How to Make Art Out of This

[Editor’s note: Joe Average was a Vancouver visual artist and activist who received the Order of Canada 12 days before he died on Dec. 24, 2024. He published the following essay, 'How to Make Art Out of This,' in the 2019 essay collection ‘Against Death: 35 Essays on Living.’ The collection was edited by Elee Kraljii Gardiner, now Vancouver’s poet laureate, and published by Anvil Press. This excerpted version of the essay has been edited for length.]

I was randomly tested for HIV in 1984 when I was 27.

A few weeks later I went for the results and my doctor said, “You’re HIV positive.”

And I said, “Oh. Okay. What does that mean? How long do I have?” Because, at that point, it was a death sentence.

And he said, “You’ve got the virus, and we don’t know exactly when it’s going to kick in. You could have six weeks. You could have six months. You could have a year. You could — I don’t know — live forever.”

And I said, “Okay, I’ll take that last one.”

For three years, I felt fine. I wasn’t on any medication, because my viral load was still good. My helper cells were all good. I was feeling pretty cocky about myself. But I had the virus. And all of a sudden I lost a bunch of weight, got a few opportunistic infections.

I had thrush, which is a real sign that your helper cells are low and your immune system isn’t working. My numbers were all crashing and they put me on the only thing they had at the time, which was AZT plus a wide-spectrum antibiotic.

My doctor said, “I’m not going to lie. Things are not looking great. The AZT isn’t doing much. You’ve probably got six months.”

There was that “six months” thing again.

At the time I was unemployed, and collecting unemployment cheques, which is demeaning on its own.

So, I thought to myself, “Okay, Joe Average. If you’ve only got six months to live, do you really want to spend your last six months standing in an unemployment line? You have to change all this, so that you have a reason to live.”

Now, my art, up to that point, was just something I had fun with. I never in my wildest thoughts considered making a career out of it, because I had some self-esteem issues.

And seriously, all I did was cartoony things. But I thought, “Okay, challenge yourself to see if you can live off this art.”

I didn’t have any money. My boyfriend, who was an elementary school teacher, would bring home boxes of coloured chalkboard chalk for me, and I bought some charcoal. I was making little charcoal and pastel drawings and tacking them on the walls of my apartment, and having little shows.

And I didn’t die!

I still felt like a fraud. Still, to this day, I feel like a fraud. My art is really just doodles that I anthropomorphize. When I was a kid, we didn’t have a TV. And in Grade 3, I got invited to some classmate’s birthday party.

They had one of those giant console colour TVs, with Saturday morning cartoons. The colours just burnt into my retina. And ever since, I’ve been trying to recreate colours that look like they’re coming off that goddamn console colour TV screen. To figure out how to make them go that bright.

I just kept doing that. And the response was starting to be pretty good, which I didn’t understand.

But it was making me money. And there I was, surviving.

I had accomplished the challenge that I set out before myself, which made me feel happy and in charge.

‘Just be brave’

It was years later, when I was 30, that I got the first “Get your affairs in order.” They’d put me on drugs and, in two years, I would become immune to them. Faster than they could make new ones. My doctor, Julio Montaner, got compassionate access to drugs for me, on quite a few occasions.

I’d been to so many funerals and seen what a nightmare a death can be, for loved ones and relatives. Especially the whole money part. So, with every show that I had, I would take 10 or 20 per cent of it and cash it, and put it in a safety deposit box at the bank. And it was my Dying Fund, so that when I die, in my will, there’s instructions that there’s money set aside.

I wanted to take care of the people around me that were going to have to deal with me dying. I’d been through the survivor’s guilt.

I couldn’t figure out why I was still alive while all my buddies, back in Toronto, were all dead. And it was like, “Well, I guess it’s my turn.”

I’d see how brave other people were, and I’d think, “Well, be brave! You’ve just got to be brave. It’s going to happen. Just be brave. But, make sure that everybody else is taken care of.”

When I first started getting notoriety in the '90s — enough that people wanted to interview me about my art, and stuff — I was very open about the fact that I was HIV positive.

I understood that I’d become Vancouver’s little darling, and there was a lot of love and respect out there for me. I thought, “Okay. A lot of those people that love me probably don’t know anybody that’s HIV positive. I’ve got an opportunity here to ease their minds.”

So, I was very open about it, to the point where they started referring to me as “the HIV-positive artist.” I know it’s good for headlines, but I’m not really an HIV-positive artist. I don’t draw things that are HIV — you know, that’s not my genre of art.

But being “the HIV-positive artist” gave me some fantastic opportunities. There was a poster competition for the very first national AIDS Awareness Week. I did this image, and it got selected.

And Gerda Hnatyshyn — the wife of Ramon Hnatyshyn, who was the governor general of Canada at the time — her platform was HIV and AIDS.

So she flew out from Ottawa, to unveil the poster with my image at the Vancouver Art Gallery. So, there I was, standing with Gerda Hnatyshyn. Mounties on either side of us. And I was very nervous. Photo ops, right?

We were given a break, and I whispered to her, “Am I doing okay?” She put her arm around me, and said, “You’re doing great.” We kind of bonded, right there.

