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Name:
Kevin Jerome Everson

Age:
34

Born and Raised:
Mansfield, Ohio

Education:
BFA, University of Akron/MFA, Ohio University

Occupation:
Assistant Professor of Art, University of Tennessee

Claim to Fame:
His short film Eleven Eighty-Two was selected to play at Sundance in 1998. In January, Everson will return to Park City for a showing of his 1999 short, Imported.

Notable Grants:
National Endowment of the Arts fellowship - 1995
Guggenheim Fellowship - 1996
National Endowment of Humanities Fellowship - 1999

Other Film Festivals:
New York International Shorts Film Festival - 1998 & 1999
Ann Arbor Film Festival - 1998 & 1999

On Art:
"I like people engaged in something that didn't exist before they engaged in it. I don't know if that'd be truth or beauty, but I think that's what art is: making your own world."

On a Hollywood Blockbuster:
"Armageddon—that's white supremacy. A bunch of white people saving the world—that's dumb."

by Ed Richardson

My favorite part about Sundance was seeing people react to my film. It ran right before the film that won Best Documentary, so there were about 2,000 people there. I watched them watching my film from the light reflected off the screen."

It's a rainy Saturday morning at Lula on Market Square. UT film professor Kevin Everson finishes his breakfast burrito and pours his coffee from a French press, somewhat quizzical about its operation. His bronze forearms protrude from rolled sleeves as he rubs his shaven head. He speaks with the bright-eyed enthusiasm of a child and the savvy and vague cynicism of an art-world insider.

"When I go back, I'm bringing less clothes. The first time I thought it was going to be like an art opening so I brought all dress clothes. Well, there's two feet of snow everywhere. This time I'm bringing a pair of boots, three pairs of corduroys, four sweaters, and that's it. And I'm bringing a staple gun; the short that won in '98 had posters up everywhere."

He estimates there are only 30 or so short-film directors in the country who have been invited to Sundance more than once. By being a regular participant in the high-profile festival, where only 60 shorts are select from over 2,000 entries, Everson is becoming firmly established in the genre. But this is par for the course for the young filmmaker, who didn't realize the prestige of Sundance when he submitted his films.

"I honestly didn't know how big it was until I got there. I had no idea. It's a big deal, a big-time schmooze-fest. I got tapes from actors wanting to be in films, everyone's giving you their card, and musicians are still sending me music. It was the first time I was a VIP in my whole life."

Everson's films are not easily grasped at first viewing. Rather than being driven by the graphic and frenetic eye candy commonly found in film today, his work exudes a gentle poetic quality, rife with symbolic meaning. Race and economic inequality are subtle, yet persistent themes. While subject matter ranges from garden insects to embalming, a consistent voice prevails.

To date, Everson has made six films, most of them 16 mm. black-and-white, and none of them over eight minutes. He and his family star in most of them and he commonly uses students as crew. His current project is a film on black taxi drivers in Columbus, Miss.

Far from seeing his work as limited to one area, Everson's approach is first and foremost as an artist. His undergraduate study was in photography and sculpture. He sees a film as a piece of art—no higher or lower than any of his other media, and he uses it as an extension of that work. He often constructs his own props and later puts them in an art opening or installation.

"If I have an idea, I have to portray that idea in every medium, but I'll do something with it that is unique to that medium. For example, Short Shift could have only been a film."

Everson funds his films through a combination of grants, awards, and sales of his art. His no-nonsense philosophy on the financial aspect of his work is to "make art, sell it, and use the money to make some more." It is a low-budget, make-do-with-what-you've-got approach in a medium that is surrounded by a multi-billion dollar industry.

His outlook on that industry is less than positive. Calling The Matrix "too slick," and Pleasantville "not it," Everson is somewhat critical of Hollywood and doesn't go out to see many of the big-name blockbusters.

"It's entertainment. They crank them out, and that's fine. I've got friends out there doing that stuff. But it's a very masculine culture. It's a bunch of guys making art by committee. I'm not saying it's good or bad, I'm just not into it. My mindset is as a self-serving artist. I want to do my own thing."

And more frequently than ever, this means experimental film. UT has one of three programs in the country with film under the art department instead of having a separate film school. Everson moved to Knoxville in 1996 to help start the Media Arts program, which has grown quickly and is expectedly popular with its focus on film, photography, and video. His participation at Sundance has bolstered enrollment and has been a validation for Media Arts.

Still, the program is heavy on the formulation of artistic ideas rather than job skills and economic concerns. It's a deficiency Everson recognizes and is correcting. Recently, he took several students to New York to show them some of the career options in the art world and give them an idea of what it's like to be a professional artist.

"I wanted to show them that there is something outside the university environment and give them an idea of the economics of art. The success of the stock market has created new possibilities in art. There's careers out there—I don't want to leave them hanging."

Even though the program has been graduating students for only a year, some alumni have gone on to graduate programs at big-name schools like Yale, Cal Arts, NYU, San Francisco, and New Mexico.

Still, with the popularity of photography and film, there doesn't seem to be any shortage of aspiring filmmakers. But Everson says it doesn't take long to find the ones who are serious.

"It's show business. It's on TV. It's glamorous. It's sexy. A lot of students come in with that attitude."

The ones who stick it out work hard—spending many a paycheck on film and processing; often dealing with broken, missing, or out-of-date equipment. It's inspiring to see what they do with what little they have. (The interested reader may wish to attend the students' own Towanda Richards Film Festival. By having students help each other on the films, e.g. "I'll act in your film, you can be my DP (director of photography)" Everson has created a community of filmmakers rather than a cut-throat winner-take-all environment.

Focusing the efforts of his students keeps Everson busy. He stays energetic to keep them energetic. Each semester he has close to 70 students and manages to keep track of what each one is working on. In the classroom he can be seen working his students into a verbal frenzy, then subtly withdrawing when the discussion has drifted afield. He will put a student in the hotseat, then as the class beings to critique, he will side with the student in a inconspicuous way—providing emotional support and cultivating their confidence.

It seems to be something that someone in his past did for him. When faced with a less-than-stellar review of a recent photography show, he is unfazed.

"Some of my students were upset, but I didn't care. The same show opened in New York around the same time and it's doing fine up there. The one here was well attended. I cut the review out of the paper and put it with all the other reviews of my stuff. It didn't bother me. I slept hard that night."

Perhaps his understated outlook is a product of his midwestern working-class roots—something that offsets the manic and glamorous life of New York art openings and the predictable sterility of the academic realm.

"For me, school was a privilege. I was the first person in my hometown to go to college. Everyone I knew went into the military. I was a junior before I even knew what the letters of my degree stood for: Bachelor of Fine Arts.

"So where I come from, you did as well as you could and you were happy as long as you tried. I don't like competition and I don't teach competition. I teach support.

"In art, lots of people are secretive, but I'm not protective of my ideas. I'm confident that my approach is going to be different even if someone else is working with the same idea. I like it when there are lots of people working on the same idea."

It seems a curiously unambitious statement for a person that wakes up every morning at 5:30 to work out, is in his office by 8:30, and can often be found in the Art Building until 9:30 or 10:00 at night. But Everson downplays his dedication and reminds that he put himself through school working in GM and Westinghouse factories, and most of the people he worked with then are still there.

"I always put in at least eight hours a day—otherwise I'd feel guilty. I mean, my family and friends see this as interesting and neat and everything, but it's still a job: no more or less important than any other job. Look—I could be pouring steel for a living."