Ok- I'm trying to move over to posting on my blog rather than on Facebook, but it's going pretty slowly. So here goes:
I guess I should give a bit of background as to how I got here. I started my art career in college at Wesleyan University, where they had a good art department, but not very much in the way of traditional training. I always felt a bit adrift in my painting classes. My graduate show consisted of drawings, though I used color on some. I always enjoyed the physicality of drawing a form, and I was drawn to large scale things early on.
After college, I skipped around for a while in LA with my wife to be; we moved up to Seattle for a delightful year, where I took painting classes with a great painter named Rob Herlitz, who made me feel the connection between drawing and painting. Moved back to LA to get married, worked in a framing shop and did a series of pastel drawings about the area I grew up in, and then after having our first child, we decided to move to New York city. We lived in a loft in Williamsburg long before it was the groovy mecca it is today: there were two restaurants nearby, both Polish food, and the riverfront was populated with nothing but hookers and drug addicts. It looks a lot better today.
Mourning Piece, 1986, Pastel on paper, 44"x 197"
Just after arriving in Brooklyn I got the terrible news that my best friend Jeff had died while surfing in my home town. As a way of coping with the loss, I created a large (4'x17') pastel drawing that commemorated our friendship. There were so many things I wanted to communicate in this piece, and borders around the edges became the vehicle for those messages. I suppose it was partly the influence of working in the framing shop, and also my interest in symbols and sequential imagery (animation).
I worked in a Soho gallery and was getting to know about the New York art scene, then my wife announced that we were going to have another child, make that two, in a short while. The prospect of pushing a twin stroller with 3 year old daughter in tow through the snow and ice to get a bottle of milk, in a loft building that only had a freight elevator and no certificate of occupancy proved to be just too daunting, and we moved back to the west coast, where both of our families live.
Once we were installed here I realized that it was all going to be up to me to bring home the bacon, at least for a while, as Marianne would be taking care of three small children and would have no time for work (she's a nurse.) So I set aside my fine art career and started casting about for something that might pay a bit better than framing shop wages, which turned out to be a marblizing job for a friend that did precast moldings for big commercial jobs. It was a fun job mostly because I got to work with some good dudes, and I learned about using lacquers and sprayguns, but it only lasted so long. Then I was out on the street with some marble samples and looking for work with local designers, most of whom want the moon, but have a limited budget. I took a lot of jobs where I was asked "can you do such and such?" to which I replied "Of course- done lots of that." Then run home or to the bookstore (this was pre-internet) to try and figure out how the heck you do that!
A couple years of that and I finally hooked up with some uptown work, and eventually a design company in the Pacific Design Center that was trying to represent a bunch of diverse artisans, with varied success. That lasted about a year or two before the owners became overly ambitious and capsized the boat, after which I landed at a company called Douglas Bouman and Associates, in South Pasadena, which was some of the remnants of the former dynasty built by Anthony Heinsbergen Sr. (more on Mr. Heinsbergen later)
At Bouman and Assoc. I was surrounded by a number of talented artists who collaborated on large mural and decorative painting commissions in many different locales; one of my first jobs there was working on the Landmark Tower in Yokohama, Japan's tallest building, where I coordinated a crew that did faux marble on 20 or so very large (21' high by 3' dia.) columns in the lobby area of the hotel. It was very challenging on a number of counts: we had to work on very tight little scaffolds that were set up around each of the columns, making painting and veining very acrobatic at times, the final coating was a water based varnish applied over oil, so it had to go on just right and not get too much dust on it, plus the real marble we were copying was in panels that were very close to the columns, meaning the color and texture needed to be spot on.
About a year or two after I joined them, Mr Bouman moved the bulk of his company up to San Luis Obispo, leaving me to run the operations out of a studio that I set up in Gardena to be a bit closer to my home, but still reachable for my uptown colleagues. We created many large murals and decorative panels from that studio, and traveled to destinations around the world, though my favorite was always Japan, where I did 8 different jobs, including the Nikko hotel in Tokyo, Japan Airlines Headquarters building, and the Imperial Hotel in Osaka. I really enjoyed the culture and the food there, and even learned how to speak and read a bit of Japanese (mostly so I could decipher the menus!)
We did a lot of work for Las Vegas casinos; I break out in hives when I hear that one-armed bandit sound now! Also Mexico City, Costa Rica, New Orleans, Aspen, even Riyadh, Saudi Arabia! I liked the visits to foreign places a lot (Arabia, not so much), but it was beginning to take a toll on the home life. I had one year where I spent approximately 130 days on the road, and it was hard on my wife and kids. So eventually, I decided to get out of the business and go back to plan A- working as an independent fine artist. Gradually I backed away from traveling and eventually we closed the LA studio for good.
