Dean Thullner is my neighbour. He and his husband, David Veljacic, opened Volume Studio Gallery Ltd.’s doors a couple of months ago, only a block from my apartment. What was once a flower shop has been turned into a bright and sparkling hair salon-cum-art gallery. And they’ll still sell you flowers (with 10% of the florist’s annual profits going to St. Paul’s Hospital, no less). It’s been sidewalk chats, pink tulips, and puppy love ever since.
I mean the puppy-love part seriously. Whenever I walk by with my boyfriend and our dog, Safie, she scrambles along the sidewalk to get to Dean’s door. There Dean will be, with his husband or one of his stylists, with a dog treat in hand and a word about the beauty of the day. The shop is always filled with people, fresh art hangs on the walls, and they even have a shop dog whose “stage name,” Sweetie, is a testament to her geriatric gorgeousness.
Volume Studio is an important addition to the West End, and to Vancouver. It represents a new kind of gay lifestyle in Davie Village, one that brings health and community-involvement to the fore. Dean speaks about a generation of men who suffered during the HIV epidemic of the 1980s, who fell, perhaps, into drugs and alcohol as an escape, and who, in many cases, are no longer with us. Dean, given three-months to live at age 29, is now, along with his husband, taking community-building to the next level through their involvement with St. Paul’s Hospital, Brilliant! A Show of Love for Mental Health, HIV and AIDS, and Pride Week 2013.
Sad Mag: Who are you?
Dean Thullner: I’m Dean Thullner—community enthusiast, creativity curator, HIV-positive thriver—I am also a founding partner of Volume Studio Ltd. at 1209 Bute Street, in the heart of Davie Village.
Volume Studio is my seventh business, and it is also my favourite business, because this business isn’t about me. I turned 50, and all of a sudden I’m in the latter part of my life, and so this business is about giving back. I love it.
But, as you know, in my late twenties I almost died. When you are told that you only have three months to live, and you are HIV positive during a big epidemic, you really learn to take care of yourself. Oddly—and people don’t like to hear this—but being diagnosed HIV-positive was probably the single most wonderful thing that ever happened to me, in hindsight.
I’m not judging anybody. But having to live your life for the everyday, having to think that each small illness might be the beginning of the end, and not really knowing that I was going to be here until November 11, 2011 when St. Paul’s Hospital announced that HIV is about living and not dying. Up to that point, I really didn’t want to sustain a future. Now that I am 50 and I have this second chance—and I have the community’s backing—I really want to say thanks to the people who have helped me, and who’ve helped others living with HIV/AIDS.
SM: Can you describe the support networks and caregivers that have helped you recover from your HIV health crises?
DT: I survived the worst of the epidemic. Now, thanks to St. Paul’s—and St. Paul’s Hospital, a lot of people don’t realize, are one of the leading hospitals that came up with the cocktail, a treatment known as Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy or HAART. They changed the world. Whereas other hospitals may have opened their doors, at St. Paul’s they opened their hearts and their doors. In the 80s, St. Paul’s opened up a whole floor for gay men suffering with HIV/AIDS and St. Paul’s looked after them until they died. And the Hospital did that for the first twenty years of a thirty-year epidemic, without even knowing what the repercussions were going to be.
It was a really unique situation. Because Vancouver had probably one of the highest gay demographics in the country…we really felt [the HIV epidemic]. In the early 80s, when I moved here, Davie Street was filled with gay restaurants and coffee shops and flower shops and drag queen revues and then, bang. All the older men were gone. All these younger men, with no mentors, were basically living fearful lives, and this really contributed to [gay drug culture in the 1990s.] It was a difficult time in the community.
Now, we are turning it around. I see [in the West End] not at 80s or 90s version of what Davie Village was, but a new, fresher version of healthier choices, healthier lifestyles, and younger people wanting to give back to the community. It is exciting! And I hope that I can help out.
SM: What does community mean to you?
DT: It means recognizing where help has come from, and giving back. Volume Studio believes in the fortitude of the organizations that it supports, and we give back to those organizations.
SM: What is Volume Studio and how does it help build community in Vancouver?
DT: Volume Studio is a hair salon, an art gallery, and a flower shop.
At Volume, we really support all levels of the artistic community.
The first Friday of every month we invite a local artist to show their work. The artist donates 20% of their proceeds to the ward of their choice at St. Paul’s Hospital or to the charity of their choice.
[I have been throwing] Brilliant! A Show of Love for Mental Health, HIV and AIDS, every year, an event which reaches out to as many artistic people as possible. This year we’re featuring fashion, hair, makeup dance, theatre…we’ll have an art auction where we take local art. Everything is community-community.
SM: What hurdles or challenges has Volume Studio had to overcome?
When we took this space over on a sub-lease, we thought that we would get a couple months free rent and we would just put some glitter and feathers around and it would be fine. Instead, it was filled with dust and mould and rats. We couldn’t go near it for three months. That saga [getting it cleaned up and passing the health inspection] went on and on and on.
The other thing that happened was that no one has ever had a flower shop and a hair salon and an art gallery in one, and because of the city’s colonial laws, we had to fight for our right to sell flowers and art in the same building we were cutting hair. Now, anyone can get a license to open a hair salon and a flower shop or gallery space.
SM: People often accuse Vancouver of being “no fun city.” Do you agree or disagree?
DT: I don’t believe that at all! I came here from a small area in Winnipeg and, when I arrived, it was during Expo and I’ve had fun every day since.
SM: Favourite Vancouver person place or thing?
DT: My husband David. I love him. He’s my best friend and he’s the florist at Volume. He’s an amazing person…we’ve been together eight years. We’ll be together forever.
SM: What are you most excited about right now?
DT: Brilliant! A Show of Love for Mental Health, HIV and AIDS, I am so excited. I’m so excited about how excited the community is. The theme is “Fashion Through the Ages” this year, so we’re celebrating 120 years of fashion and music and talent and iconic figures. We’ve drag queens, we’ve got singers and dancers and choreographers and performers, not to mention all the fashion: the hair and makeup and clothes.
It’s going to be probably about 168 people in a 55-minute fashion show that’s going to blow Vancouver away.
Tickets are only $75 and you get a $50 tax receipt.
I am also very excited that, this year, the Vancouver Fireworks [the Festival of Light] has finally decided to recognize that Gay Pride begins at the same time, which they’ve never ever recognized before. So, the community reached out and I took it and decided to host the event with Simone [drag queen Christopher Hunt]. So Simone and I are doing a “Sport a Speck of Pink” party—you have to wear a speck of pink to get in—and it will be at Brand Live, which is sponsored by the Keg. Partial proceeds from the fireworks ticket sales go to St. Pauls’ Hospital.
The party is on August 3, in a huge tent, and it’s is usually just a party for the Keg, so primarily heterosexual, but it came up that why, on the evening of Gay Pride’s launch, we never recognized it? So that’s what we’re doing! Next year it’ll be even gayer.
The other thing that I’m really excited about is that John Ferrie is showing at Volume Studio and he is one of Vancouver’s hottest artists. We are expecting a great turn out —it’s on the 2nd of August.