December 24–31, 1998

20 questions

G. Garfield Crimmins

Interview by a.d. amorosi

A funny thing happened on the way to phoning Jerry Crimmins: The evening news exploded. With CNN blaring green nightmare footage of bombed-out Baghdad, escape was necessary. And The Republic of Dreams: A Reverie (W.W. Norton), the Moore College of Art teacher, traveler and painter/sculptor's book was just the ticket: a surrealistic, erotically enticing, fold-in, pop-up travelogue through a make-believe land of Crimmins' design. With his alter-ego Victor La Nuage and an intimate team of accomplices, Crimmins brings you to La République de Rêves—the Republic of Dreams—where hazelnut-flavored champagne flows and beautiful women are always naked. But there's trouble in paradise due to the imagination-stifling League Of Common Sense. Armed with the book's pop-up passports, telegrams, maps and postcards, you are part of the action, aiding Philadelphia resident Crimmins in his dream weaving.

Were you a particularly daydreamy kid?

I guess so. You have to remember: I'm the middle child. I'm from the Middle West. I was born in the dim past—1940, in Minneapolis, near Minniehaha Creek by the shores of Gitche Gumee, which is full of mythology. The first myth you're faced with is Hiawatha. And it's very cold out there. It's bound to make you an eccentric.

Is academia the real League Of Common Sense you refer to in your book?

Unfortunately, yes. It's pedantic, they get into a power thing. It stifles a lot of creative thinking, especially amongst art students.

You went from Minneapolis to the Marines to Brooklyn's Pratt Institute and then to Philly. How'd you wind up here?

When I got my degree from Pratt I began looking for schools to teach at. I spent time at Tyler. And then suddenly somebody at Moore died and I got his job. No, I love it here. I would not want to live in any other place. When I got here, driving 100 miles per hour from Brooklyn, I had to slow down to 15. I learned to love that slowing down. You get a chance to smell the flowers.

When did you first envision creating your own world?

I was going through a tremendously painful period in my life. I started working out of a briefcase rather than a studio. I began taking in tremendous amounts of surrealistic art and literature: the symbolists, Baudelaire, Apollinaire, Poe, Magritte, Duchamp, Rimbaud. And they were all pointing to an island in the horizon, an island of dreams. So I began writing prose poems—something I hadn't done before—and painting this place. I created a visitors' guide to the République La Rêves, which is inappropriate French. From there I applied to the NEA for a grant for "aid to a developing nation." And they gave me a grant—this was the early '80s when you could still be tongue-in-cheek.

The book isn't a story with beginning or end. Just like history. Is that what you intended when you started? And how much did its intricate detailing cost you?

It's a 25-year project—all the legal wrangling, the time, 50 grand. I just got caught up in it! When you invent something and people begin to take it as REAL, you start playing with it to make it more plausible. My Ministers [the title he gives to Rêves' officials, including locals like Harry Anderson] helped me create phony documents to make it credible. My Minister of Poetic Justice is a lawyer so he sharpened the language, stuff like that. Giving it coins and documents make it real for people.

Does your book take on any added importance with today's bombings and heartache as backdrop?

It's been great watching kids and 70-year-olds opening the book and laughing at the drawings, naming their own streets. With all this stuff going on, tonight's a perfect night for Rêves. I'm going to Lakehurst, NJ, and boarding the zeppelin. I've got three weeks off. And I won't be watching news again.