Self-taught Canadian Pop artist and activist Joe Common, who devoted his life to uplifting these dwelling with HIV/AIDS and advocating for the LGTBQ+ neighborhood by inspiring kaleidoscopic art work, died in his sleep in his Vancouver residence on December 24, based on his relations. He was 67 years previous.
Born Brock David Tebbutt in Victoria on October 10, 1957, the artist took on the identify “Joe Average” when he was 19 years previous, based on Van Dop Gallery, which has proven his work since 1996. The moniker happened throughout an evening out ingesting with buddies, because the artist recounted in a 2017 interview with the Vancouver Solar.
Joe Common’s “Gertrude the Green Horse” (n.d.) was acquired by the Vancouver Artwork Gallery’s everlasting assortment in 1992. (picture courtesy Vancouver Artwork Gallery)
“When I asked the doctor what [the diagnosis] meant, he said: ‘You could last six months, you could last a year, five years, 10 years or forever … we just don’t know.’ And I said: ‘I’ll choose forever,’” he mentioned in a 2005 interview.
In the beginning of his profession, Common organized small reveals in his West Finish condominium the place works have been priced based on his month-to-month lease. Initially impressed by First Nations artwork and later artists together with Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, and Peter Max, he developed a signature Pop Artwork model that took the type of public murals, prints, banners, and work, usually centering on folks, animals, bugs, flowers, and customary home goods.
“I did a few images about AIDS — one called “My Thinking Cap (Life with HIV)” and one known as “Ray of Hope” — once I first began the cocktail as a result of I needed that out of me slightly bit,” Common mentioned, referencing the “cocktail” of antiretroviral remedy medication taken by HIV+ sufferers.
“For the most part though, my images aren’t so much AIDS-related — they’re more about how the child in me wants to see the world: happy and with love,” Common continued.
Joe Common adopted his moniker as a young person throughout an evening out with buddies. (picture by Mavreen David, courtesy McLaren Housing Society)
One in every of his most well-known works, created for the Eleventh Worldwide Convention on AIDS, which had the theme “One World, One Hope,” appeared in Canada’s first HIV/AIDS consciousness stamp in 1996. The art work was reproduced in 2021 as a large-scale mural that was put in in downtown Vancouver on the outside of the Helmcken Home, which offers sponsored housing for folks dwelling with HIV and AIDS. The work marked the fortieth anniversary of the primary reported AIDS instances in the US.
All through his lifetime, Common’s advocacy work and artistry have been commemorated with quite a few awards and honors, together with a civic proclamation by Vancouver’s former mayor Philip Owen designating November 3, 2002 as “Joe Average Day” and an Order of Canada issued on December 12, every week and a half earlier than his dying.
“His art with its bright colours brings a smile to my heart and soul,” Common’s sister Karin Tebbutt Cope Carson advised Hyperallergic, including that he “helped change how people viewed living with HIV” and that “his legacy will bring hope and happiness.”
Along with Carson, Common is survived by his brothers KC and Mark, his father and step-mother, and two half-sisters.
Joe Common along with his sister Karin Tebbutt Cope Carson (picture by and courtesy Karin Tebbutt Cope Carson)
