JET III's Profile

From: Ringwood, NJ
Joined: May 19, 2008
http://www.artbreak.com/jetiiiphotography

About JETIII:

I am JET III and these are my initials. I am modern, one of a kind, a "fine artist" in the technological age. I was there in NYC's East Village during the 80's, participating in solo and many group art exhibitions. I have also raised a family since that time and kept the painting and drawing going in the mountains of New Jersey. I have been concentrating on the subtleties of nature in my drawings and paintings, while living in an era that's reliant on wires and megabytes and I have also fought silently over the years for environmental protection.

I have come a long way since my first New York City exhibition in 1979, or when most of my paintings were stolen after an art show one year later.

"My work is a progressive reaction to society and is an effigy to life in general. It is built on imagination, abstraction, representation, experimentation and observation. The work disregards personal style and symbolism by maintaining in endless form, color combinations, transformations, manifestations, an efflorescence of artistic precedents and ideals, and a kaleidoscope of dissimilar modes of expression. It was begun in 1979 as a giant progression, the body of work has evolved into an amazing array or artistic precedents including reversible paintings, convertible sculpture, and also include hundreds of drawings done on, buses, trains and subway trains. The idea of a progression is a modern concept where each painting is a step by step idea process elevating the artist to a higher level and broader spectrum of activities and after invention in 1979 has resulted in over four thousand works of art.

My "Reversible" paintings, an idea that I invented in drawings in 1980 and made into paintings in 1983, actually have two different ideas contained on a single artwork, however, until they are hung or suspended from the ceiling, the owner, gallery director, or curator is forced into making an artistic decision on their own, choosing which side to show and for how long. Variety and change are it's core ideal. My convertible sculpture takes this idea one step further by increasing the possibilities of choice, and providing combinations. Prior to inventing the reversible work I was interested in reinventing impressionism's ideals and methodology in a modern context. I also fought for the environment in my own way since the early eighties".

I have met many famous artists such as Larry Rivers, Roy Lichtenstein, Anselm Kiefer, Julian Schnabel, Susan Rothenstein, Keith Haring, Jean Michel Basquiat Andy Warhol among others and have discussed art with them. I met Leo Castelli, Mary Boone and countless other art gallery directors at openings, museums and exhibitions. Large advertisements of my art shows have been spread across noted NYC art papers, magazines and newspapers including The Village Voice, The N.Y. Gallery Guide, Say Arts, Cover Arts and the New Common Good.

In 1988 I installed window installations and a solo exhibition at one of the last East Village galleries called the Emerging Collector. They were of my golden winter weeds, rare dead migratory seabirds, an unusual drawbridge, and a curving, splotchy, waterway littered with debris. I had painted in full view of the N. Y, Airport, and Coastal Trade, literally a "Gateway to the City" outside in the “plein air” tradition, but I did my paintings in the dead of the coldest winters. With added found objects, as integral parts of the framing materials, the paintings were a strong statement to clean up our land, air and seas. These paintings and the beach scenes of the tidal flats in Brooklyn where I painted in the winters of 1987 89 were a harsh reality. The pollution and degradation intermixed with nature’s beauty and constant change eventually found their way onto the artistic endeavors produced there.

For two seasons I recycled found objects, recovered cluttering the desolate almost abandoned waterways; in an area of the national park service located on the Jamaica/Sheepshead Bay, part of the Gateway National Seashore. I removed from her twisted and convulsing shores the debris, cleaned and used as framing material for the oil paintings (that had been produced on the spot in one day) artifacts of broken glass bottles. Objects tossed aside or in the water a hundred years prior, in my ancestor’s day. The framing materials also consisted of modern wooden reminders of our rich heritage of pollution, the visual reminders of a day in the corroded seashore that once was his ancestor's backyard playground.

These paintings done in Brooklyn were shown collectively in solo Exhibitions in 1990 at the Emerging Collector Gallery, but many of the frames had to be destroyed in order to get the art home. Some of these few remaining framed artworks were again exhibited in 1997 at the Skulski Polish Foundation Gallery in Clark, New Jersey.

I have a Masters of Studio Art from NYU in 1983 where I studied under Ross Bleckner, Diane Blell, Marilyn Karp, John Kacere, Adele Weber, and Bob Kaupelis, among others. I received a Bachelors of Fine Art from SUNY Albany in 1979 where I studied drawing, painting, sculpture and photography. I've attended the Art Student League of NYC (Painting Award), New School University in NYC (Etching), School of Visual Arts (Design), and Ramapo College of NJ (K-12 and Art Teaching Certifications). I have also worked as a graphic artist in photography and became a master printer utilizing silkscreen and airbrush printing methods to make my own handmade fine art prints and artworks. Since that time I have worked digitally, as well as by hand by drawing and painting.

