Jeremy Novy was born in Reedsburg, Wisconsin, about 45 minutes northwest of Madison in Sauk County.
“When I was born, my parents were only 17, and my biological father went to prison a few days after I was born,” said Jeremy. “He was always in trouble as a teenager, but they finally convicted him for a series of robberies in Wisconsin Dells, and he spent most of my childhood in prison.”
“So, I never really got to know him, and I was told that this other person – my stepfather – was my father. I am not sure how he got involved with my mother, but he had a history of violent relationships, and he never treated me with any respect as his child. My mother worked a lot to put food on the table, and I had to deal with this stepfather."
"This was not a situation that was going to end well.”
Jeremy was a loner in high school. As he explains, the town was full of jocks, and they loved to pick on the outsiders.
“I knew I would get in trouble if I fought them – not only at school, but at home,” said Jeremy.
“My stepfather would fight me because I fought kids at school. It is crazy to think this adult wanted to fight me. I learned that I could not fight the other students. So, I put one of them in a headlock, and he turned out to be the head of the basketball team. Since they could not expel him, they expelled me.”
Jeremy was placed in an alternative school. Later, he was the only student who ever exited the program well-adjusted enough to return to a normal school.
“I never thought, and I still do not think, that there was ever anything wrong with me. There was a lot wrong with my home environment. It was very, very dysfunctional.”
Eventually, Jeremy started running away from home. When he called the police on his stepfather, the police would put him in shelter care for “protection.”
“They weren’t protecting me,” said Jeremy. “They were putting me in an environment with other kids who caused trouble.”
“And here I am, this gay kid, trying to be butch, trying not to be bullied, and trying to survive. Eventually, I started running away from the shelter care. I went to Wisconsin Dells, where I told everyone, I was a college student, and they gave me a job and a place to live."
"I was doing pretty well for three months before they found out.”
Since the shelter system was not working, the state sent Jeremy to a juvenile detention center. He was legally emancipated when he was sixteen. His social worker convinced the judge to let him live on his own, and he’d already proven to them that he could be self-sufficient.
“This was the weird cycle of my childhood. A lot happened to me before I was even old enough to drive.”
Since neither of his parents graduated from high school, Jeremy was committed to finishing high school.
“I wanted to achieve something, and I wanted to prove to my stepfather that I was important,” said Jeremy. “I got to walk down that aisle and get my diploma in the end. That was a huge, huge achievement for me. I proved to myself and everyone around me that I could and would do important things in the world.”
Jeremy got involved with the Chicago rave scene, which was extremely rewarding socially and spiritually.
“This was a lifesaver,” said Jeremy. “Raves were a beautiful outlet for meeting queer people. I did not grow up with any gay people in my life. I could not go to bars since I was underage. But I could meet people my own age at raves.”
Big city nights
Jeremy came out when he was eighteen.
“I told everyone ‘I am gay’ and I left for Minneapolis,” said Jeremy. “I had this belief that gay people could only live in big cities. After a while, I moved to Milwaukee.”
“I had just finished high school and did not know what I wanted to do next. So, I went to college for photography at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Peck School of the Arts, and took a bartending job at Boot Camp Saloon on the side.”
“This was never going to be my profession, but I worked with some of the most interesting and important people in Milwaukee’s queer history.”
Bartending at Boot Camp was like “starting a whole new school,” Jeremy remembers.
“I learned a whole lot while I was working there. I had this collection of uniforms, and a bit of a uniform fetish, and Si let me wear my uniforms at work. I would show us as a firefighter, police officer, Navy guy, you name it."
"Si was nice enough to let me study art abroad in China for two summers. When I came back, my job was still there waiting for me.”
“People were nice to me. I often worked day shifts, which was when the old-timers and regulars showed up. They would share stories of their lives in old queer Milwaukee, and that was cool to hear. They would tell me about Juneau Park, and how everyone would cruise the park, and hook up behind the statue."
"Growing up, I had no idea cruising existed. Being gay was a secretive thing, not something you would dare to do in a public park. There was this whole way of life that I never knew existed – and it existed long before I was even born.”
“They were mentors to me about queer life, which is not usually something people have someone to teach them. That’s what made this time in my life so memorable. The people, and their stories.”
