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Robert Sherer completing on one of his pyrographic works. |
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“The Submarine Game” by Robert Sherer. |
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Where there’s smoke
By Sue Harrison
Banner Staff
Robert Sherer uses skills he learned as a Boy Scout, like wood burning, to turn childhood memories into evocative renderings of innocence laced with sexual stirrings that began in those early years.
And far from feeling exploitative of the youngsters he draws, his work manages to create for most viewers a look back into their own formative years and the powerful feelings that were coming to the surface at that time.
Sherer’s work can be seen at Lyman Eyer Gallery, 432 Commercial St. in Provincetown. The show begins with a reception at 7 p.m. on Friday and continues through Aug. 30. William Cash will also be showing.
“My work is utterly autobiographical,” Sherer says in a caramel-coated Georgia accent. “I had a classic American childhood. My dad worked in the aerospace industry doing contract work for NASA. Knowing my dad was building rockets for the moon put stars in my eyes.”
His mother, he adds, was the quintessential mother-of-the-year, housewife-of-the-year type of woman who also ran a catering business out of the home.
He grew up in that environment and went camping, earned merit badges and began to have his first sexual feelings though he didn’t really know what they were.
“That Americana kitsch is the best of what I can recall about childhood,” he says. “That includes the naughty rites of passage.”
The results of his long look back are pyrographic (made with wood burning tools) pieces of thin wood veneer that depict innocent childhood pastimes like swimming or sleeping in the woods all snug in a sleeping bag. The boys all look like illustrations from the ’60s. And yet, there is an element of something deeper, something the (mostly) boys in the work are feeling deep inside.
To get to that point he creates several versions of the same drawing on paper — there is no erasing with wood burning — and shows them to friends to get their reaction.
“I do that until I find an image that is completely innocent if you want it to be or loaded with subtext if that’s what you want,” he says. “I get bored with art that only has one punch line. I like a narrative with several possible directions.”
Once he has the drawing he wants, he goes down to the local lumberyard and buys some thin veneered wood and transfers the drawing with tracing paper.
“Then I burn it,” he says. “When the wood cools back down to room temperature and my fingers stop burning, I color it with various furniture stains.” He laughs and says his techniques make the work quite archival. He has wood burnings he did as a young Cub Scout and they are still perfect.
But sometimes he is shocked by the “wild and disparate interpretations” that he hears at his exhibitions. “I’ve had people say, ‘That is so sweet, it touches my heart,’ while others snigger from the time they walk in the room.”
“Whether we like to admit it, children think naughty thoughts. It’s not like you wait until your mid-teens to suddenly have those thoughts.”
He is true to the past but also very respectful of the innocence and vulnerability of his subjects. “I know it’s tender,” he says of the memories from that time in life.
No matter whether you are a man or a woman, gay or straight, looking at Sherer’s drawings will take you back to your own past. That’s the beauty of his work. It’s not about an adult viewpoint. It’s about that time when our bodies start to react to the world around us and we step, wide-eyed, toward the future.
He recounts a recent party at his home where a group of friends was looking at one of his pyrographs of a boy in a sleeping bag dreaming or thinking of two other boys tussling. One of Sherer’s friends said he remembered having titillating thoughts like that but not knowing what they were. Soon the whole group was vividly remembering similar feelings from childhood.
Recently Sherer has begun to do commissions where he listens to someone talk about their childhood and makes a drawing to capture it.
“I think of it as revivifying the past, making it come back to life,” he says. “Frequently, when they see the finished piece, they cry. It’s a very cathartic experience.”
artseditor@provincetownbanner.com
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Sasha Lazard reaches for the high notes of musical possibility
Outer Cape Gallery Listings
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Aug 16th, 2007