The Party Don’t Stop

Cody vanwinkle

Interview by L. Valena

Can you start by telling me what you responded to?

Yes. I received an illustration that was a mostly white canvas that was abstract, maybe bordering on cubist. There's a figure in the forefront who's looking out to the viewer, and all around her are colorful details. Yellow, orange and purple. The whole thing read to me as festive. There were shapes that could be lights or fireworks. Something that could be a string of flags you would hang at a party, or something.

The figure looking out at the view is not happy. Not celebratory. Maybe sad, or bothered by something. So I thought of sad clowns. I thought there was something sad clown happening. It was serving me sad clown realness. The figure out at the viewer, and it's like a bust, in a way that reminded me of a mirror. And I thought that made sense, because this sad clown is reflecting the sad clown in all of us. I felt like... it's less that someone is sad, and more that they are troubled by something they see.

I received this prompt the week of the democratic primary, and the news is all about coronavirus. We are all seeing things that trouble us. Like that clown, we have to grin and bear it. The show must go on. We can't stay in bed. We have to smile at the customers, do our jobs, and go through the daily mundane activities. Even though something not okay is happening, and we all know it.

I was thinking about how we each have to cope with our feelings alone. We have support systems and stuff, but when it comes to you and your feelings, that is something that you are tackling on your own. So my initial idea was to have a mostly empty canvas with some sad clown disturbed by something they see off in the corner. I wanted to focus on the isolation. But then as I was drawing, another inspiration came along.

I was watching this documentary series on Netflix called Don't Fuck with Cats- have you heard of this? It's a true crime show about a criminal who does very bad things, records them and puts videos on the internet for people to watch. One of the themes that the show touches on, is in order for this person to be successful, the audience has to click. People have to elect to watch this. The audience is complicit in the crime. And at the end of the show, a lady who's a frequent voice on it says that the Netflix audience who's at home watching a documentary about it is also in some way complicit in this crime. That's how I feel about true crime in general, as a genre. I still consume it sometimes, but I feel really gross about it. We're finding entertainment in someone's real tragedy. I think about the audience eating popcorn, in the movies, being riveted by a person's actual life falling apart. So that's when the one clown became three. And instead of being in a featureless expanse, completely isolated, these clowns are performing on a stage. It's not that they have to grin and bear it. It's actually better if they don't grin, because the audience just wants to see them bear it. It's like: we're interested in the struggle- in the suffering. That's why we bought our tickets to the circus. So I put the focus on these clowns, who are not happy, still having to perform for us.

These are very expressive clowns.

None of them are jovial.

But what I will say, is they are not scary. They don't freak me out. They're definitely clowns that have feelings, but not in the way that we usual see them. A sad clown can be kind of disturbing. These are not disturbing clowns.

I wanted them to look like sympathetic characters. I think that they are the victims in this scenario, so I'm glad they don't read as scary. I just wanted them to read as people who are struggling with something. That's what I thought about the figure in the piece that I responded to. This was clearly not a picture of a clown- there was no indication that this person was any kind of clown. But even if that person was a clown, they are not performing. This is a person who might happen to be wearing makeup, dealing with issues. It was really fun for me to research different types of clowns. I love the idea of a rodeo clown.

That combination of words is incredible.

Have you ever been to a rodeo?

No. Have you?

Yes I have. Rodeo clowns are a real thing. There are some things about me that are not as Arizonan, but I have been to some rodeos, truck shows and tractor pulls. But I have a serious fear of drawing cowboy hats, so I didn't go rodeo clown.

What is it about cowboy hats?

Their shapes are so curvy, complicated and layered. It's such an icon, that if you mess it up, everyone notices. I just don't have the kind of spacial relations to comprehend a cowboy hat. It's like a mobius strip. It can't exist, and yet it does. I was having to decide, especially when it was only one clown- I wanted it to be in some very sophisticated pose. I thought that I could go ballet, or Grecian urn or statue, but something that looks upset, or sad, or in mourning. I just didn't find the source material I was looking for. Actually, for the hobo clown, I invented that pose, and I am not a dancer. And I'm only a novice figure drawer, so I'm pretty happy with the way that turned out.

The one on the right could be balletic, but I think I got that pose from a modern dancer. The middle one- the birthday clown or circus clown, is clearly doing some kind of spin. I wanted to find three different poses that all seemed mournful, sad or troubled, but not cover their faces. That clown in the middle could cover it's face and still obviously be a clown, but if that hobo covers it's face, is that a hobo clown or just a hobo?

I think there's this hashtag 'clowns are people too' theme.

Yes! That's the message I want to get out. A clown is a performer, a public speaker- is that really that different from other types of performance? If this person was a wedding singer, or doing that busking gymnastics thing at Faneuil Hall- what's the difference between that and clowning? How come one is funky and cool, and one is kind of weird and almost frowned upon?

