Tales From the Newsroom: Three men on a toilet
My all-too-brief career as a visual artist
I didn’t know much about Bill Fark’s back story. I know he’d been in the Air Force at one time, and I think he’d been a professional dancer. Or maybe he covered ballet for the paper.
I met Bill at the North County Times, and he was in the twilight of his career.
He was a features and arts reporter for us, covering local galleries and artists from the area — and was eccentric even by the standards of those circles.
You’d never guess Bill was ex-military by his garish dress. He was famous for loud, colorful shirts and pants. Think of anything that Mick Jagger or David Bowie might have worn in the ’70s — and then double the brightness.
I’m pretty sure Bill frequented the local thrift stores, because he surely wasn’t buying that year’s fashions.
He also wore lots of folk jewelry — the kind of leather bracelets and stone and metal necklaces you see at the San Diego Zoo gift shops, or at the gift shops at the museums in Balboa Park.
But Bill was also famous for starting his wardrobe over after his extended summer jaunts. He would pack a couple suitcases full of his bright shirts and pants — and then leave them behind in the hotels as he and his wife, Lucy, traveled across Europe.
When he returned home, he’d rebuild from scratch.
Upon turning 70 — or maybe it was 80 — Bill was informed by the publisher that corporate HQ back east had denied Bill’s request to continue working past the company’s mandatory retirement age.
It was the sort of stupid bureaucratic nonsense that led that particular newspaper chain into financial distress just a few years later, but that wouldn’t have cheered Bill any. He loved the news business, loved profiling local artists, loved going to opening night at a new gallery show and mingling with his people. For all I know, he even loved the stale crackers and cheap cheese they put out as hors d'oeuvres.
One day, a co-worker who adored Bill, Laurie, pulled me aside in the office and said one of the local art galleries was working with a class at Palomar College to do an entire exhibit on Bill. That he was posing (fully clothed, thank heaven, although if they had asked there is no doubt whatsoever in my mind that Bill would have gone along with it) for the class and that they would be creating portraits in various media.
I said that was pretty neat.
Then she asked, “Well, what are you going to submit?”
“Me?” I stammered, looking around in panic. “But I’m no artist!” I whispered, probably too loudly.
“Think of something,” she said. And that was that.
When I got home that night, I was wracking my brain on what I could possibly create that would fit in with an art exhibit. I still draw like a 2-year-old. I suppose I could have painted an abstract — I mean, people will pay for a canvas painted by elephants holding brushes in their trunks, after all.
As I was sitting on my couch, stumped, my eyes kept coming back to a piece my sister had created — and that I had inherited when my brother married and his new bride said, “Hell no” to keeping it.
It was a collage of Elvis, on the top of a toilet seat.
I mean the collage was on toilet seat, not a collage depicting Elvis on a toilet. The toilet seat was the canvas.
While my brother had kept it in the bathroom and used it as a toilet seat, I had hung it on my living room wall in a place of honor. It humored me. My sister had created it for an art class, surrounding a photo of Elvis with all kinds of knick-knacks commemorating his life and career: rhinestones and sequins and pills.
Just maybe ...
The next day at work, I emailed Laurie: “Can you get me a 5x7 photo of Bill?”
A day or two later, she slipped me a manila envelope.
Inside, the photo.
I wanted to honor Bill’s sartorial splendor, so I hit the fabric store and laid in some of the most garish odds and ends they had in their scraps bin. I then picked up some Mod Podge clear sealer, and started looking for different little decorations to surround the photo.
Laurie kept bugging me, wanting to know what I was making. I told her she’d find out when it was time.
The day before the exhibit’s grand opening, I brought it to work in a box and left it on her desk.
To be honest, I wasn’t sure the gallery owner would even display it.
Laurie had asked what my asking price was, and I said $500. I mean, what the heck, right?
Opening night, I arrived at the gallery a bit nervous, but kind of excited, too.
As I made my way through room after room of drawings and paintings of Bill, I was impressed with what the students had done with acrylic, with charcoal, with watercolors, and pencil and ink.
And it reinforced my belief that I had no business trying to capture Bill through any of those mediums.
I finally made my way through what was a good sized crowd for a smallish gallery (it had turned into Bill’s unofficial retirement party), I saw a group of five to six folks, including Bill and Lucy, standing in front of some work or other.
As I got closer, I saw it was the Bill Fark toilet seat. Bill saw me, gave me a big smile, and said, “Jim — this is great!”
Oddly enough, it never did sell. I went by and picked it up when the show was over, and brought it back home.
A few years later, I had moved on to the San Diego Union-Tribune. One year for my boss’ birthday, I made up a Jeff Rose toilet seat.
I guess I hadn’t explained to Jeff the back story or how it as intended very much as a compliment, because he didn’t take it the way it was intended. Not at first.
But over time, it grew on him — and for my next birthday, he created and brought in a Jim Trageser toilet seat. (The piano is a nod to my love of music, the beer bottle cap is self-explanatory, the scissors indicates my constant need of a hair cut, and the clock was a reminder from my boss that it wouldn’t kill me to get to work on time more often.)
That one now hangs in the garage, next to the Bill Fark and Elvis toilet seats.
It may well be the only toilet seat art gallery in the country.
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Haha, this rules!
I must steal this concept.