Six months later, I got this really fancy, embossed envelope in the mail — an invitation to Rideau Hall, to be one of 50 Canadians to have lunch with Princess Diana and Prince Charles.

And I got to meet Elizabeth Taylor, right after the World AIDS conference. They asked me to do the image for it, the “One World, One Hope.” There were banners of it all over the city. Shortly after that, we had done a limited edition set of prints.

Right at the very beginning of my notoriety in Vancouver as a popular artist, David van Berckel — the fellow who started Opus — and his wife came to my show. His wife fell in love with one of my pieces, and they bought it.

A few weeks later, David and I went out for lunch. He said, “I think you’re going to have longevity, with your career. I think your stuff is awesome. But, here’s my advice. When you have enough money, invest in reproductions.”

Back then, the reproductions were offset lithograph. An edition of 300, of one print, cost $12,000, or something. I put out a lot of money for a really slow return. But I kept on doing it, so I’d have an inventory. I got up to about 11 different prints.

‘Lately I’ve been sleeping better’

Last year I was whining to my friend Sherree about only having $3,000 left in my account.

She said, “Remind me again why you’re not on disability?”

I said, “Well, I’m not disabled.”

And she said, “Joe, could you stand at a job for eight hours?”

And I went, “No.”

“Could you sit at a job for eight hours?”

“No.”

“Honey, you’re fuckin’ disabled.” [Laughter]

So, she got all the forms. We applied. And, a few months later — I’m on disability. Whaaaat?

Another friend of ours said, “Has Joe applied to Wings?”

Wings is an organization that was set up by a man who was HIV-positive. He was watching his friends having to move into subsidized housing. Having to leave their homes and move into these crappy little units. And it made them a little unhappy. So, he set up a thing with the government, where they give him money that he allocates to people. They subsidize my rent.

So, I applied for that, and I only have to pay a third of what my rent is. My friend Doug said to me, “You know what this means, don’t you? Dude, you’re retired!”

I only have to come up with $375 a month for my rent. My groceries are paid for. I only have to sell one print a month to cover my rent, kind of thing.

It took me a while for my head to wrap around that. Because, as an artist, I’m hardwired to constantly be in a panic.

“Where the fuck is my next cheque coming from?” I kept on thinking, “It’s going to all be pulled away from me.”

I stressed about it for a few months.

But lately I’ve been sleeping better. All of a sudden I don’t have to worry about anything. And that is the closest I think I’ve gotten to happiness.

So, thanks to my friend Sherree — who all my friends call my wife — I’m sitting pretty!

‘These are my battle scars’

The Georgia Straight or somebody was doing a story on me, and they sent a photographer over — Jamie Griffiths. We’d clicked immediately, and the photo she took of me was awesome.

So, I called up Jamie, and I said, “I want to document this.” She was like, “Absolutely.”

So, maybe once a month, for a couple of years, I’d go over to her studio, first thing in the morning. We’d sit, have tea, chat, see how I was feeling, talk about what was going on. And then I would just take off all my clothes, and she would just photograph me, for a couple of hours, and document the changes, what was going on in my body.

I trusted her so much, in photographing me. And she’s awesome. I love her dearly. Documenting all of this helped me through the whole thing. And the gay and lesbian film festival, Out on Screen, contacted Jamie — because she’s a filmmaker as well — and asked her to submit something to the festival.

So, she came to me, and she said, “Joe, this might be a perfect opportunity to put something together with all the work we’ve been doing.”

Because, sometimes, she wouldn’t just photograph me. I’d usually come from the gym after boxing and sparring with my trainer. I had the gloves with me, and she said, “Can I just film you, just doing that?”

We sat here for a month, put it all together, and put it in the festival, and got a really good response. The piece was about lipoatrophy.

I say, in the film, I See the Fear, that I was at Safeway once. Safeway opens at 7. I’d be there right at 7, so there were the fewest people I could see. Did everything early.

I’m kind of used to being alone. I’ve been alone most of my life. It’s not a big thing for me. But I was at the checkout once, and there was a woman and her daughter right in front of me.

The daughter looked up at me and said, “Why do you have holes in your face?” The mother looked at me, and I could see the fear in her eyes. And she kind of shushed her daughter, and whisked her out of there as quickly as possible.

And I thought, Oh my god, she was frightened of me. Because she saw something she didn’t understand.

Another time, I was walking down Davie Street and I hear this “Eh! Joe Average!” from the other side of the street.

“I don’t know what you’re on, but you’d better get your act together soon, before you die.”

So I knew that everyone was looking at me, thinking I looked frightening.

I just hid. A lot. You know? But this whole — it got me to the point where I decided, “I’m just going to own this. These are my battle scars. I’m going to be proud of this.”

The name of the film was I See the Fear.

That was the trick. It’s like, how do we — how do — oh! Let’s make art out of this!

Art makes everything better.

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From ‘Against Death: 35 Essays on Living,’ edited by Elee Kraljii Gardiner (Anvil Press 2019). Used with permission of the publisher.