The theatrical artist and scenery painter Diego "Dago" Fellasez specialized in recording failed acts and artists. Without his efforts we would know nothing of the brief career of The Amazing Zamboni, Elephant Juggler, or the unsynchronized tap-dancing Siamese triplets, "Six Shoes over Texas".

Fellasez was particularly interested in failed auditions. Among his many canvases are a duck ventriloquist, an quadriplegic mime and the autopsy portrait of a man who advertised that he could dive 50 feet into 2 inches of water.

The subject painting was one of a series done at the auditions for the Village Persons, a '70s novelty band that celebrated the gay lifestyle. The model, George Pozgorny, was quoted as saying that he thought he had a sure thing with his ornate helmet, claiming that he felt it represented gays in the military and was a far better icon than, say, an American Indian, a social group with a very low representation of practicing homosexuals. Pozgorny later became part of the road company of "Angels in America."

Fellassez's own career was tragically ended when he was crushed under the set of "The Phantom of the Opera" while trying to do a nude study of a union stagehand.

 

BACK          NEXT