Dan Pillers: Artist Interview

January 31, 2025Arts + Entertainment, Community, Feature0

The Visual Arts Gallery here at MHCC is hosting the exhibition of local artist Dan Pillers, originally from Spokane, through the end of January – with content and commentary on our society that has brought some gallery visitors to tears.

“This particular show is, in a lot of ways, is a dream show for me,” Pillers said of the exhibit that reflects the raw emotion and consequences of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s-90s and its impact on the gay community.

“It’s one that I’ve sort of wanted to do for a long time. And this, this gallery allowed me this space to do it,” Pillers explained.

This is a story of everything from coming out, to living through the AIDS crisis, to current (times). This story that’s being told is one that I’ve been telling for 40 years.”

It’s been that long since the AIDs epidemic began sweeping through his community and others nationwide. It may be tough for some of us to imagine what it was like back then.

“I lost over 300 people to AIDs… So, that’s a lot to process in basically a decade, over the course of the decade,” the artist said.

Among the multidisciplinary works of art on display is a scrapbook featuring Pillers’s friends from that era. He was asked about the possibility of them visiting the exhibition.

“Today, most of that community is gone,” he said. “The friends that I do have that were from that time, I love them dearly, and I’m really glad they’re still around. Although, interestingly enough, some of us, we have a hard time speaking to each other because we went through hell, and when we see each other, it reminds (us) of (that) environment.

“You had to just do your absolute best to survive,” Pillers continued. “ It was crazy. You partied so you didn’t feel… There was a period of time where, like, every week was somebody’s funeral and that’s where you saw your friends.”

Pillers’s personal story is about accepting himself as he is, much as many of us today are delving into the same space of “Who am I, authentically?”

When Pillers came out as gay to his parents and my family, they were kind of shocked, he said.
“They didn’t like the idea. They weren’t too keen on it. They have, religious beliefs that, you know, made it difficult for them to sort out. But over the years, they’re (now) like, ‘Yeah… we always knew.’ “
Along the way, Pillers took the impact of becoming one’s true self to another level: His mom helped him to see another side, he explained.

“What people don’t understand is that as a parent of a gay person – (while) the gay person has had their entire life to sort of sort out their own emotions and stuff and get to this point where they finally speak up and say who they are, at that moment, the parent has to begin their own, their own coming out process.

“For my mom that meant she had to sort of figure out how she talks to her people in her church, her neighbors, and how to, you know, still have her beliefs but also, you know, go to bat for her son,” he said.

The complexities of self-identity, cultural norms and stereotypes are on full display in Piller’s MHCC exhibit. Many highlight the myths and burdents of men and masculinity, and that outsized impact on society.

When Prisma Flores, graphic illustrations editor for The Advocate, stopped by the gallery to take some photos for the publication, she reacted with tears. The examination of maleness hit home, she explained.

“The position of the mirror that says ‘Respect,’ another with the neighboring piece, ‘What kind of man are you?’ – and then just past the punching bag, ‘The art of manliness,’ there’s a frame of a cowboy’s groin and the framing elements of all the pieces, like the preserved patriarchy,” Flores said.

“And the punching bag to me represents anyone that doesn’t fit the patriarchy will be the punching bag of the patriarchy and that’s why I’m like so moved,” she said. Likewise, she took in the wall display “that challenges my own limited worldview – I understand how people can be so inhumane to each other.
“So that’s why I’m weeping. That’s why I’m moved. Yeah, preserved, beautifully, perfectly preserved, that’s how I would describe it.”

Pillers said his creative process “involves a lot of hemming and hawing, a lot of scratching my head. It also involves my dreams. It involves my… just being, my observations of the world around me, and it’s a long process.”

Inspiration can arise unexpectedly, he said. “Sometimes it’s finding that just that right object. For instance, the punching bag, when I found the punching bag, I picked it up and I knew exactly what it said to me.”

Many of the pieces were inspired by such an object that inspired him to investigate something. “I do a lot of research on my work… I go down the rabbit hole of discovery… That helps me .. set a mood, it helps me feel that mood while I’m creating it. That’s a big part of my creative process, it’s actually feeling what I’m doing.”

The ultimate secret sauce, Pillers added: “Once I get an idea, I turn everything over to my dreams. I literally dream these pieces in detail, and I know how to put them together before I actually start.”

He said he hopes the MHCC show inspires people to tell their own stories. His advice for students is “develop your own language in your art and tell your story, your personal story, in a way that allows people room to see their (own) story within it.”

The Virtual Arts Gallery exhibit closed for good on Jan. 30. For those who missed it,
Pillers’ work will get another showing at the Guardino Gallery at 2939 NE Alberta St. in Portland, from the end of March through April.

You can also find his work on Instagram, IG@Danpillers, or on his website, danpillers.com.
Links to his interview with The Advocate and also the Art Department’s Artist talk can be found in the article on our website at https://www.advocate-online.net/?p=29847.