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Don Hershman: Doctor and Fine Artist

The work of artist Don Hershman has returned to the walls of Salomon Arts Gallery in Tribeca, this time centered around the idea of code switching, which Hershman experienced as a gay man living in the American South in the 1980s while completing his medical residency. That's right, on top of being a fine artist, Hershman is also a trained doctor, and still works as a podiatric surgeon in San Francisco. The Art of Code Switching is on view through October 15, and 10% of the proceeds of the show's sales will be donated to The Trevor Project, which support suicide prevention efforts among LGBTQ+ youth.

EVENT: The gallery will be hosting an Artist Talk open to the public on October 12, when Hershman will be in conversation with Anthony Haden Guest.

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Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. For decades, Don Hershman found success balancing two careers, one as a podiatric surgeon and the other as an artist. His latest show is up in Tribeca at Salomon Arts Gallery. It explores what it means to alternate between two selves. It's titled The Art of Code Switching. In The Souls of Black Folks, W.E.B. Dubois called code-switching the duality or double consciousness of Black people living in two worlds. Today, we recognize examples of code-switching as changing the way you speak in different settings or using different mannerisms associated with a particular characteristic or identity group, all as a means of survival.

In an intimate show of 20 paintings, Hershman explores the need for social navigation among people of color, women, and the LGBTQ community through single and double imagery and shadows among bright reds and blues. He also reflects on his own experiences as a gay man in the '80s. As an Artnet News review states together, the show is an insightful personal reflection and offers an entry point for further exploration into collective identity and trauma, historic and contemporary. The show is called The Art of Code Switching, and it's on display at the Salomon Arts Gallery in Tribeca through October 15th. Artist Don Hershman joins me now. Don, welcome to the show.

Don Hershman: Hello.

Alison Stewart: Listeners, would you like to join our conversation? Have you ever found yourself code-switching in different settings? What does code-switching mean for you? What does it look like for you? 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. We'd like you to share your experiences with code-switching. 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. You can call in and join us on the air, or you can text us at that number. Social media's available as well @AllOfItWNYC. When was the first time you heard someone use the term code-switching, Don?

Don Hershman: Actually, I heard the term from one of my patients. One of my African-American patients mentioned it to me at the time that I was exploring what theme I wanted for this show. I was asked to do the show in December of '22 at Miami Art Basel, and they had seen my shadow series. That led me to the shadow series had to do reflections and to do a show which was booked out several months in advance, I needed to explore the theme of reflections. I had a conversation with one of my African-American patients, and the whole theme of code-switching, it's as if a light bulb went off and I started to reflect on my own life, and then it became very personal. It was a journey producing these 21 paintings.

Alison Stewart: How did examining code-switching take you on a journey back in time for yourself?

Don Hershman: I realized that I had code-switched for a large portion of my youth. All LGBT children are code-switching with their families without even knowing it. Then I grew up at a time where the subject of gay rights or even women's rights wasn't even a subject and there was no recourse for any bad behaviors surrounding that. As I moved through my career into residency, I really had to dive deep into the closet just to maintain employment. It was an interesting time to reflect back upon, I don't remember going through tremendous emotional stress because it was just the norm. It wasn't as if I had to change the way I navigate. I had been navigating most of my life. That's just the way it was back in the '70s and '80s. It was quite a journey remembering all that. I had forgotten it completely.

Alison Stewart: Let's actually talk to Jeffrey from West Harlem. Hi, Jeffrey. Thank you for calling in.

Jeffrey: Thank you for having me. I'm so happy to hear this conversation because it reminded me of when I was a child in the early '90s, I'm a gay man, my straight older brother would teach me how to code switch. [laughs]

Alison Stewart: How so?

Jeffrey: He would say, "Here's how you do this. Here's how you shake hands, how you do a bro hug." I think he was just teaching me what being a heterosexual man is like. I didn't realize until well into adulthood that I unconsciously did those things when I was around mixed company or straight people. It absolutely is a life skill that LGBTQ people learn when they're young.

Alison Stewart: Jeffrey calling in from West Harlem. Thank you so much. It's an interesting question, and I've gone back and forth and I've disagreed with myself on this question. Do you think, Don, code-switching is a choice or is it something that just comes naturally?

Don Hershman: I don't really think it's a choice because in many societies it's a matter of not being arrested. It's a matter of not being and sometimes executed. You could take it to that extreme. In our country depending on the environment that you're in, you need to have your radar up and your antennas up to just check out your environment. Also I can just imagine I can't speak for the African-American experience, but independent of LGBT in my conversations with my patients, code-switching is something that we subliminally do all the time, and people of race and color they can't hide their color. They have to be very savvy and be on autopilot for code-switching all the time.

Alison Stewart: Got a really interesting text that says, "For me, code-switching means adopting the way everyone else talks on the res when I visit. As a 10-year-old who spent a majority of my summers off with my Mohawk grandmother in Canada, I was ridiculed by my classmates when I returned to school in September when I forgot to switch back." Thank you so much for sharing that whoever texted that in. Another interesting text, and we're going to get to this later, but I love the sentiment of this. It says, "As a healthcare worker who dreams of being an artist, I'm very interested in Dr. Hershman's career trajectory." Tell us how you are a surgeon and an artist, Don.

