People own whole collections of your posters! Pander: Yeah, I have a certain kind of hard-core following that stretches back to the '60s, dating back to when I was a kind of an activist. But the people who buy my work, now that is a whole other story. But it always seems so strange to me that someone will come up to me in the grocery store and say, “oh, you’re Henk Pander,” because it never seems to have much to do with the actuality of my mundane daily existence. But I do find it exciting that I sort of stepped off the boat here in 1965, and it ended up like this. In order for me to make it here, working as an artist, I had to diversify my skills, develop a broad base that includes posters, stage sets, lettering, as well as drawing and painting. I would never have done that in Holland. I became more honest and less fearful, simply through the sensation of living in a foreign country. The social controls of your own country are gone, so you become freer, perhaps more direct. I’ve also had to maintain a sort of competition with myself, straining always for higher standards so that each piece would be better than the last. The pressure to survive has affected my work in a positive way. The need to make my work known led me to posters, whereby suddenly you can see 500 Henk Panders around the city. Being in America has caused me CERULEAN BLUE LTD. 119 BLANCHARD STREET SEATTLE MAILING ADDRESS: P.O. BOX 21168 SEATTLE, WA 98111 (206) 625-9647 to learn to express myself more articulately, because I’m asked to talk about my work and asked sometimes to work in complex organizations. It’s not been easy for me. Sometimes I wish someone else would take the responsibility for supplying me with sufficient income so I didn’t have to spend time as a business person. I have to really work at it to sell pieces at all. It really doesn’t go by itself. I don’t sell many drawings. I sell watercolors and occasionally paintings. CSQ: But the drawings are truly the seminal work? Pander: Yes, they are very pure. They are very immediate. They are binary, either black or nothing. But they are not necessarily what my supporters buy. Sometimes I feel underemployed, that I’m capable of doing far more than I am asked to do, so that’s why it’s really very necessary to make my work known outside of Portland, more than it already is. I would like a show the caliber of this Museum show in Amsterdam. CSQ: How many brothers and sisters do you have? Pander: Nine. CSQ: And how many of them are artists? Pander: Four. CSQ: And now your sons, too? Pander: Yeah, well, it’s kind of like they don’t know any better. My father was an artist, so I never knew any better either. ■ FICTION, POETRY AND ILLUSTRATION OF THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST New work from Chris Howell, Katherine Dunn, Walt Curtis, Tom Smario and Christina Pacosz E i------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 Four issues for only $7.50 plus, with the coupon below, a free comic featuring Jim Blashfield, Dennis Cunningham, J. Ross, Dana Hoyle and Susan Gustavson. Name _____________________________,_______ Address ,________________________________ City State Zip £ Mail this coupon, with your check, to Mississippi Mud, 3125 SE Van Water Street, Portland, Or. 97222 __________________ iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinniiniiiniiiiiiiiiniiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiniiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiininiiiinmniniiininiiininniiininmiiiiiiiiiiiifi 22 Clinton St. Quarterly
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