ART EXHIBITIONS
Solo:
2009 Ringwood Public Library, Ringwood, NJ
2007 Kean University, Nancy Dryfoos Gallery Union, NJ (2 solo exhibitions)
2007 Ringwood Public Library, Ringwood, NJ (2 solo exhibitions)
1997 Skulski Polish Foundation Gallery Clark, NJ
1990: The Emerging Collector, N.Y.C., BHF Bank, N.Y.C.
1987: Helio Galleries, N.Y.C., Nite Gallery, N.Y.C.
1986: Pene du Bois Gallery, N.Y.C.
1984: Lucky Strike Gallery, N.Y.C.,
1983: Eighty Washington Square East Galleries, N.Y.C

Two Person:
1987: Nite Gallery, N.Y.C.
1982: Le Nid Gallery, Northport, N.Y.

Group Exhibitions:
2008 Morristown Community House Art Exhibition
2007 Morristown Community House Art Exhibition
2007 Bergen County Annual Art Exhibition Paramus, NJ
2006 James Howe Gallery Kean University Union, NJ
2001: St. Catherine Patron of the Arts Art Exhibition Ringwood, NJ
1998 Skulski Gallery International Graphics Exhibition Clark, NJ,
1988-1993: The Emerging Collector Gallery N.Y.C.
1990: The Arsenal Gallery N.Y.C. Curated by Joshua Teplow:
1990 Woodstock Art Exhibition Curated by Anne Debriano,
1989 Kilimanjaro, N.Y.C. Curated by Anne Debriano,
1989 Mars Bar, N.Y.C. Curated by Toyo;
1989 65 Bleeker Street Gallery,
1989 Nice Biennial Nice, France,
1988: Emerging Collector, N.Y.C.
1987: Now Gallery N.Y.C.
1987 Helio Galleries, N.Y.C.
1987 Cuando Exhibition Space. N.Y.C.
1987 Artifacts Gallery Miami, Florida
1987 Nite Gallery, N.Y.C.
1987 ABC No Rio Gallery, N.Y.C. COLAB:
1987 The Art Director's Club Gallery Juried by Patterson Sims, Holly Solomon et al.,
1987 Discovery Gallery, Glen Cove, N.Y.
1987 Discovery Metro Gallery, L.I.C., N.Y.
1986: Jus De Pomme Gallery, N.Y.C. Curated by Emma Harvin,
1986 Helio Galleries, N.Y.C.,
1986 Eastman Wahmendorf Gallery, N.Y.C.
1986 Now Gallery, N.Y.C.
1986 No Se No Gallery, N.Y.C.
1986 Fusion Arts, N.Y.C.
1986 Forefront Gallery, L.I.C., N.Y.,
1986 Civilization, N.Y.C.
1986 Lebron, Sinclair,and Upton Legal Offices, N.Y.C.
1986 The Field, N.Y.C. Benefit and Auction,
1986 Nite Gallery, N.Y.C."Taking Liberties",
1986 Greenwich Auction Room, N.Y.C.
1985: Eastman Wahmendorf Gallery, N.Y.C.,
1985 Nite Gallery N.Y.C. curated by Louis Lopes
1984 65 Spring Street, N.Y.C.
1984 Westbeth Gallery, N.Y.C.
1982 Art Complex East, Riverhead, N.Y.,
1982 Wilbur National Bank, Oneonta, N.Y.,
1982 Kaber Gallery, N.Y.C.,
1982 Shirley Scott Gallery, Southampton, N.Y.
1981 The Art Students League
1981 Five Towns Art Exhibition, Woodmere, N.Y.
1979 Le Grand Illusion Gallery, N.Y.C.,
1979 S.U.N.Y. Albany Gallery
Performance Art:

2004 – 85th- 83th Streets and Second Avenue NYC
1986 Now Gallery, N.Y.C.
1986 Fashion Moda, Bronx, NY
1986 Fusion Arts N.Y.C.
1986 Tompkins Square Park, N.Y.C.
Sponsored by the N.Y. Council on the Arts, N.Y.C.
1986 Pene Du Bois Gallery, N.Y.C.
1985 Now Gallery, N.Y.C.
Parrish Art Museum, Southampton, N.Y.
1981-1983 Cow Harbor Day, Northport, N.Y.
MY Art Space
http://myartspace.com/
Web Listings:
JETIII is Listed in the World Artist Directory http://WorldArtistDirectory.com
Phirebrush
http://www.phirebrush.com
Fine Art America
http://fineartamerica.com/
Saatchi-Gallery
http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/yourgallery/artist_profile//92342.html
Gather
http://jetiii.gather.com/
Global Art Collectors
http://www.globalartcollectors.com/myaccount

I have been making my art for 30 years now. I was very prolific when I first started out as an artist and started so many artworks. So many could never be finished for many years of hard work.

Some of my artworks back then were done quickly and were all about the idea and the process of inventing art, others took me a really long time to finish. I found over time that I really appreciated the ones that I put maximum effort into and still love the idea of the process of making art as well.

I wanted to work in different styles, but found that art people were generally against this. They wanted to look at a room of someone's art and see the same things, like everything should match. Remember, Andy Warhol had been making copies of copies and Minimal art was very big, when I was attending art school.

When I first invented it, people seemed to never fully understand my reversible idea, or how hard it was to do this. Especially gallery directors, who would eventually have to make a decision as to which way to show something. Since my idea was to make art that changed, if you have 200 reversible artworks, that would lead to 200 x 200 possibilities for an art show. I am quite sure that by now I have attained my goal.

