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Written by Michael Muckian, Contributing writer
Dec 16, 2010
Actor/artist Thom Bierdz – Photo: Courtesy
When the actor Thom Bierdz returned to the CBS daytime drama “The Young and the Restless” to reintroduce his character of Phillip Chancellor III, he made history of a sort as the first openly gay actor to play an openly gay soap opera character. It was the only way he would return to the show, the Kenosha native said, because he had changed and needed his character to be true to who he is.
As the storyline now goes, Chancellor, who was last seen driving his red Corvette off a cliff in 1989, had in reality faked his own death so he could live his life openly as a gay man elsewhere. Chancellor reappeared in August, his newly gay identity adding greater relevance to the show, or so producers hope.
When the artist Thom Bierdz recently asked the American Art Awards online website representing 25 galleries in 25 states to create a new category devoted to gay teen suicide, he hoped to slow the growing trend of gay youth taking their own lives. His efforts may have been prompted after
reading about gay teen suicide in his home state of Wisconsin, but as with his soap opera character, Bierdz also was drawing on personal – and in this case tragic – experience.
Growing up in Kenosha’s blue-collar neighborhoods, Bierdz realized early he was gay, but knew not to come out for fear of harassment. He came out to his family at age 18, but not broadly to the Hollywood glitterati until 2000. Los Angeles may be a gay-friendly community, he says, but the entertainment industry isn’t, especially for hunky gay soap stars who need to maintain a heterosexual persona that’s attractive to their show’s primarily female viewers.
But even his caution couldn’t keep him from experiencing personal tragedy. Two months after Phillip Chancellor was killed off in 1989, Bierdz’s younger brother Troy, diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic, killed their mother with a baseball bat. He is currently serving a life sentence at the Columbia Correctional Institution in Portage. In 2002, Bierdz’s older brother Craig, whose acting career had failed before it ever started, put a gun in his mouth in his small Hollywood apartment and pulled the trigger.
“I’ve had as many highs in my life as I have had lows,” says Bierdz, 48. “But life seems good when you can see it beyond the earthly realm.”
Some of the highest highs have come through art. Bierdz paints three days a week – everything from abstracts to apples – and his work has attracted critical attention and purchases by stars such as Scarlett Johansson. He also paints as performance art, creating canvases at live events while raising funds for charities of his choice.
Bierdz was named by Out Magazine as 2005’s artist of the year and has won other accolades. He prefers art to acting, and understands the therapeutic value it can have for people, especially gays.
“I don’t think people can fake what they paint,” Bierdz says. “It’s important that they express themselves and have a safe way to do so.”
By sponsoring the teen gay suicide category on the AAA website (www.americanartawards.com), Bierdz hopes that young gays contemplating suicide will instead put their fears and anguish on canvas. And that they realize they are not alone.
“These days there is still bullying and name calling, but even in the public service announcements aimed at preventing it, no one is coming out and saying ‘Gay is good,’” Bierdz says. “I want people to know that gay is good.”
The AAA contest, which is designed not to sell art but to expose artists and works to an interested public, will be open for submissions at least through year-end, Bierdz says. Artists can submit digital images of their work, which will be put on display on the website.
“Art is pure creation and I can do whatever I want,” says Bierdz, who also is the author of 12 screenplays and “Forgiving Troy,” a 2007 self-published memoir about the 20-year struggle Bierdz has had coming to terms with his mother’s murder. “As an actor, there is nothing you can do that is pure. I prefer painting because I am not very good at following directions.”
