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What I Have Been up To Since Graduation: Robert E Peary High School 1983

In the Fall of 1983, I started college at Montgomery College, Rockville and got an AA degree in Studio Art, Spring 1986. In the Fa1l of 1986, I continued my education at the University of Maryland, College Park, graduating in 1988 with a BA in Studio Art. My emphasis was on Drawing, Painting, and Performance Art. My academic emphasis was in Psychology, Sociology, Philosophy, and Feminist studies. My intent was to gain a strong understanding of the world into which I was born and to find a proper place where my influence could improve the quality of life for humanity through my art and, hopefully, the self-awareness and intellectual structures that it could inspire.

Although committed to my academic life, I maintained a close association with untrained artist friends, often completing assignments while making art at home to address more personal concerns. Shanna and I often conspired to create art and developed the characters of Mrs. and Professor Wilson, which years later evolved into the invention of Jokie X Wilson, my current alter ego. Together we began our explorations of mind states, ultimately hanging our brains on Yonder Tree. Eventually paint, ink, graphite, words, and other mediums became mere waves and particles by which we could search through the substructures of our culture’s social manifestations.

In the Fall of 1988, I moved to Tucson, AZ on my way to San Francisco, CA. My tenure there turned into eight years during which I fully separated myself from all of my previous social influences and began to participate in the local LGBT and arts communities. I documented my intellectual, spiritual, and social studies in Crazybook, my sketchbook/journal. I painted, sold a few, did performance art, got paid a few times, learned, and spent much of my time in intense states of meditation. I did retail management to support myself and found that I was as pragmatic as I was creative, making the businesses I operated very successful.

In March of 1997, I finally realized my dream of permanently relocating to San Francisco, CA. I became involved with the Radical Faeries and became less a recluse and more socially active. I was finally home. I would still scare people, but they seemed to like it. I continued my painting, Crazybooking, and performance art, continuing to do retail management to support myself. I was finally part of a community asking the same questions as I was about the direction of world government, religions, and our places within these institutions. In May of 2000, I took my first trip to Amsterdam and realized that I was completely out of place spending my life in retail management. I spent two weeks writing and drawing two hundred pages of self-examinations and realized that my retail career must end. I walked away from that on my return. I tried a dot-com business, was fired for being too openly gay, sued, and won a tiny settlement. I made one last effort at retail, selling luxury tabletop items, was restructured out in June of 2002, and then took a job with the SFUSD public school system. I never expected to be good working with children, but I apparently have this unlimited patience thing going and that makes me ideal for the job. I was shocked to find that parents really like me too, even with the unusual clothes I wear. But, then again, I don’t comment on their facial piercings either.

Also, in June of 2000, I began to work on an annual event at SF LGBT Pride, the Faerie Freedom Village, the only non-commercial/spiritual space in the entire celebration. In 2002, I became the Producer of the event and have been since. We have a park-like setting in which to, clothes-optionally, dance, sing, pray, make art, and such over Pride weekend. I arrange about thirteen hours of performances, manage the security, and handle all of the administrative functions such as contract negotiation and planning meetings with the Pride board. Several thousand people from around the world attend the FFV, one million plus attending the entire Pride event.

Additionally, I am a member of the Bay Area Dadaists and volunteer at Under One Roof, a local AIDS charity. I am currently on my 193rd journal, am prolific in the genre of mail art, and continue to paint, exhibit, and perform. Currently, my interests are in gaining an understanding of the architects of our culture so as to myself help build greater realities within which we all can live in peace and quality. I further hope to pass these skills onto others, empower them, and encourage greater and better dialog between cultures that have traditionally been in conflict. I hope to better understand precognitive states as I am convinced that it is within them that we all experience the most consensus as to the needed direction of humanity.