It wasn't until this Artbreak site that I was able to show enough work at one time for people to see what I was all about all these past years. Read the descriptions and you will see the dates range across the years. This is because it just took me many years to finish these particular artworks. There is also large group of works that I did in a day too. When you frame things the way I do, you can see how I invented something interesting for each work, this took me extra time as well.

I put one drawing on-line the other day called "The Hole in the Wall". I started with an India ink action swishing style approach then spent the next 2 years filling it in with a million tiny strokes. I have called my work of this type, "Maximal Art" for many years now. There are many examples of this type of artwork on my Artbreak site, but due to file sizes, it is not always practical to give viewers a sense of what the original looks like up close. This is a part of the surprise.

When I was a student I was painting my own ideas and I was re-invented ways of seeing things that had not been used for a century. I called them Modern Impressionism, but it went much further over time and eventually morphed into my Maximal thing and a host of other artistic precedents.

Many of my simplest landscapes that are done Impressionistically, have unusual frames added to them that were made from driftwood or were antiques, etc., as I enjoyed making the frame a part of the work. This modernizes the artworks, with a sort of Dadist approach.

People have not always appreciated the frames, many were taken out of their frames and re-framed and some of my old wooden driftwood frames even were burned for firewood!

I started out collecting antique frames in college and even painted paintings that would fit in them, eventually I started painting the frame too, I built my own frames, finally I even restored the damaged antique ones and modernized them. People used to say also that these thick gaudy frames were not appropriate anymore, but I couldn't disagree more, depending on the particular artwork I made for each frame that I had collected. They used to tell me that the frame should not compete with the art and I said "What if it becomes a part of the art!"

I also like to hang art exhibitions in the salon style of the 19th century. I like to see a solid wall of art. They also used to tell me to pick one direction for my artworks to hang, but I made them reversible in a multitude of different ways.

It is very hard to survive throughout life, as an artist. I have worked in corporate law, magazine publishing, advertising, type and color printing done by hand. I have also sold medical life support equipment and medical software, then even become an art teacher. I even raised my own 2 children too. Through all the many different jobs I held, I always stayed true to my art. I found that I can get a tremendous amount of work done over my life by approaching it slowly and steadily. Hard work is not a problem for me. There were times over the years when I didn't start or finish many artworks and others that I made many. When I was 20, I painted late into the night, then got up early for work, but as I got older I found other ways to get things done. Over time I have changed my approach many times as well.

I think when you are young, you have a tremendous amount of energy that you can spend devoting toward something positive for society and by channeling your energy toward creativity, you can also get many artworks built and started. Even if many artworks are not finished, they can be completed over a long period of time over one's lifetime. The idea behind the artwork, that you create defines your time on earth. If you do a really great job of making it, maybe people will always appreciate it. For me it would be sad to see it thrown out, or not appreciated, after all I gave up to make it.

Art supplies are expensive and you have to work hard just to afford to be able to make it. If your job is not conducive to creativity, you probably will not be able to come home and make art, but for me early on, it afforded me the ability to buy canvas and paint. So, I pushed myself to make art after work, even though my daily employment wasn't always in a very creative atmosphere. In the early years, I spent all my extra money on quality art supplies.

To begin with, you need something to paint on. This would be called a "Support". I have used canvas, linen and wood, but have also used odd things that I thought would work.

Since I built most of my canvases myself, many of my works were done on fine linen or wood and were originally treated with a hot hide glue "Size". The sizing is like making Jello and is very similar just without the flavor, as it cools a little, it is applied with a brush to the linen. When dry it is clear and crystalline and protects the fabric with a protective barrier from the destructive oil in oil paints. This also helps to stretch or shrink the linen tighter and makes it taught and receptive to an oil painting "Primer", or the "Ground".

A "Ground" must be applied to the raw material and covers the linen or wood with a white surface which can be painted on directly when dry. I use two coats of size and a couple coats of oil painting primer in this manner, but there is another method too. Gesso is a white chalked acrylic primer ground that also will coat a canvas with a receptive surface on which to paint. This is the quickest method today for people using acrylic paints on canvas, but many use it for oil too. Oil can be put on top of acrylic (plastic), but not the other way around as oil and water do not mix. Many coats of gesso are applied to the canvas which stretches it tighter and protects the material from most acrylic paints and to some degree from the oil in oil paint.

I usually never start painting by sketching onto the canvas first. I just started right in painting. You can draw with your paint too. On some of my artworks, I am used to thinking about an idea in my head for sometime, before ever starting, like having a plan ahead of time.

If you think of it, like photography, when you frame the shot just right, and look through the viewfinder, you do this with an idea. I always used my own ideas and nobody ever told me what to paint or draw. It is my art, it can, and has been copied by others, but my ideas are still mine. Artbreak gives me a chance to speak about each piece one by one and really show when they were done, even if it doesn't allow me to arrange them in a true order.

The "Composition" or the design of the idea is a critical factor in making the art what it becomes later. You can think of it like the structure of a house (the studs and framing) as it is being built, you can tell what the house will look like someday.

You use it whenever you think of an idea, even when the subject is right in front of you like with a landscape, interior, or person modeling for you.