My dad applied to clown college at some point in his youth, and he always says that it was the longest and most involved application he ever completed. He said it was really powerful, because it really tried to get a the heart of the person- it really tried to understand the person on a deep level.

It makes sense. When you're creating a character like that, you have to find a way to marry that character with the rest of your psyche. When I was researching these clowns... The one on the right was the one I started out with, but when I decided that the clown wouldn't be alone anymore, I didn't want to do three of the same style. I wanted to showcase three different styles of clowning. I looked up the history of clowning, and I found a meme or something that had six or seven historical types of clowns, that were each depicted by a different depiction of the Joker. The Jack Nicholson Joker was refined and wacky- his makeup was perfect and he had tailored costumes. The Heath Ledger Joker was grimy, and kind of falling apart. Cesar Romero wouldn't shave his mustache for the role when he played the Joker, if you look closely you can see it. It seems that all of these different depictions of the Joker have, whether accidental or not, chosen a different style of clowning to explore.

How long have clowns been a thing? Is it a court jester thing?

I didn't go back that far. I was just looking at the last couple centuries of clowning. I assume though, yeah. There have always been fools for the sake of entertainment, and people who volunteer for that role. This is, for sure, the darkest and most mature piece I've made for Bait/Switch and maybe in general. I don't usually think that much about the effect of the media on the human psyche, and comment on it. And I'm sure, to the untrained eye, someone would not see this and think "oh, it looks like someone's been watching Don't Fuck with Cats." I think whoever gets this next might see something else entirely and do something different. But if you happened to be sitting over my shoulder while I was creating it, then you would know that I've been thinking a lot about how we are all forced to perform, under duress, for each other.

I keep thinking that maybe I'm ready to leave Facebook.

When I left Facebook, it was a simpler time. It was before there was all this attention on data-mining, privacy laws, and all these things. For me, it was a much more simple decision and simple reasoning. Now, we live in a time where it's much grittier. So I'm not surprised to hear that. One of the major motivators for me was when they cracked down on people using fake names. When they said that we had to use our real names, I said, you can't make me. I think that's privileged information, and if my name on Myspace could be Captain Awesome, than my name on Facebook can be whatever I want it to be. So I changed it to something that wasn't my real name, but sounded like a real name. And then I just left it entirely.

I used to be on all the social media sites, and I've been slowly backing away. Many of the different platforms I've quit entirely, some I've just scaled back. I still have Twitter, but I just haven't used it for awhile. I might go back, but I might not. I'm always waiting for the next thing to be invented. I used to be really excited about that. People would rush to it, because it was still unexplored, and unregulated, and people were just free to goof off. And then it turns corporate. Ever since Instagram and Facebook came to power, when there's a new one they can't really take off. Every once in a while there's a new one, and I start an account, and nobody uses it, so I stop. Because we haven't replaced Facebook with anything else, when I'm not using that I guess I'm not really using social media. And that's fine with me. I would like social media to come to an end.

Me too.

I don't know if it will, but I would approve of it just going away. And right now I'm pretty happy with how much limitation I have over it. I know if something feels too invasive, I can just walk away. If you're listening, Instagram and Twitter, I can quite anytime I want. You don't own me.

You've participated in Bait/Switch a few times now, do you have any new advice?

You have to feel out, depending on yourself and the project, how much you want to draw from the source material, and how much you want to just create some new weird thing. I expected to have this be a lot more based on the source material, and then by the time it was done, it went in a completely different direction. And then I started adding details in that had nothing to do with anything. Like the backdrop. At first I had the curtain closed, and they were in front of it, but then I didn't like the colors. So I opened the curtains, but then it was too black and blank, so I added some little decorations that I think make it so quaint. Now this might be a school play?

Or like Vaudeville?

That as precisely what I was going for with that stage. I considered drawing an audience between the viewer and the performers, but that seemed redundant, because the viewers of this drawing are the audience. We're all involved with this, we're all agreeing to be an audience that we may or may not sign off on. So if you click on some unknown link, and it turns out to be Rick Astley, then you didn't ask for that, it just happened to you. But if you know that a video has particular content in it, and out of sick curiosity you click, you're automatically approving, because you're showing that there is an audience for it. I want to remind everyone that doing something like this is a great excuse to research something that you didn't know much about before. I learned so much about clowns, just because I wanted to include some clown elements in this piece, and it was a great easy excuse to learn about something I'm interested in. If you smell a clue, and you want to go look for it, do it. That's yet another reason why this activity is fun.

Call Number: M20VA | M24VA.tuSe

Cody VanWinkle spent five years illustrating children's books at the Greater Boston Bigfoot Research Institute. In 2017, he was published in And Lester Swam On, written by 21 rambunctious second graders. Someday, he would like to combine his passions for making ice cream and knitting.