#silver elvis

It’s the 46th annual Richmond Hill Winter Carnival and the scenery is a perfect picture of what Canada’s all about. The ground is covered in a fresh blanket of snow. Children with red noses hold their hands out to metal drums crackling with the warmth of a fire. Skates hang over people’s shoulders as they wade through the white fluff to get to the frozen pond.

To the right of the pond a peculiar character catches everyone’s eye. He’s a walking optical illusion. He wears a coat with a pattern of black and white squares that could make you cross-eyed if you looked at it long enough and holds a black and white striped umbrella to match. But what’s more puzzling are the three boot prints he leaves in the snow.

The Three Legged Man is just one of Peter Jarvis’s many whimsical and eye-catching personas. The 55-year-old performance artist has been a regular street performer in downtown Toronto, most notably for his portrayal of a robotic, bedazzled, Silver Elvis. 

Despite the cold and less desirable conditions, this is not just a job for Jarvis—it’s a performance.

“If I can get an audience to a moment of stillness for 30 seconds, that’s a big amount of time for people to focus in this chaotic society,” he says. 

His day starts at 6 a.m. to prep his costumes and any makeup he needs for the event. For the winter carnival he brings his Three Legged Man costume and his infamous sequinned Silver Elvis suit.

Jarvis arrives to the event in his regular attire of black jeans and a T-shirt. You wouldn’t know he has three legs, or was once Charlie Chaplin, nonetheless the metallic reincarnation of Elvis. But this seemingly ordinary person is nothing short of a modern day Renaissance man. 

He credits his artistry to being the baby in a family of eight.

 “When I was five my brothers and sisters would just say, ‘Ignore him and he won’t bother you’ and that just egged me on to find other ways to get their attention,” he says with a laugh. 

His desire to be noticed brought on his love for impersonations of characters from his childhood. His favourite people to imitate were Fred Astaire, the American Broadway dancer, and Charlie Chaplin, the English silent actor who he says is his greatest inspiration.

“I based my whole career on [Charlie Chaplin’s] influence,” he says. “He ran his own studio, marketed himself, directed, wrote his own music and performed. I do all of those things to survive as an artist.”

Jarvis also taught himself how to dance at a young age by watching Soul Train, a dance show from the ‘70s, which influenced his mechanical movements for Silver Elvis. 

“I figured I’d learn how to do the robot by mimicking the dancers on that TV show,” he says. 

Chaplin’s effect on Jarvis’s career is seen through his performance of the Three Legged Man at the carnival. He is silent most of the time, doing grand, swinging gestures with all three of his legs as people of all ages stop and gaze with curiosity.

A little boy violently flailing a balloon sword slows down, captivated by Jarvis’s movements and, of course, his third leg. Even the boy’s mother is in awe, her jaw agape.

Jarvis says illusions are his inspiration for creating a character.

“That’s my hook,” he says. “If I can create a sense of illusion, then that sets the curiosity and wonder of my audience immediately.”

Orly Dinar, 48, a friend and fan of Jarvis’s work, says his performances always draw a crowd. “I think it’s because he’s different and because of how he moves and really portrays his characters,” she says. 

Being a street performer is just one chapter in Jarvis’s story. He also teaches as a guest artist at elementary and secondary schools and helps other artists jump-start their creative endeavours. 

Jarvis met designer Phil Sarazen 20 years ago and helped him find a market for his unique bicycle sculptures.

One of them stands magnificently on the ice in the middle of the pond like something out of a Dr. Seuss book—a giant bicycle with drums hanging off of its rainbow-coloured, metal limbs.

Children bang on the contraption’s hanging drums as Sarazen, 65, invites a parent to give the bike a ride.

Sarazen says his relationship with Jarvis is collaborative and that he’s learned a lot from his fellow artist.

 “I’ve been really interested with the whole body, movement and dance in the last couple of years and Peter was the one who got me caught up in that,” he says.

Jarvis’s day winds down with heavy lifting as Sarazen helps him move the giant bicycle contraption on to a trailer. Walking on three legs all day has Jarvis worn out, but seeing joy in people’s faces makes it worth it.

“I perform because it does change people even if it’s just for one moment,” he says. “I’m just trying to bring people back to their sense of play and their imagination, which makes them feel young again.”

The first four mentions of Bob Dylan in The Andy Warhol Diaries:

1 Oct. 1977: "[I saw] Albert Grossman, who used to manage Dylan. He told me again that he has my silver Elvis, but I don't understand that, because I gave it to Dylan, so how would Grossman get it?"

11 May 1978: "Robbie [Robertson] said he knew me from the Dylan days. I asked him whatever happened to the Elvis painting that I gave Dylan because every time I run into Dylan's manager Albert Grossman he says he has it, and Robbie said that at some point Dylan traded it to manager Albert Grossman for a couch! (laughs) He felt he needed a little sofa and he gave him the Elvis for it. It must have been in his drug days. So that was an expensive couch."

20 June 1978: In London, at Nona Gordon Summers's party "for Bob Dylan, and Bianca [Jagger] was raving about him and how he's after her. He had his bus parked outside. Nona told him he should buy a painting of mine and he came right out and said he'd already had one -- the Silver Elvis I gave him -- and that he'd traded it for a sofa. So what Robbie Robertson told me a few weeks ago was true. And then Dylan said that if I ever gave him another one, he'd never do it again.  ... Later on, Bianca was complaining that Dylan had wanted to take her in the bus, and how insulted she was that he hadn't gotten a limo for her."

29 Aug. 1979: "Rupert [Smith] and I worked on the Ten Most Famous Jews series. I haven't been told for sure who's in it. Maybe Woody Allen. Charlie Chaplin, Freud, Modigliani, Martin Buber. Who is Martin Buber? The Guggenheims. Oh, and Einstein. And Gertrude Stein. Kafka (photos for research $2.20). I think they were considering Bob Dylan but I read that he turned born-again Christian."

More on Dylan, Warhol, and the Double Elvis. In 2012 one sold for $37 million. Expensive couch indeed.

More on Dylan in his gospel phase (including the third photo above, dated 1980).