I carried my art supplies far into, what I called, the "wilderness". Sometimes I painted outside in summer, but many times in late fall, winter, or early spring, as there were less bugs. I would find and paint a cool landscape spot, or something I found interesting, or defining, along my way on that particular day.

I used Long Island where I grew up, for some of my subject matter after college. While commuting on the LIRR train I drew in my sketchbooks. I also worked and painted in NYC. NYC was also where I went to my art schools, which included NYU, the Art Student League, The New School University, and the School of Visual Art.

After getting married in 1985, and moving to Brooklyn in 1986, I set up a studio there and eventually found my way to the Brooklyn's National Seashore. I did a new painting almost every day back then, either on the beach or in the studio. I built the frames into the art in order to be reversible. The integral painted frame was a many sided painting which made the job much harder too. Not only did you get two great paintings, but the integral frame was different and worked with the art. I treated every side and corner, as a painting unto itself, but also a part of a larger whole.

I moved to NJ in 1990, a year after my daughter was born and brought all my art and supplies with me to NJ. It took two Ryder trucks to get it all there and have been trying to juggle a life at home with my family and all my art ever since. When the recession hit shortly after moving, I used my science background to survive as an account representative in the medical field. Eventually I found my way back to art, by teaching about it. Over the years in Ringwood, I turned my yard into an earthwork and used it as a basis for my photos.

I use photography constantly, but do not usually paint from photos. I have not really shown my photos, or my sketchbook drawings on the Internet, as of yet either. I do, still draw in a sketchbook, but do not generally paint what I sketch. I have filled maybe 20 sketchbooks over the years and have them all safely stacked up somewhere.

When I finish my large drawings, I can stack them one on top of the next one without bothering to frame them, or having them taking up much space. I just put a couple of pieces of acid-free paper between each one.

This is my Bio, written by my daughter JLT - "Abstract expressionism. Environmentalism. Pop art. Undoubtedly, JET III, can be classified into any one of these artistic genres. But what does this really say about his works or his artistic aims? Connecting to humanity through his creative efforts is more important to him than trivial material gains, and this has always been evident in both his life’s choices and his innovative paintings. Early on, he preferred living on the edge instead of opting for a more comfortable lifestyle and has continuously sacrificed necessities just to keep creating art. It started as a young man when he plunged into the artistic world at a crucial period in his existence. As his parents forbade him to pursue his new infatuation with his creative side in favor of practicality, he went up against them in order to fulfill his destiny. Since the 1980’s, JET III has created thousands of paintings, drawings, and sculptures that reflect his own personal take on artistic form and ideas on improving society.
Initially, his appreciation for artists such as Picasso and Warhol manifested itself in his imagination and became apparent in his works. Art History was a popular subject in his paintings as he strove to honor the previous masters and make a statement using silk-screens of their visages. He employed a new form of pointillism that had a flow and grace not seen in previous eras, making and breaking artistic barriers with each new piece of art. James also pioneered the “reversible” painting where each side contains a separate tour de force. Although he has had numerous solo gallery shows in his lifetime, including his most recent at Kean University, he has always remained part of the counterculture of the art society and never fully embraced by critics. In fact, it seems he has slipped beneath nearly all reviewers’ radars during his gallery show epoch, mostly due to the combination of the critics’ utter absence and the dying art scene of Greenwich Village in the late 80’s. James also was part of the performance art movement in the Village while other commercial creators were more preoccupied with extravagant events uptown.

After he married his wife, and had a child, JET III was faced with a difficult decision ahead of him: should he continue struggling against the elements as an underground artist and raise his child in Brooklyn, or move his developing family to a different environment for a fresh start? In the end, he chose to relocate to a small suburb of New Jersey. Besides working various office jobs, JET III revamped antique furniture and became a certified art teacher, in addition to having a second child. The woodsy landscape of Ringwood influenced him to pick up an increasingly naturalistic manner of painting in the coming years. As he matured and developed his own unique, expressionistic style, he grew more knowledgeable and open-minded about the globe surrounding him.

Now that JET is older and wiser, he is eager to pass on his all-encompassing experiences to future generations. Progression is his goal and he believes that the populace must embrace artistic change and individuality in order to evolve successfully. To quote him, “I hope that since my work was done for humanity’s benefit, society will one day realize I am giving up a good part of my life and happiness to make it for them.” A mission state so straightforward and honest cannot be denied, and in our modern world, it seems rare to find such simplicity. JET III has never put money ahead of his masterpieces, and all that he requests now from the world is a fraction of the art appreciation that he has bestowed throughout his life thus far".

JET III Art Statement: My life experience has been, in essence captured in my art. I am physically able to paint or draw with any type of art media and possess the ability to easily switch styles from realistic to abstract. I have no problem with coming up with ideas of things to make. For this reason, I am not bored with making or teaching fine art to all peoples. The only period of my life that I did not produce a tremendous amount of art was when I was very young or working in a full-time job and time didn’t allow for it. I have always stood for freedom of ideas and speech.

I have utilized any style or technique I wanted to express my ideas, but over the years have settled into several key examples. My art is mostly representational in an abstract way. At times it’s decidedly environmental. Most of the art features enhanced colors, hidden items and can be looked at for years without discomfort.