In spring 2011, Jeremy was in downtown San Francisco when he got a memorable phone call. Boot Camp had burnt down, and it was not coming back, the caller told him.
“I was sad, because everything I knew about Milwaukee queer history came from Boot Camp, and those customers had lost their home. All those different people, and their different experiences, and nowhere to go to tell them anymore.”
Finding his muse
Jeremy became fascinated with artwork that broke the rules, elevated social justice, and gave voices to people who did not have voices. He started doing stencils of doors and windows on boarded-up, abandoned houses, demonstrating the mental health impact these buildings had on people living in the neighborhoods.
“I started documenting my process in photographs,” said Jeremy, “and soon the Wisconsin State Journal was reaching out for an interview."
"When the article came out, I discovered they had interviewed the anti-graffiti people at the Department of Public Works, and they said they only wished I had a different canvas to put my art on. They did not think what I was doing was wrong. They understood that I was trying to make a statement about blight – and they wished there were not boarded-up buildings too.”
“That kind of sparked my creativity,” said Jeremy. “I can put images out into the world about different causes that I feel are important, and people can see them and hear my message. And if I do them well, people will agree with what I am trying to express."
"This is a much quicker way to reach them than through City Hall requests, proposals, meetings, etc. I can cause social change by just doing art.”
“That was fascinating to me.”
“I was doing urban still life, where I’d place an image out into the world that was fixing the urban blight and decay, just by adding some color, or whimsy,” said Jeremy.
“You would have something broken and then you would have something beautiful next to it. I started putting stencils on pay phones in boxes where the phones were no longer there."
"I was trying to highlight things I wanted to change. Maybe we can get rid of some of this decay happening in cities.”
“I started doing koi in 2006 in Milwaukee,” said Jeremy. “When I came back from China, I had to do an art project to earn my credit. I chose koi because I wanted to create a moment of Zen in our chaotic, concrete, urban landscape. And now, they’ve become this iconic image.”
Jeremy joined the arts hoping to find brotherhood. Instead, he found a surprising amount of homophobia.
“Graffiti artists were beating up gay graffiti artists. They were tagging queer slurs all over those artists’ graffiti. They used the word ‘gay’ as an insult, not an identity. When I started seeing that stuff, I realized I needed to get more queer images out on the street.”
“While I was at Boot Camp, I created a few images that became my trademark. Tom of Finland images, which began as postal stickers. And then I saw the Wigstock documentary, and I thought, ‘this is my kind of happening, where people can be whoever they want to be.'
"So, I did an 8x10 stencil of Lady Bunny. I’d put that out in the streets of Milwaukee, and it would be removed immediately. There could be other graffiti and stickers in the vicinity, but my stencils of anything else would be instantly removed.”
“I was like, wait a second. People love the koi. They find them a beautiful thing, so they ignore them. People of all ages have conversations about how much they enjoy them. It was a common positive experience across the community."
"I thought, this is causing a change. It is making people talk who would not normally talk. It is creating conversation. There is something happening here."
"I need to keep putting out with queer images, to create queer visibility and safe space for the queer community. Just having images on the street is representation."
"It is important for those images to be seen.”
Moving on up
Jeremy graduated from UWM in 2008. He knew it was time to leave Milwaukee, and soon he had the chance of a lifetime.
“I met the owners of Tough Gloves, a leather glove company in San Francisco,” said Jeremy. “They had been living in Milwaukee and were heading back to California. Since I was about to graduate, they invited me to move back to San Francisco with them."
“San Francisco was a place with a lot of street art,” said Jeremy, “and I was ready for a place known for queer acceptance. I could just go about my life, in San Francisco, without having to hide anything from anyone. In Milwaukee, sometimes you had to dress a bit more butch, and watch out for yourself."
"I felt safe, but it was not necessarily a safe place to be gay. I could be myself, I could further my artwork, and I could meet more people like me. It was a win-win, so, I moved.”
In San Francisco, Jeremy increased representation with more historical queer images through stencils and street art.
“I discovered this alternative drag scene that wasn’t necessarily about female impersonation, or even looking like a woman,” said Jeremy. “They come across more like club kids than drag queens. I started doing a lot of drag performers, including RuPaul’s Drag Race stars.”
