ROBERT SHERER

This series is a celebration of my old-fashioned rough-and-tumble boyhood in the rural South. I reconnect with the lost world of secret rituals and relationships, of tree houses and fortresses; of skinned knees and blackened eyes; of wooden sword-wielding pirate attacks; of archery and catapults and booby traps; of rock skimming, tree climbing, knot tying and skinny dipping. These works are utterly autobiographical.

I grew up in and around Jasper, Alabama, in a military household during the Vietnam War. Like many rural Southern boys, my world was predominately outdoors; hunting, camping, swimming, scouting and war gaming. The rites of passage and relationship intrigues from those secret hideouts and pup tents helped to define me as a man.

Ironically, the illustrations of camping guidebooks and scouting manuals of the 1960s most closely resemble my youth. I began to derive my biographical drawings from these sources, but found that some vital emotional component was still missing from the product. I could replicate the style but I couldn't connect it to the memories. It wasn't until I began to render these scenes with actual camp craft materials that I truly remembered my way back to camp. The connection seems so obvious to me now: during my youth there were times when my merit badges for camp crafts were the very foundation of my self esteem. What a wonderful twist of fate that these same techniques and materials now help to imbue my art works with an air of authenticity.

I believe that my original intention for exploring this unusual line of visual inquiry was to play with kitsch Americana in an irreverent manner. Almost immediately, however, the focus of the work began to shift toward an exploration of the process of male gender role programming. I had no idea at the time that I would ultimately use the series as a means to unearth from memory those pivotal moments when the natural love of men for men takes over and diminishes the social construct of male competition.

Good Morning
pyrography/wood veneer/shellac
22" x 25" framed

Submarine Game
pyrography/wood veneer/shellac
20" x 25" framed

Melonballers
pyrography/wood veneer/shellac
22" x 25" framed

Blossom and Bloom
pyrography/wood veneer/shellac
25" x 21"