My classmates and teachers at NYU used to argue about my early Dot Paintings 1981-83. There were also big discussions on my "Action paintings" as well especially the Painting "Seagulls". It was radical thinking in 1981 to paint with dots or splashes of paint again, but think of the computer revolution taking place soon after that and the punk scene taking place right then. These paintings were just a bit ahead of their time. Computer monitors were and are measured by dots per square inch. Magazines and books are printed with tiny dots. My job at the time was located next to the color department where small dots of color were measured and mixed to produce the magazine printing. As an example of this, look carefully at my paintings (in particular “Blasted to Atoms ca 1982”), then look at my teacher Ross Bleckner’s style change (Mary Boone Gallery at www.rbleckner.com) before he became my teacher in 1983. Look at his cell paintings, in particular. One look at my use of color and you will see that this was against all trends in the early 1980s, where black was a predominant theme.

My first art professors were all very different and I credit several of them for good direction. Mark Greenwald was my first drawing and painting teacher. His critiques of my art were harsh, however it was the competition I had with him that has kept me going, when all was not so easy. His rough treatment has served to spur me on to become the best artist I could be, and I learned to thank him for it. I later found his face adorning a wall of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. His rough face had been painted eight feet high by the Super Realist painter Chuck Close, one of his “close” friends.

Close joked after I did his portrait in ink pen and gave it to him at one of his gallery openings, "If I had more time I'd do your portrait"! we were in an elevator at the time. A typical Chuck Close portrait on a face is legendary, extremely time consuming and detailed. I drew the small ink portrait of Chuck Close quickly, but it really resembled him. I remember presenting it to him on the elevator as we were riding down together to the street. I found his response particularly humorous.

Being the subject of the early Close masterpiece entitled "Mark”, I had never understood why Greenwold made us draw and paint large self-portraits until I saw his face on that museum wall that day. I never understood the criticism I received from him either, but over the years it only stood to make me stronger in the face of severe critiques and petty jealousies. I made the art for myself and that is the essence of "Fine Art".

Dennis Byng was by far, one of my favorite art teachers. Above all else, he taught me about color and 3-D design. He made Plastic Lucite Sculptures and taught me the process. He was a professor of design and my mentor at that time. I made several great Lucite sculptures while studying under his watchful eye, and prize them highly today. One of my “Lucite Pyramids” was the first artwork I ever sold in a NYC gallery. This sale took place way back in 1979.

Edward Cowley another art professor, taught me to use my art on my property and to let people walk outside amongst my art. He taught me to be environmental about art and showed me many examples of artists using the environment to make art. I credit him with my predilection to sculpting the landscape as I did in Ringwood, NJ, or cleaning the glass from the seashore as I did in Brooklyn and in seeing the beauty in small town American Architecture, as did Edward Hopper. He taught me to use abstraction environmentally with my own watercolors as his favorites Arthur Dove, John Marin and Charles Burchfield had done.

Phyllis Galembo originally taught me photography and I refined it when running a darkroom for 7 years in publishing and in a color department creating advertising, book and magazine covers, type, product labels, and packaging. I have taught photography in college now for 6 years.

Later in 1984, while taking one of my adult education classes on a field trip through Soho, in NYC, I found that another of my art history professors, Marilyn Gelfman Karp who had used the natural environment in interesting and provocative ways.

When I first taught art adult education courses I learned that art has the unique ability to save humanity by bringing happiness, both in the making, the process, the teaching and the viewing, or experiencing to people of all ages. However, it took me a long time to realize that I should devote a part of me to teaching others.

I had always wanted to be an artist and just make art. During my masters program I had no thoughts of becoming an art teacher, Later, as my wife and I struggled to survive during a recession, I started to consider the idea of teaching art to others. I slowly found I really enjoyed it. I made room in my life for my family, making my own art and teaching about art to others.

I have taught art in college now since the new century changed and have taught high school and even a little junior high, but my real wish had always been to show my art to all. My goal has become to make art and share it with all people. We are all just really brothers and art is a valid method of communication. Artbreak, and the Internet gives me this opportunity to some extent..

I have made so many different kinds of artworks and find it interesting to see just what different people like in the work. Basically there is something for everyone in my work and I hope you can find something here that you can appreciate. Just click the I Like it logo above your favorites! I can also tell things about you with the selections that you find enjoyable, so feel free to join and to make comments on the art.

If I had the finances, I would love to travel and make art in front of people all over the world, and now the Internet helps me do this. This comes, in part, from the fact that my parents were antiques dealers many years ago, and they trained me how to restore furniture and antique collectibles. We traveled and collected old furniture and things. We would pack a large van with items we bought and then restore, refinish, repack, unpack and display items at antique shows.

Packaging became something that was a part of my art. My sketchbooks were finished from cover to cover and boxes and bags were made to store them in. My painted cardboard boxes and shopping bags were started in 1981-82 and became acrylic art packages. In 1990 when I went to Hanover, Germany, I saw a pile of Warhol Brillo boxes and was photographed there by my wife. The empty pop culture Brillo product box had now become a functional art item.