Don Hershman: I come from a Jewish neighborhood in New York in Brooklyn. I grew up in Brighton Beach, and my parents were very much set on me becoming a "professional." I always had an aptitude for drawing, I think they were just petrified that I would become an artist. Luckily I was pretty skilled in the sciences, so I kept everything more conventional and to what my parents wanted me to become. I have no regrets about getting into healthcare. I think that's a whole nother conversation. I think that's a gift that I am in healthcare, but in my trajectory as a physician, for instance, in medical school, it was a tremendous amount of memorization.

For instance, in functional anatomy, I would just draw all the anatomical figures to maintain their spatial relationships for examinations rather than just rote memorization. I drew everything, and someone, a pretty well-known photographer who was one of my partners when I was pretty young, came across my drawings and just said to me, "This is something you cannot waste. You have an inherent skill that most people don't have without any training, and if you don't use it, you lose it. I encourage you to continue to draw and exercise that talent so you can evolve." I took him very seriously and I started drawing on a regular basis. I had my first show in 1992, which was quite successful. It was a group show, but just the reinforcement of the reaction of my paintings and the sales just motivated me to get a studio and to keep that career going.

Even though I was a full-time physician, I never gave up on the drawing and the painting. It just evolved on its own. I started winning competitions and more and more weight just started to be thrown into that direction with reinforcement and offers and galleries and things like that. It was a very organic process over my lifetime. I'm not a 20-year-old artist. I'm a mature [laughs] but it does happen over time. Perseverance and consistency and dedication over time can produce some level of success.

Alison Stewart: My guess is Don Hershman, he's an artist as well as a surgeon. We're talking about his art show, The Art of Code Switching, which is at Salomon Arts Gallery in Tribeca until October 15th. I want to make sure we talk about some of the art. Code-switching number three, it shows a man sitting down, his hands clasped together underneath his chin, a little bit like the thinker. He's contemplating something, but the colors on the man's sweater and code-switching three are different. One side is blue, the sweater is blue-ish, one side is green. How did you think about color choice when you were [unintelligible 00:10:06]?

Don Hershman: Color choice for me is extremely organic and spontaneous. I tend to layer color as I move through a painting. I knew that the double imagery was a metaphor for two separate personalities or two separate sets of behavior and also the idea of what are the long-term effects of code-switching. We know we do it our whole lives, and depending on who we are, how intensely we must code switch. This was an overall rule line through the entire show. Depending on the painting, I did these very subtle nuances that differentiated each double image of different people that I chose to paint. It was a wonderful experience and a wonderful process.

Don Hershman: Code-switching number one, if you go to our Instagram right now, you can see it on our Insta Stories, is another symmetrical painting, and it's a subject. It's like when you were a little kid and you would kiss a mirror and you would see yourself. He's sort of kissing a version of himself. There's a lot of shadow work in this piece, not to mention--

Don Hershman: Yes.

Alison Stewart: Tell us a little bit about the shadow work.

Don Hershman: Well, the shadow work was the very, very beginning of the origin of this entire project and shadows always represent reflection. Shadows also create a certain level of drama and tension. Again, as I paint a figure, the shadows will disappear and the process is indescribable because I'm always amazed when I see the final product. That particular painting is very powerful because of the juxtaposition of color, the red background, and the black and white [unintelligible 00:12:07] images. That piece, by the way, won the jury selection for the De Young Museum here in San Francisco, and it'll be hanging there till January, I believe.

Alison Stewart: It's really an extraordinary piece. I want to read a couple of other texts we're getting from people. "Hello. As an ADHD adult who was diagnosed as a child, code-switching has been the norm for me just to appear normal and attentive. I would love to hear more about code-switching for neurodivergent people." Thank you for bringing this up. A Scottish immigrant who moved to the US pretty young, "I code-switch to a Scottish accent and more reserved personality around Scottish people with no control whatsoever. I cannot make myself switch to the other and just sound like someone doing a bad impression if I try to force it." Thank you for writing in. At the show, there were testimonials. There's a video presentation of people discussing about code-switching. There's videos of people telling their stories. Why did you want to add the voices of people as a background to the show?

Don Hershman: Well, I wanted to add another dimension to the show. To research this subject matter, at first, I have my own personal story, but to research it, I just went on the browser for TikTok and I typed in code-switching, and I got a cornucopia of testimonials of code-switching and it was just fascinating. I spoke to my media guy and I said, "I think we should create an installation of testimonials of different types of code-switching, different situations, which will prompt someone to be forced into code-switching." It just added a more human dimension that it wasn't so focused on one subject. Everyone that experiences code-switching has their own individual story.

This is the first time I ever actually heard someone who may have autism or someone that may have a very heavy accent. I haven't even come across that. It really does diversify into not only race and LGBT but also disabilities and people that come from other countries. The origin of the term code-switching is linguistic. It comes from people that come from different countries that are, let's say, expatriates, being able to switch language. That's the literal meaning of code-switching, switching language. It's now morphed into our own society, and it's been coined for code-switching for behavioral changes and language changes to fit into society.

Alison Stewart: There are a series of really gorgeous paintings at the Salomon Arts Gallery. It's The Art of Code Switching. My guest has been artist and surgeon Don Hershman. Don, thank you so much for sharing your work and your thoughts with us.

Don Hershman: My pleasure. Thank you.

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