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Blame
it on the Avon Lady and Charles Schultz
When
I was a kid in the 1960s, my mom (like many) would buy the
fine products offered by the door-to-door Avon saleslady.
Shed also buy stuff for my brother and me. Before you
get the wrong idea, let me quickly add that Avon sold more
than makeup for women. They also sold stuff like bubblebath
and toys for kids. She bought me this plastic Snoopy soap
dish.
Now
I really dug it and used to play make-believe stories with
it. Then I started drawing it. Many times. of course, I was
glued to the TV whenever CBS would show a new Charlie Brown
cartoon. Although, everyone loves A Charlie Brown Christmas,
my favorites then were Charlie Browns All-Stars and
Hes Your Dog, Charlie Brown. At any rate, my favorite
character was Snoopy.
My
dad took notice of it and bought me paperbacks reprinting
the Charlie Brown newspaper dailies. I soon took to copying
them. Thats when I knew I wanted to be an artist for the
rest of my life. (I also wanted to be a priest and a weatherman.
Ive
strayed far from those vocations since then!) Although I dont
think I was thought of as the best artist in the class, my
schoolmates did think of me as the Peanuts expert.
My
skills at drawing Peanuts characters have greatly dimished,
but I still have fond memories of the strip and consider it
one of the best and most-influential of all time. I lost my
Snoopy soap dish as a kid and, with the help of my wife, I
found one in a comic book store. Since then, it has a place
of honor in my library at home, as you can see in the photo.
Where
was I?
Oh
yeah. So even though I wasnt the best artist in the class,
I was determined to become so. I drew a lot and would get
in trouble often in grade school for filling my tablets with
cartoons and drawings instead of class notes and homework.
It got to the point where my mom gave me a tablet soley for
drawing in, so I wouldnt get bad grades for drawing in the
tablets for math, English, or whatever.
By
high school, my best friend Stephan introduced me to Marvel
Comics and I was instantly hooked. Before, I did mostly cartooning
with an occasional landscape, I had little interest with the
figure. This changed now that I was exposed to Jack Kirby,
Steve Ditko, John Romita, John Buscema,
Gil Kane, Gene Colan, Jim Steranko, and
many, many others. I now changed my style to learn the exagerated
anatomy and the foreshortening that were the trademarks of
superhero art.
I
had little formal instruction, because my high school offered
art for about 45 minutes on Friday. The art department had
very little budget or priority. It was cancelled half the
time for choir practice or National Honor Society meetings.
I wasnt in National Honor Society (too much drawing in my
notebooks and text book margins?), so all that meant for me
was to join Stephan in a trip to the corner comic book store
to buy new and old issues of more Marvel comics. I soon became
in expert in Marvel Comic trivia. Still, despite all that,
my instructor Luba Kytasta was very encouraging to
my efforts.
With
the comics, I was also introduced to fantasy illustration
of the likes of Frank Frazetta, Berni Wrightson,
Barry Windsor-Smith, and others. Wow! They really took
this stuff seriously. They used very realistic rendering in
their approach.
A revelation
By the time I entered college, my style was immersed in the
sword and sorcery/fantasy/horror/superhero comic look. My
projects in my college art projects all reflected that bent.
Until one day, I saw my first (and so far, only) act of violence
in person. A hit-and-run drugged-up driver hit an old woman
who was crossing the street. This happened right in front
of me. I stuck around with other witnesses to give a report
to the police. I will never forget the sight of the long trickle
of bright red blood that came from her head while she lied
on the ground. Her head was cradled in someones lap.
I
found out in the local paper that she died that night. This
incident had a very profound impact on me. I realized that
evening how shallow and mindless the violence I depicted in
my art was. Since then, I rarely draw violence, unless its
to make it look ugly.
Someday,
my prints will come
I got a 2 year Associates Degree from Macomb Community College,
where I got all my beginning drawing and design. I then attended
the Center For Creative Studios for 3 semesters, taking life
drawing, anatomy and a few commercial art classes. I majored
in fine, as opposed to commercial art, because I was already
working for a studio and figured Id learn more on the job
than at school. And fine art was a lot more fun!
