Description

Michael Pope remembers coming out as his authentic self through his art at 1155 Pacific Street. He was a resident here in 1992/1993.

Transcript

The reason I’ll remember this building forever was that it was where I lived when I was coming out and finding ways to be authentic as an artist. And I was dating a man named Darcy. He had a beautiful body, especially his torso, six pack. He was just a beautiful, beautiful male specimen. And I had to do a project that had to do with showing who I really was, and it scared the shit out of me. And it was an art project that I had to get up and talk about and present to my peers. So I got those bandages that you make casts from. And I made a cast of Darcy’s body, his torso, and I sanded it down. So it literally was a front and back piece of his torso without the arms. So I hung the torso on some kind of mechanism. So it was hanging free. And then I literally dipped a white tuxedo shirt into Plaster of Paris and put it around the torso and ripped pieces of it through so you could see inside to the torso. And then I wrapped the whole thing in beautifully painted glossy barbed wire.

So for me that, it sounds a little bit trite now that I describe it to you, but it was, there’s the real man. There’s what you see here. Here’s how I’ve self imposed a cage. Now get to me. And that happened while I was living there. And if I had to share a creative coming out story, it would be that.