To be continued.....
I guess I should give a bit of background as to how I got here. I started my art career in college at Wesleyan University, where they had a good art department, but not very much in the way of traditional training. I always felt a bit adrift in my painting classes. My graduate show consisted of drawings, though I used color on some. I always enjoyed the physicality of drawing a form, and I was drawn to large scale things early on.
After college, I skipped around for a while in LA with my wife to be; we moved up to Seattle for a delightful year, where I took painting classes with a great painter named Rob Herlitz, who made me feel the connection between drawing and painting. Moved back to LA to get married, worked in a framing shop and did a series of pastel drawings about the area I grew up in, and then after having our first child, we decided to move to New York city. We lived in a loft in Williamsburg long before it was the groovy mecca it is today: there were two restaurants nearby, both Polish food, and the riverfront was populated with nothing but hookers and drug addicts. It looks a lot better today.
Mourning Piece, 1986, Pastel on paper, 44"x 197"
I worked in a Soho gallery and was getting to know about the New York art scene, then my wife announced that we were going to have another child, make that two, in a short while. The prospect of pushing a twin stroller with 3 year old daughter in tow through the snow and ice to get a bottle of milk, in a loft building that only had a freight elevator and no certificate of occupancy proved to be just too daunting, and we moved back to the west coast, where both of our families live.
Once we were installed here I realized that it was all going to be up to me to bring home the bacon, at least for a while, as Marianne would be taking care of three small children and would have no time for work (she's a nurse.) So I set aside my fine art career and started casting about for something that might pay a bit better than framing shop wages, which turned out to be a marblizing job for a friend that did precast moldings for big commercial jobs. It was a fun job mostly because I got to work with some good dudes, and I learned about using lacquers and sprayguns, but it only lasted so long. Then I was out on the street with some marble samples and looking for work with local designers, most of whom want the moon, but have a limited budget. I took a lot of jobs where I was asked "can you do such and such?" to which I replied "Of course- done lots of that." Then run home or to the bookstore (this was pre-internet) to try and figure out how the heck you do that!
Italianate mural (detail), private residence, Beverly Hills, 1992
A couple years of that and I finally hooked up with some uptown work, and eventually a design company in the Pacific Design Center that was trying to represent a bunch of diverse artisans, with varied success. That lasted about a year or two before the owners became overly ambitious and capsized the boat, after which I landed at a company called Douglas Bouman and Associates, in South Pasadena, which was some of the remnants of the former dynasty built by Anthony Heinsbergen Sr. (more on Mr. Heinsbergen later)
At Bouman and Assoc. I was surrounded by a number of talented artists who collaborated on large mural and decorative painting commissions in many different locales; one of my first jobs there was working on the Landmark Tower in Yokohama, Japan's tallest building, where I coordinated a crew that did faux marble on 20 or so very large (21' high by 3' dia.) columns in the lobby area of the hotel. It was very challenging on a number of counts: we had to work on very tight little scaffolds that were set up around each of the columns, making painting and veining very acrobatic at times, the final coating was a water based varnish applied over oil, so it had to go on just right and not get too much dust on it, plus the real marble we were copying was in panels that were very close to the columns, meaning the color and texture needed to be spot on.
Faux Marble columns at Landmark Tower, Yokohama, 1993.
About a year or two after I joined them, Mr Bouman moved the bulk of his company up to San Luis Obispo, leaving me to run the operations out of a studio that I set up in Gardena to be a bit closer to my home, but still reachable for my uptown colleagues. We created many large murals and decorative panels from that studio, and traveled to destinations around the world, though my favorite was always Japan, where I did 8 different jobs, including the Nikko hotel in Tokyo, Japan Airlines Headquarters building, and the Imperial Hotel in Osaka. I really enjoyed the culture and the food there, and even learned how to speak and read a bit of Japanese (mostly so I could decipher the menus!)
Ceiling for Desert Inn Las Vegas, 1996, acrylic on canvas, approx 12' dia.
To be continued.....
Kudos on starting this project. After many years of painting, I also find myself in a similar position. Sometimes to know how we got where we are, we need to revisit the past. I look forward to reading the updates.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, am so sorry about Jeff. The piece you created for him is just beautiful. Second, am so glad to read more of your story and doubly glad you have continued with the blog -- really excited to keep up with it (already subscribed). Looking forward to the future posts!
ReplyDeleteThank you both for the input- I'm excited about sharing all of this with you!
ReplyDelete