But
CCS got too expensive for me, so I transferred to Wayne State
University. I took my first intaglio class with Stanley
Rosenthal and fell in love with printmaking immediately.
It became my concentration (along with drawing). I took every
printmaking class they had, except for seriagraphy, which
didnt interest me. Stanley became a mentor to me and Ill
never forget the strong influence he was on me.
The
medium I really liked the most was woodcut. Maybe it was all
the black & white comics I drew, but the graphic approach
to creating imagery came naturally to me. I loved intaglio,
but I tended to spend too much time correcting my etchings
and aquatints until I corrected the life out of them. Woodcuts
were much more difficult to correct, so a lot of the rawness
stayed, leading to a more powerful look that I liked.
I
started showing and selling my work in Detroit galleries like
the Detroit Artists Market and The Scarab Club.
It was a very exciting time and it thrilled me to no end to
sell something to someone I never met. One of my prints even
won an award from the Alma College Print Show that
was juried by David Becker, an artist and art professor
at WSU I greatly admired. This made me happy when I found
out, but I didnt realize what an honor that was. When
I showed up at the reception, all the awards went to art professors,
except for two including me. This inflated my ego so much,
I had to soap up my ears so my head could pass through the
door openings!
The greatest gallery an artist could wish for
While
at Wayne State, a co-worker of mine told me about the figure
drawing sessions at the Michigan Gallery. It instantly
became my hangout every Tuesday night and Saturday morning.
Along with the figure drawing I was doing at Wayne State,
I ended up drawing from a live model at least 5 times a week!
After
I got my Bachelors Degree from Wayne State, I took a workshop
at the Michigan Gallery given by Stephen Goodfellow
on how to do micropointillism. It reminded me of doing aquatints
and I caught on to it very quickly. Stephen soon organized
the first group show of micropointillism there, along with
Lowell Boileau (who helped Stephen create the technique).
There were 3 rooms designated for the show, with two of them
for us beginners and the large one for Stephen and Lowell.
They displayed my work in a very prominent area in their gallery
next to their work, which I felt was a great honor. My work
even got mentioned in the papers. Wow!
Back
to some roots
I got involved with Ukrainian artists by Dzvinka Hayda and the organization ADUK. This introduced me to a new circle
of artists and I finally met a hero of mine. One of my strong
influences since childhood were the breathtaking paintings
in my church Immaculate Conception in Hamtramck. I doubt Ive
ever paid attention to an entire mass any time Ive been there,
because I was too mesmerized by the art, especially the one
of God and Jesus crowning Mary in the large painting on the
upper right front panel. The work was done by Michailo
Dmytrenko, and he was a board member of ADUK.
The
first show we did of art by Ukrainian artists was in 1990
at The Scarab Club. I couldnt believe my art was in the same
room as Mr. Dmytrenko, as well as the Kozak brothers
and Roman Baranyk who all did beautiful paintings,
sculptures, and icons in churches that Ive admired for years.
And I was speechless when Mr. Dmytrenko told me that my painting
of The Risen Christ was a beautiful
composition. This from the composition master!
The
next year, the ADUK show concentrated on the 5 year anniversary
of the Chronobyl Tragedy. It was a powerful show. I wasnt
able to make the reception due to a wedding I was standing
up in. Still, Joy Colby, the Detroit News art critic,
singled my woodcut out in her review. Egomaniac that I am,
I bought quite a few copies of that paper and was even able
to get the negative and metal plate for that page.
The
last show ADUK did was the one based on Ukrainian folklore.
I miss ADUK, but a lack of participation from Ukrainian artists
stopped the annual shows. The same three or four people were
doing all the work.
Getting lazy
Since then, I got married, bought a house, and became addicted
to movies and websites. My art output shrank and I stopped
submitting my work at galleries and shows. At this point,
my drawing has become rusty. Ive been making a strong
effort to get my skills back to where they were, but I still
have a way to go. Keep checking the galleries. You never know
when I may actually create a piece I actually like!
In
the meantime, check out the interview I gave to CidTalk.com
which featured me in her artists section.
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