The selling of fine items in antique shows trained me in sales and for my own art exhibitions. I learned how to talk to people and to give them the best product and fair value for their money. When I went away to college in 1975, I started my own antique collection and worked during the summer selling and restoring furniture and antique collectibles. Two trunks I personally restored were purchased for the Vanderbilt Collection and are in the Manor in Centerport, NY.

I started actually signing my restored antique furniture pieces in the new millennium and made my own furniture designs too. I consider them to be a valid part of my art. I have also combined my antique furniture and paintings together. This to me represents both preserving our past and making items of modernity together as one.

I also realized that I wanted to make my art right to where people congregate, parks, festivals (like Cow Harbor Day, held once a year in Northport, NY), beaches, malls (Miracle Mile in Manhassett), commuting, or even right on the NY City streets. I don’t like to do this performance all the time, just once in while, and make my art right in front of people. Wherever I go though, I make art. Over the years I have taken a camera everywhere I went and I have made many of my sketchbook drawings, while commuting on buses, subways and trains. People seem to love to spend a moment or two watching an artist at work!

Making my art in public like this eventually led me to making my giant action paintings in front of galleries in NYC during the 1980’s. It was these performances that influenced others to use ideas such as this. During the 1980’s you started to see these art performances evidenced in commercials and movies. Much later, my pick-up series in NYC was witnessed by literally thousands of passerby and vehicles. I used my pickup truck as a moveable art platform.

I originally entered my earliest paintings in street art festivals in Manhattan’s Central Park and Greenwich Village. This outdoor experience between the artist and the public led to the Cow Harbor Day and early beach paintings of the early 1980’s.

This artist/public experience would not always go as planned, as there were so many variables and risks involved. In my first outdoor show in Greenwich Village street hustlers tried to steal some of the art, but I apprehended them and foiled their plans. In my life, I have foiled many crimes and captured many criminals by hand, but one outdoor show on Central Park went even farther than expected, when everything was stolen. My custom van (It took me two and a half years to build) was stolen immediately after the Central Park Art Exhibit in 1980 with two years worth of framed paintings and drawings inside. I had to start all over as two years of my hard work vanished into thin air.

I had my 15 minutes of fame that day as the Daily News covered the story of “Artist’s Van is stolen” on page six. As I found out later a street gang from Brooklyn stole the van and one criminal tried to sell me two of the paintings back, but I never did get any of the art back.

Luckily, I still had slides of my work and used them to get into New York University Masters Degree Program in Studio Art. Along the way towards my Masters Degree, I gravitated to the New York East Village Art Scene. This began around 1982-83 and finalized in and around 1991 with the recession reeking havoc on artists. The East Village scene shut down after that time. During the eighties, I had exhibited and performed my paintings from one end of the city to next, in a variety of styles, and showed the art in little, obscure, galleries that, unless you lived there, you would never know even existed. Critics didn’t even go to most of these places, and they happened off the radar. The East Village is quite different today, but even when I had my best and biggest shows the critics were strangely silent. I think either they didn’t know what to say, as the art was definitely new and different, or they never went to see it. Around that time a whole new bunch of new bigger gallery spaces opened south of Houston Street and with it the East Village slowly fell apart.

The Emerging Collector Gallery was one of the last bastions of the East Village Scene and I was showing and selling my work there from 1987-90. I had artwork there almost continuously during that time period. I had a solo exhibition of my beach paintings and also two front window displays.

Many of the other artists from the art scene's Micro shows were also showing there too and it was such a great time to be an artist. Work was piled in racks and collectors came in and looked at art from two large backlit panels of slides. There were draws full of drawings and the back office was loaded with tiny sculptures. They also held art auctions where their collectors could get a bargain.

I truly believe that those days and nights spent in the East Village, as it was first gentrifying, were among the great artistic times of the late twentieth century. A long-haired character named Mr. Sexy came around daily with a list of gallery openings and happenings, that covered each evening’s art events and openings. Many individuals that just had an affinity for art scene, or lived in the area, always could find something interesting to do, or see.

A few artists drove around in hand-painted cars. I painted two of them and one was a 1975 Cadillac. Police in my neighborhood in Brooklyn used to tell me that if it were ever stolen they would be sure to get it back for me. It was all spray painted in wild colors and the roof was painted like one of my paintings with epoxy and acrylics.

Years after moving back to suburbia from Brooklyn, NY, I realized that my East Village work was as much about expanding my own horizons as to sharing my ideas freely in the world’s art center. Everyone seemed to be an artist and art exhibits in these tiny little places were made up of a multitude of individuals. Exhibits and performances popped up all around the city, but their base was in the East Village. The Emerging Collector was one of my favorite places and was run by Anna and Christine, two great people! Curators came and selected work to hang in a variety of places, such as bars, etc. Many looked at film slides of the art.

In many NYC EV shows, there was an imposed limit on size. These were generally called small works, or Micro shows and occurred at tiny little places like "Nite", or "Now" Galleries. Some art exhibits were in bars or restaurants. Openings in the small galleries were usually packed and spilled out all over the streets. The art became one with the street and performance art was initiated into the general public’s vocabulary, however, what they saw in the fancy galleries and museums was a far cry from the real performances of the East Village. Performance and self-promotion became a part of the East Village.

