The label below will be present in the exhibition alongside this piece. It is provided here so that fans submitting fanworks know in advance how fandom will be discussed in this project. However, fanworks do not need to take into account the below information and should be inspired by or responding to the piece of art alone: 

Mark Heresy 
American, b. 1965 
Will to Power, 1992 
Ink on paper 
28 x 22 in 
2000.11.5 
Gift of Peter Norton  

Mark Heresy describes himself not as an artist, but as a “cultural saboteur.” Other examples of his satirical art include ballot boxes which allow the viewer to vote on whether they believe “Mark Heresy is a God” or “Mark Heresy is an (adjective deleted),” as well as American flags recreated from toilet paper and cut currency. Through his work, Heresy challenges conventional ways of thinking about and bringing meaning to familiar symbols. Will to Power is one of 29 pieces, primarily of contemporary West-Coast artists, dealing with themes of environmentalism and nature gone wrong, which were gifted to the Haggerty Museum of Art in 2001 by Peter and Eileen Norton. 

Meanings 

If you ask a fan what their fandom means to them, they will likely respond with something more than a surface-level description of that fandom. When fans engage with their fandom, they imbue it with meaning. Meanings may be explicitly written into texts; they may be implicit, they may be subtext, or they may be something specific to a single fan based on that individual’s own life experiences. Regardless, the meanings fans create around their fandoms influence all their interactions with it and drive their passions towards it.