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When did you break away from these Coney Island-based architectural sculptures to the "exploding canvases?"

After I left Coney Island I had to make some adjustments in my personal life. I had some habits that needed correction. And I spent a period of time with my daughter and her theater career. My late wife was a writer and was working at home. Then she got ill and died of cancer in '93.

In '97 I took a studio in Brooklyn and got back to my artwork for the first time in quite a few years. And when I got into the studio the first thing I did was a series of shooting gallery-inspired pieces. (I knew that as soon as I got back to the studio that that was what I was going to do.) One of the pieces is now hanging at Hope and Anchor where I do my karaoke. Now, it is true that I greatly admire Jasper Johns. It's a problem because people will immediately go there when they see the bull's-eye imagery but for me it came from Slim's Shooting Gallery.

But that brought me back to artwork. I then started doing a series of paintings with flags and flag parts. In some I used stainless steel and clapboard. You know when they plaster walls there'd be these wooden strips and they plaster over them—well, I reclaimed a bunch from dumpsters in Coney Island from buildings that had been torn down and used them in that series.

Then I moved the studio over to 13th St. and that's when I started working with these newer pieces. I call them "exploding stick pieces." I sold them all to a collector in Brooklyn Heights. And that was the beginning.


Can you speak a little about the use of the aluminum in combination with the wood shards?

Well, it's not conscious but in thinking about it—it's as if the insides were coming out. Even the blood-red color. I went to black and white in one of the earlier versions of these pieces-it's currently at 440 Gallery. But the black and white one seemed oddly tailored to me. It doesn't have the sense of the "gut" that the others have. And that may be because of the color. Nonetheless I'm going to explore different color options in the larger series I'm working on now.

Did moving your studio upstate, and starting to keep bees up there, have any influence on these later pieces? It seems as if you moved from a Victorian architecture/Coney Island influenced paradigm to a more natural, almost chaotic viewpoint.

I suppose. But I actually started doing these "exploding" pieces down here. I have a terrific fondness for the 19th century mill buildings. And I miss that kind of an atmosphere—especially a building that has craftspeople and artists. I wondered how working alone in a rural setting was going to affect my sensibility. Yet that's where I got the aluminum and red shard pieces-up there, in the country, in the winter with the wood stove going, by myself. Now I find myself gathering materials around the property that I'd like to incorporate someday. Almost like brush pile work.

What about "Kay Sera Honey?"

I harvest honey from four hives and I buy more from local producers whose product is very much like mine. I sell the honey at my karaoke gig and at art openings—wherever it works. I donate 20% of the profits to different charities. Last year I donated to Doctors Without Borders and Heifer International. (They donate farm animals to impoverished villages around the world.)

That must be interesting having a dual life—your studio and bee-keeping operation upstate and your karaoke gig in Brooklyn.

It's a little exhausting. I'm doing the karaoke three nights a week—Thursday, Friday and Saturday and honestly I'm getting to a point where it's difficult to wear heels. (But necessary for a woman in my position…. You know my public expects it.) But it's tough because my wife and I don't get time together to relax upstate.

Would you say the bee-keeping influences your artwork or your performances?

To me it kind of works as a whole. Bee-keeping itself is not just a country farm activity but also a spiritual pursuit-being connected to an organism that's made up of tens of thousands of beings. And one of whose members I've been wary and somewhat fearful in my life. You know people have this idea that bees will come racing out of their hives and attack you. But it's a tremendous thing to be able to work with them and get right in there and feel secure. Plus the honey is great.

I also collect from them beeswax which eventually I'll do something with. I'd like to get into encaustic painting using the wax. And there's another product that comes from working with bees that's called propolis. This is a hard resinous substance that they make from sap and resin that they collect from trees. Bees use it to sort of glue everything together inside the hive. When I empty the frames of the honey and I've got the parts of the hive back in the shop I scrape the stuff off. People take it internally for its health benefits. But I give it to a friend of mine who's a violin-maker and she uses it to make varnish.

And how does Kay Sera fits into this?

Well, a couple of things happened to me. My late wife died of cancer. I tuned a significant age—I'll leave exactly what age up to speculation. And I'd been wrestling with cross-dressing all my life. I didn't grow up in any kind of a time or place or a social atmosphere that would have allowed me to say isn't this cool or bohemian of whatever it might have been for some people who could have dealt with it. But it was really a matter of fear and shame. But eventually I decided that if I didn't deal with who I was that I was going to be the next person taken out on a gurney.

So I just sort of threw the closet doors open and looked and saw what was in there and decided it was actually pretty cool. To make a long story short I found the most interesting, most fun-loving, most flamboyant community among gay drag queens. People really threw it all out there, painted it with a big brush and had a good time. I joined the Imperial Court of New York—one chapter in a nation-wide group of drag queens who do charity events I realized I needed an ironic drag name. So I just thought "que sera"—Kay Sera, what will be will be.

Cross-dressers are probably the last of alternative lifestyles to come out from underneath the rock. I mean people can understand gay people, even transsexuals, but a heterosexual man who lives to dress as a woman confuses a lot of folks.

I had a friend who was working as a businessman in Midtown. He decided to open this restaurant called Hope & Anchor in Red Hook. They wanted to boost the bar business so he came to me and asked me to host in character, in drag, as Kera Sera, a karoke night. So I jumped on it. People often say it's like no other karaoke they've been to, its like going to somebody's home.

So being a karaoke hostess, bee-keeper and an artist, a husband and a father, a dog owner—it's a good life.

Richard Eagan's newest exhibit will open at Park Slope's 440 Gallery (www.440gallery.com) on January 5th 2005. He performs as Kay Sera at Red Hook's Hope and Anchor every weekend. (347 Van Brunt St at Wolcott St, Red Hook, Brooklyn (718-237-0276). To get there by public transportation take the F or the G to Smith-9th Sts, then take the B61 bus to Wolcott St. The karaoke begins at 9pm and runs until 1am on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights.) You can purchase Kay Sera honey at the 440 Gallery opening, at the Hope & Anchor Karaoke or by calling 917-364-9429.


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