered the schools to start enforcing Brown v. the Board of Education at Istrouma High. The day the school started integration, it was sealed off by federal marshals and it was very tense. I believe there were four African-American students, young women who were integrating the school, and there were some really shocking things that happened. I remember one occasion when two of the girls were walking down the hallway and someone started yelling words I don’t want to repeat. All the white kids moved to one side of the hallway and were cursing and spitting at them as they walked to class. I was moved by the courage that was shown by these young women and it spurred me to get interested in politics. When I went back to Texas, I got involved with the Republican Party because, believe it or not, back in the ’60s, the Democratic Party in the South was pro-segregation. It was the Republican Party that believed in integration. Of course now, thanks to Nixon, it’s totally flipped. The Vietnam War then drove me from the Republican Party completely.
PGN: What were the major influences on your artwork?
HI: There was a lesbian woman named Ernestine Viola Glossbrenner who taught advanced mathematics, physics and chemistry. She was my mentor from the time I was 13. She went on to be a state legislator. During my high-school years, both of my parents became alcoholics and she was a lifeline. We became very close and she got me interested in politics. I also got hurt and wasn’t able to play football, so I joined the debate team. My first topic was nuclear proliferation and it sparked my interest in the subject matter. The third big influence was my mother. We lived on the Texas/Mexican border and my mother liked to collect folk art; a lot of that is incorporated in what I do. It’s amazing when you look back at your art and you can see your whole life woven into the pieces.
PGN: You played football?
HI: Yes, since I was very young, mostly guard and linebacker.
PGN: Linebacker? You look like you should have been a receiver!
HI: I was tall and lanky but I wasn’t fast enough to be a receiver. I was good at long-distance running, though.
PGN: The first piece I saw of yours was from the “Witness: 30 Artists Respond to 30 Years of the AIDS Pandemic” exhibit.
HI: When I first came to Philadelphia, I’d just gotten a divorce. I’d been married for several years and it wasn’t until I got married that I really recognized myself as a gay man. When I was younger I’d dated both sexes. [Laughs] I thought everybody did that but just lied about it! But it turned out I wasn’t bisexual. I met David Acosta here and got involved in ACT UP. I had and lost a lot of friends who were HIV-positive and it was terrible the way they were treated. When I look back at my art from that period, I can see a lot of anger in my work. [Smiles] My art is still probably angry, but the temperature is a little lower!
PGN: I can’t imagine what it was like.
HI: It was scary, in the early days. There was no AIDS test, no way to find out if you had it or not. You never knew who was going to be sick next … if it was going to be you. If you did come up positive, it was pretty much a death sentence. It was the kind of fear that eats at you. Especially in a culture that at the time really denigrated gay men: We had to fight the religious right and the Republican right, who were both rabid in their condemnations of gay people. We didn’t have the straight allies that we have now. The thing that inspires me the most over the years is how many straight people are out of the closet with their support of their gay friends and family. Of course, it can still be brutal for young kids, especially in rural areas, but overall it’s much better.
PGN: I never even considered the ramifications of not even having a way to test for AIDS, never mind treat it.
HI: Yes, pretty much the first thing you did when you got up was to check the mirror for Karposi Sarcoma lesions. But by the time you presented with lesions, the AIDS was pretty far advanced and you’d die pretty quickly. Now, thankfully, we have testing and wonderful drugs to extend people’s lives but it’s still difficult. A lot of younger guys think, Oh, I’ll just take a pill and it’ll be all right, but it’s not that easy. I have type-1 diabetes so I know what it’s like to live with a chronic disease. It’s not fun.
PGN: What is “M.A.D.?”
HI: It’s a military doctrine that means Mutually Assured Destruction. It basically means that if someone has the military means to attack you, you have the capacity to destroy them. Most people think the “M.A.D.” era ended with the Cold War, but it’s not the case. It’s now called Full Spectrum Dominance and it was refined by the Bush administration. I try to deal with the larger implications; for instance, after the Cold War, America asserted and celebrated that we won, but it’s estimated that we spent $10 trillion on weaponry. That’s $10 trillion that we didn’t invest in our economy or have for rebuilding our schools or dealing with climate change at the start. And that’s only what we paid monetarily; it doesn’t count what we lost in human sacrifice. The nuclear arsenals have been reduced but we still have 20,000 in the world, and all the armaments and systems that go with them are still coasting us trillions of dollars for something we hope never to use. The only good thing about the Cold War was that the United States and Russia had a symbiotic balance. But after the collapse of the Soviet Union, that weaponry has spread and we now have 10 nuclear powers in the world. The more players you get, the more dangerous the game. And some of them are pretty unstable; a minor conflict could set off a major conflagration that would have global effects. It could lower the temperature of the Earth, which would affect agriculture, which could lead to famine. It’s a very dangerous game that I try to expose with my work. There are a lot of people working behind the scenes — Henry Kissinger, George Schultz, Sen. Sam Nunn — who are aware of and trying to avert the dangers of M.A.D.
PGN: You really have to wonder what is wrong with us sometimes.
HI: I know. Humans have always been murderous, but with nuclear weapons, we reached a point where we could actually exterminate ourselves. So we’ve grown up in a time that no generation in humanity has lived through before, a time when our moral sensibilities are completely behind our technological abilities. It’s not going to end well until we change the way we understand and control technology. And that goes for a lot of areas of technology. Look at how poorly we’re dealing with climate change. A lot of people make a lot of money by raping and pillaging the Earth with more and more ways to do it, without considering the ecological costs.
PGN: You’re a visual person. What image comes to mind when you think of the Cold War era?
HI: I’m a sculptor first and an activist in addition to it. I can have the best subject in mind but if I can’t craft an image to express it, then my art doesn’t work. I have a piece called “XX” in the exhibit; it refers to the Fat Man bomb used in Nagasaki.
PGN: What drew you to sculpting?
HI: Well, my mother made a mistake. She wanted me to be a lawyer but when I was young she gave me a book on Michelangelo. I was immediately drawn to it and at 15 knew I wanted to be a sculptor. It was a fight because when you’re a gifted student, they have certain expectations of what you should be, and artist didn’t fit in there. In school, I wanted to take woodshop and metal work but I wasn’t allowed to in the gifted track. And now what do I do? [Laughs] Work with wood and metal, all the no-no’s.
PGN: I understand that you suffer from dyslexia. Do you think that being dyslexic pushed you to more manual work?
HI: I actually think it’s the other way around. I wouldn’t say I suffer from dyslexia; to me, it’s a blessing. Most people rely on verbal dialogue but visual people can think with the sound off. I can turn things around in my head and visualize them in space, which is a real asset to an artist.
“M.A.D.” runs through July 31 at Crane Arts Building, 1400 N. American St.
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