“I started doing life-sized drag queens on the streets of San Francisco, and a life-sized Lady Bunny got me arrested. It became this turning point in my career, where people stared paying attention to what I was doing. If you are going to be arrested for putting up images of your own community, this work must really matter.”
“The Boot Camp logo was like a boot tread, and I incorporated that into a stencil now seen all over the country,” said Jeremy. “My idea was, what if the boot prints are two people facing each other and kissing? So that is what you are seeing: it is just two people kissing. Maybe they are two men, maybe they are two butch women wearing boots.”
“I put these in places all over San Francisco that used to be cruising hotspots, like Ringold Alley, SOMA, etc. And they are cool, because you don’t see a rainbow, you don’t see two people kissing, you don’t see any of those things that automatically say queer. But it sure is queer.”
“I met a couple who came to Folsom Street Fair for the first time, and they decided they needed a tattoo to remind them of their time there,” said Jeremy. “They went to Mr. S Leather, and saw my boot prints outside, and one of them decided to have those tattooed on their rib cage. And I was just like, what? And they said, hey, we never thought we would meet the artist. It was not about who the artist was, it was just trying to commemorate this moment, and this image was perfect.”
“I received a National Endowment for the Arts grant from the Queer Cultural Center in San Francisco to create an exhibit of queer street art. So, I started collecting queer street art from all over the world. I wanted to prove that there was something bigger going on. Queer street art is not something I made up myself."
"There are all these people all over the world doing the same work, and they do not even know each other. When I began my collecting, these artists started connecting, collaborating, and co-hosting shows, and it became this great awakening.”
“If you look at queer art images, you’ll see they’re all a bit political in nature,” said Jeremy. “I have a theory that different moments in queer history were tipping points for certain communities, when police, politicians and the public started to notice queer people. From those moments, the conversation has evolved from existence to protection to equality.”
“I’ve done tributes to the Black Nite Brawl of 1961, which the History Project revealed to me; Compton’s Cafeteria, where transgender folks and homeless queer youth rioted in summer 1966; the Black Cat Raid, which sparked a protest against police brutality in 1967; and most recently, the Upstairs Lounge of 1973, which was the worst mass murder of gay people in history until Orlando.”
“I was hesitant to add the Upstairs Lounge to my series, but it is significant and needs to be remembered. Even more so now since the memorial plaque was stolen and they are trying to replace it.”
“I hope to keep doing these, because there are queer events that happened all over the United States long before Stonewall,’ said Jeremy. “The Stonewall riots just got all the attention.”
“I am proud of a stencil I created for World AIDS Day. It says, ‘ignorance equals bliss,’ and it is a contrast to ‘silence equals death.’
"My dating experiences inspired this one. I would hook up with people who did not actually communicate that they had HIV or AIDS, aside from wearing a biohazard tattoo. They thought it was OK, not speaking about their status, because they have this symbol on their body.”
“I found that shocking, and it inspired this art piece that incorporated the biohazard symbol into a triangle. It was my response to what I was seeing and feeling."
"I put it out on World AIDS Day because I was like, this is not right. This is very wrong. I think other people should know about this before they find out the hard way. By making this art piece, I felt like I was letting other people coming to age in queer society know what this meant, how it worked.”
“I am not sure where my ideas fully come from, but like most artists, they come from life experiences. Everything goes into a blender, and gets mixed on high, and whatever comes out is a blend of all those things.”
Being seen worldwide
When Jeremy paints on the ground, it is usually in an overlooked area, where no one really cares if something is painted there or not.
“Nowadays, we have rainbow crosswalks in so many queer neighborhoods,” said Jeremy, “but I am opposed to just having rainbow crosswalks because people don’t really care about the ground."
"People spit on the ground, and throw garbage on the ground, and drive on the ground.”
“We really need to have more queer murals. Murals empower people. A picture really is worth one thousand words. With a powerful image, you can create mass conversation without any words at all.”
“For a long time, we did not even have queer TV. Think about the power of Will & Grace. When people started seeing Will & Grace on TV, there was this sense that ‘gay people are OK, they’re not terrible people after all.’ Will & Grace somehow created queer visibility and a visual safe space through TV. I believe that queer murals could also achieve that.”