I think if you look at my work’s progression, begun in 1979 you will see many ideas that have affected other NY artists, designers and thinkers. Even my clothes were copied by fashion designers. I hand painted my jeans and fashions and belts in patterns that approximated my art. Back then I used a lot of black, white and red, but my vivid sense of color has always emerged again and again.

In 1985 I started a whole new direction for art to follow as I returned to representational abstraction. Using unusual color schemes like purple or blue I painted portraits. My realist painting entitled “Spaghetti Western” was displayed in a window display at the Emerging Collector on Second Avenue and Forth St. for a month in 1988 and could be seen by all cars and passerby, hence the start of realist painting begun again in NY. Most art of the day was heavily abstracted or conceptual/dadaist in nature.

In 1990 my impressionistic beach paintings with recycled materials for frames was also displayed in the window and several later sold. My fashions influenced a generation of designers. The fashions I made influenced even Andy Warhol who told me I should go into fashion. I didn’t listen to him, as my clothes designs I made for me. He told me "Give me a hundred of those" when he looked at my spiked bracelet and hand painted accessories. I met Roy Litchenstein, as well, who wrote me two kind notes of art career encouragement on his post cards from Leo Castelli Gallery. I still have those hand-signed cards. I also met Leo Castelli several times, in his two different spaces in Soho. At the time he was one of the top gallery dealers in Manhattan.

I met Larry Rivers (another artist from the early 1960’s) twice. I originally met Larry Rivers in the early eighties when I was displaying my antiques in the Hamptons at an antique flea market. I recognized him in the throng and introduced myself and he appreciated it. I didn’t live far from the Hamptons and the show would not have been a big deal, but meeting Larry was for me a big deal, as well as all the other famous artists and celebrities I met along the way. I recognized Larry’s face right away from videos I had seen on the 1960’s and he stopped to chat for quite a while. Much later in the late eighties I met him again somewhere in the West Village near West 4th Street. I liked talking art with him and he talked to me about art for some length. I always appreciated that his work was never completely finished and his drawing style.

Many artists that I met were just friendly like this and communicated well. I have fond memories of meeting and talking twice (before his untimely death) with Jean Michel Basquiat. Jean Michel and I had a lot in common, even though our art and popularity was very different. We discussed art on two separate occasions and he once told me he loved my fake leather jeans and painted accessories. I met Keith Haring twice as well.

I have met and discussed art with several prominent German artists such as Gerhard Richter and Anselm Kiefer. I told Gerhard Richter that my work was a giant progression and that I utilized different styles of expression. He also was utilizing different styles of expression and had at the same time been making and exhibiting realistic and abstract artworks. I was criticized for these very ideas during my masters degree at NYU and one of my most vocal critics was the head of the art program and wife of the second most famous art gallery dealer in NY. In her eyes I may have seemed a rebel, but I always stuck to my beliefs and never changed my art to suit others.

During the Mid to late 1990’s to the present I have been teaching art. My vanguard artistic ideas have taken root in a whole new generation of young people. At times I made my art in front of people and at other times I wanted to make it alone, away from everybody in a studio or secluded natural wilderness. As a teacher I made art in front of my students and helped each of them to make great things too. Many of my students have pieces of my art, or have photographed or drawn my portrait.

Picasso once made art in front of the movie screen as in the "Mystery of Picasso". Many times he shut himself up in a studio and locked out the many gallery dealers that came to ask him for art. I work a little differently from Picasso, in this movie you can see his work develop. I have compared the major differences in our methods, however I have always appreciated the important artists that have come before me and the ideas they have given to me. In 1983 I started a tribute series to honor artist heroes and work on this series still continues today.

I hope that since my work was done for humanity’s benefit, society will one day realize I have given up a good part of my life and happiness to make it for them. I also did it to change the world. When my art is appreciated, I find some degree of happiness. I am talking about seeing a smile on someone’s face, or getting a reaction, whether it is positive or negative.

I have also communicated my ideas to others that have changed or used the ideas themselves. I decided that my students should benefit from all my art and life experiences. I have from time to time sold my work, but tried as much as possible, not to. I saved it up and made it better and better, devoting the necessary time to it to achieve my own personal best. I used my own ideas and made things that I wanted to, not what people wanted, or expected me to do. I never took a commission and I always bought the best supplies that I could afford even when it meant going without life’s necessities. I guess I have always lived on the edge. If I sold an artwork, I sometimes did it for food, shelter, or necessary things for my family. I made the art to express myself and maybe do some good.

After painting in my free time constantly since 1979, In 1983 I began exhibiting in one art exhibition after the next in New York City and also in suburbia. This gallery experience continued until after my daughter was born in 1989. Over time I slowed down production of my art enough to raise two kids, and finance a house in Ringwood. This would not have been possible without the support from my wife and we have stayed married now for more than twenty three years. I have never completely stopped, or given up making my art. What makes me sad is that all this interesting art is all piled up, mostly at my house and the houses of my parents, brothers, friends, etc. and some of these valuable messages are now slowly falling apart.

