Three details from drawings done in Jerry Moriarty's Draw Anything class at SVA in 1981/2.
Word has just gotten to me of Jerry's passing. Though he left his body in March it seems word didn't start circulating amongst SVA alumni until two weeks ago. An ugly, biased NY newspaper gave him an official obit on June 25. I mourn his passing.
Jerry was a huge influence on me at a time when I desperately needed someone to help blow away all the Sophomore year bullshit at SVA in Fall 1981. I was a media major, studying illustration. There was less pretentiousness among Media students than there was in any other SVA department - forget Fine Arts and Photography, those spoiled brats expected you to worship the ground they walked on and the Commercial Design students were all headed for greatness in their daddy's advertising firms. Media gave you space - classes in model drawing, tricks of the trade, faculty who were working as book and magazine illustrators - some stiflingly realistic, others horseshit wild and original- Jerry was of the latter.
Jerry taught two classes at SVA. Draw Anything From Your Own Head and Paint Anything From Your Own Head, there may have been others as time went on. I took both classes and did two independent studies with Jerry. His classes had a diverse student population - fine artists, illustrators, cartoonists or, like myself, the just plain lost. Jerry had definite methods of working. Each class began with a 15 minute Drawing Game that centered around a word, thought, or phrase after which we all put our work on the floor and got involved in discussions, not critiques, of each other's work. It opened us up to the day, to each other, to the task at hand. We got to know each other,we got to know Jerry, we got to know ourselves. There were assignments (that) I can't remember, with strict parameters on medium for the work. I do remember that assignments centered around the use of specific media with a related size of paper such as - NO. 2 pencil, black ballpoint pen on a piece of 18" X 22" vellum or India Ink and white acrylic paint on the same surface n' dimension. Cartoonist tricks really. You could work on them in class and at home. You were responsible for X amount of drawings per semester. There were also suggested experiments ( my personal favorite was sitting in front of a TV for eight hours drawing in a sketch book or pad in black ball point pen and then choosing a drawing to do as your class project). Rule of thumb - everything was from your head with no reference, no models, no still life. Absolutely no working from photos. Eventually you'd come up with your own visual vocabulary or, at least, learn to recognize what you were visually attracted to or stimulated by. Jerry taught you what a creative slump was, how to recognize it, how to remedy it ( by not working). There was no tearing up of paper if it wasn't going well. Nope, you had to work your way through it.
Jerry was well versed and interested in a great variety of subjects - The Beats, jazz, poetry, sci-fi, TV, rock n' Roll, of course, art. As you worked Jerry made his rounds engaging each student in conversation about everything from the deeply personal to the mundane. At the time I had just gotten involved with the Poetry Project at St Mark's Church in the Bowery, going to poetry readings all over NYC almost nightly. We had long, intense conversations about modern poetry, Jack Kerouac and The Beats, especially since On The Road's main character is Dean Moriarty (harhar!). Before long our conversations included Joanne Kyger, Bernadette Mayer and Ted Berrigan. We took note that notorious Beat personality Herbert Huncke could often be seen on East 23rd Street by SVA for his methadone clinic was only two blocks North on East 25th Street. You could also catch him at Cosmos Diner on East 22nd and 2nd Avenue. Jerry was as thrilled as I was when I had a prose piece selected for SVA's award winning Words publication in 1982 and was equally happy when I had work published in Maureen Owen's magazine Telephone in fall of 1983. We'd talk about what was being shown in Soho or on West 57th Street. Jerry's classes were intensely personal experiences that you either loved or hated. You stayed or got the hell out there right away. No middle ground. And that's what I was looking for.
I could go on endlessly about Jerry Moriarty. He was an amazing Artist, a synthesis of cartoonist and painter who did a sort of comic called Jack Survives based on his working class upbringing in Upstate New York. It is what he is most known for. He inhabited his own personal universe while inspiring you to do the same. It carried over to the very clothes he wore. He was wildly methodical, dedicated to creativity, self possessed. His vision was his own, so much so that there was absolutely no evidence of influence...it was that singular. Once, discussing visual vocabulary, Jerry mentioned that his trees resembled broccoli and therefore he would not need to learn to draw broccoli since he already had broccoli in him. Brilliant. Isn't that true about everything? We carry everything within us, there's nowhere to go, the true and final frontier is inside not outside, we know it all already. It's already happened, it's just waiting for us to meet up with it. Ultimately 88 turns out to be a good run.
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