“In 2016, San Francisco wanted to put up a mural on Polk Street honoring important people in the city’s queer history,” said Jeremy. “They had the artist, they had private funding, but the neighborhood petitioned against it and shut down the mural. In 2018, Sydney celebrated gay marriage with a mural of George Michael depicted as a saint. Some religious people defaced it, and the artist sued for reparations. He won the case, and the mural was repainted.”
“To this day, people continue trying to black it all out. It still gets homophobic graffiti, but it is removed immediately. This is why queer street art matters. This is what we are up against.”
“I have been doing this for a long time, and I’ve heard a lot of stories."
"People say that seeing the koi fish outside of a business tells them it is a safe place for queer people to go. Some of these people are coming from homophobic places, or do not yet feel entirely comfortable in their own skin."
"I heard from a mother of a transgender child, who thanked me for artwork that inspired a meaningful bond. They were able to bond over my stencils, even though they did not completely understand each other."
“So, it is beautiful to know that I have given people that. I do not know that I was ever trying to do that. That is not who I am. But what my artwork has inspired is beautiful, and I am proud of that.”
Long-time fans often ask: why are there so few photos of Jeremy unmasked?
“I’m not opposed to photos of myself,” said Jeremy, “but I like the idea that it’s all about the artwork, and if you’re going to like it, and if you’re going to find meaning in it, that’s because of the artwork – not because of who created the artwork or what they look like. But there is also another reason. When I started doing this, queer street art was not so trendy or cool, and it was not accepted as art. It was graffiti, and you could go to jail for graffiti. So, you never wanted to show your face, and it has been a habit I never really broke. Now, everyone is a bit of a street artist, and they can be cute on camera.”
Jeremy relocated to Los Angeles in 2018, where he sought to advance his art career even further.
“While I was living in L.A., I did a new leather guy series. They are crossing their arms, in their leather gear, but they do not have eyes on their faces. They do not have eyes because they are meant to be any race living in L.A. By removing the eyes, you suddenly have something that signifies all races. That diversity of people was a real influence in Los Angeles.”
While traveling the world, Jeremy has been working on a series of people impacted by HIV/AIDS, including Divine, Leigh Bowery, Keith Haring, Klaus Nomi, and Antonio Veracruz of Portugal.
“I’m really trying to find those queer events around the world that caused the tipping point in queer rights,” said Jeremy, “Because, you know, they are everywhere, and I think that people should know about them. We see queer history removed from schools and libraries, and it is always in danger of becoming reduced to the spoken word. Documenting these events with art is so important.”
“Sometimes, I don’t think people realize the significance of their own community,” said Jeremy. “For Harvey Milk Day in San Francisco, I created a stencil of Harvey Milk, complete with the famous quote ‘if a bullet should go through me, then let that bullet destroy every closet door.’ When I brought it to Milwaukee, and posted it all over Walker’s Point, nobody had any idea who it was. No one!”
“And I was just like, that is so weird. You really don’t know Harvey Milk? It made me realize that we need to put more out there, more often, so that people know the history of our own community. They need to figure out who these people are, why they are significant, and talk amongst themselves. That is probably gentler than having someone preaching it to them.”
“You have to put it out there. Do not ask for permission. Hope you get forgiveness afterwards. If it gets defaced, you need to go back out and put it up again. You do not sit down with a homophobic person and try to convince them not to be homophobic. You just keep showing up and showing them who you are.”
Blazing new trails
During the pandemic, Jeremy’s landlord sold his house and left Los Angeles. Unsure what to do next, Jeremy returned to San Francisco, where his chosen family – including members of the Burning Man community – welcomed him back home. At least, for a while.
“I moved to Cathedral City this summer to house-sit, and it looks like I might just be staying here,” said Jeremy. “San Francisco is awesome, but it’s changing so much, and it’s becoming really hard to decompress there. It is weird how fast this happened.”
“It’s a little more relaxing and chill out here in the desert,” said Jeremy, “and it is exciting because there is a whole new queer community to explore. Every community has its own unique history and identity.”
“And, sometimes, it’s weird to think that what I’m doing is history.”
The concept for this web site was envisioned by Don Schwamb in 2003. Over the next 15 years, he was the sole researcher, programmer and primary contributor.
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The concept for this web site was envisioned by Don Schwamb in 2003, and over the next 15 years, he was the sole researcher, programmer and primary contributor, bearing all costs for hosting the web site personally.
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