I have always felt my art carried an important message to people willing to look deep enough. I have intentionally tried to make it as complicated as possible to represent their own complicated lives. I called this invention Maximal Art, where “More is Better not Less”. The relatively complicated dot paintings were my first examples of this theory especially "Stuck" and "Blasted to Atoms".

While I studied art, I had always heard the expression from the minimalists of the late sixties and early seventies, “Less is More”.
I had explained my ideas to my classmates and teachers at NYU and Professor Robert Kaupelis made me feel slightly better by saying to me that “Less is More or Less”.

My re-invention of the dot painting had properties inherent in “Optical art” or “Op Art” and some of my modern dot paintings produced an optical effect quite different from it’s Post Impressionist and Fauvist past. I termed this part of my “Modern Impressionism” period and produced a variety of art forms in this vein. I was actually accepted into the NYU program with the slide sheets of the earliest impressionistic and expressionistic paintings that had been stolen. I had just formalized the newest paintings with the dots.

I have always expressed my feelings and emotions with vivid color and at NYU my new ideas met with both pride and prejudice from my fellow artists. One idea that was not easily understood was when I was grappling with the idea of reversibility, having more than one idea on an artwork. Either the work could be turned over to reveal another completely different artwork or just spun around on the wall to reveal something different. I signed different sides and places to let people know that you could turn it around. I heard many years later a African American artist claimed to invent something called Dualism, but this was nothing more than my reversible art renamed and reclaimed by another. I have dated slide proof of the reversible idea from 1983 and it was sold and exhibited during the 1980’s. My Reversible drawings actually predate the painting and go back to early 1980. My idea is also so much more than some artist turning his paper over and doing the other side, because of a lack of paper.

I never minded doing twice the amount of work to make one piece of art. With a reversible artwork I had said that it would be the owner, gallery director, or curator that gets a decision in the choice of artworks displayed. I said in 1983 that if I can someday make 200 reversible paintings in my life there would be 200 times 200 possible art exhibits possible. This makes 40,000 different shows. Another radical idea I was grappling with was related to sculpture. Since I had been painting just about everything in sight, the pieces seemed to me to be interchangeable. With the idea of interchangeability came the term “Convertible Sculpture” and parts could be combined in different ways to keep the idea fresh.

My theory of working in different modes of expression was the one of my original ideas that met with the most vehement reactions. It wasn’t until I met and saw Gerhard Richter’s large exhibition on 57th street in the late 1980s that I realized I was not alone in this thinking. In my Masters exhibition at NYU, I showed two different walls of art. On one set of walls were hung salon style with many of the dot paintings, the art was all over two large walls the way they did back in Paris in 1875. Salon style had not been in use for over a hundred years until then. Of course, It caused quite a reaction, but I got into some trouble with the head of the art program for it, as I did for showing a different grouping of art hung traditionally on another large wall facing the salon. These were members of the Nuclear war Series, such as "Act III", which included large areas of symbolic pure white cleaning the slate of humanity. The director of the art program herself pointed out to me the error in my ways and I tried to argue the point, but it was useless. She also did not appreciate my return to impressionism, but this early efforts are some of my best paintings and have led me to new ways of working and thinking. Looking back twenty years I can plainly see that it was among my greatest achievements and influenced countless other artists to jumping around throughout art history in modern ways.

Throughout most of my life I spent my time outdoors in the natural world at our farmhouse located far into the New York State countryside, in various areas of tri-state suburbia, and in the big city. Therefore, because of this nomadic lifestyle, many of the paintings and drawings are decidedly environmental.

I have utilized many different means of expression to accomplish my expressions and impressions in my art. My art is a reaction to society and are about saving the environment from the encroachment of housing developments and the pollution of oil and waste. I witnessed the steady sprawl of humanity across the countryside in which I live since I was a little child.

My sports hobbies are fly-fishing and golf and these have appeared as subject matter from time to time. These activities are performed pretty much exclusively outdoors. Any art that was actually created on location has been influenced both by the place and the time in which it was made. The artists, the fish, primitive designs, and various commutation methods are but an expressions and extensions of me. My antique collections and refinishing and restoration work and my environmental earthwork art was all performed outside as well.

My love of old things led me to many of my inventions with my art. Utilizing antique frames was something I started doing way back in 1979. Framing back then was not supposed to compete with the art and this was sacrilege to artists that saw my framing. Later in the East Village, I sold art with old frames that I had painted as part of the art and this served to influence a new generation of artists that could get their hands on old frames too.

What is interesting about the information I present here on Artbreak is that you can choose to go all over jumping from time period to time period seeing all kinds of art. There is though, a big difference to seeing the real artwork in person, and no digital image can ever replace an original. I purposely choose not to give you all the details of the original in high resolution, just an idea of what is there. Hopefully this will keep you wanting to see more.

I feel that there is a big difference to making man-made art, created in the studio by the human hand, with art which was created by technology. I made both; I used technology and every (hands-on) method, media and material on which I could get my hands on, in the process of making my art. I also do not feel that art created by technology can replace that which was made by hand, but that computers just exist as another tool open to me. This site is just another result of me sitting in front of a computer screen. My studio work and abstract art has been invented and altered and in many ways speak about ideas and influences that have affected my life, as does my computer work.