| Issue #18 - July 25, 2008 |
Honoring the Artist: Steve Alpert
It's not every day that you find an artist who was also a TV producer for many years. But such is the case with this week's cover artist, Steve Alpert. Experience in both professions has given Alpert a perspective that he finds not only useful but gratifying as well.
Q: Your paintings show a great deal of diversity as far as subject matter goes. For example, your cover features landscape. Tell us where it is.
A: It's Diamond Head in Hawaii; I went there on the first morning after I arrived. That was about a year and a half ago. But I see the image as "universal." The clouds could be any place, in California or Florida. It just happens to come from Hawaii.
Q: You moved full-time to Quoque after many years in New York. What is it about the East End that you particularly appreciate?
A: I love the smell of the place, the salt air, the basic quiet. Moving here allowed me to change my life.
Q: I can see that. Working in corporate video as you did in New York is quite a bit different. How did you end up in media, even though you mentioned you were interested in sports when you were growing up? You also said your mother was an artist. Why not major in art?
A: I was accepted at several colleges, but I ended up at Ithaca College in upstate New York. I just signed up for TV because it seemed the most interesting; the first day of orientation, we went to the TV studio, and I just said to myself, " The rest of my life is in the studio."
Q: Of course, there's now another kind of studio in your life, where you paint. Yet there's been other aspects that have influenced your life as well. Like when you were 17, and you worked in the Catskills.
A: Yes. I was a waiter there. That was like my "Boot Camp." I called it "Life in the Jungle." I learned a lot there.
Q: How about when you took off and traveled throughout the United States? You learned a lot then, too.
A: That was important to me. I just had to get out of New Rochelle where I grew up. I particularly liked traveling in the West.
Q: Now that you are devoting yourself to art, what did TV producing teach you about painting?
A: Standing in front of an easel is like film or video editing. Taking disparate parts and telling a fluid story.
Q: That's an excellent comparison. I started by asking about your landscape. How about your military images?
A: I have an obsession with war, especially World War II. For example, I've seen Saving Private Ryan nine times. I saw a photograph of flag - draped coffins at Dover Air Force Base. The photo was honoring the boys who had died in Iraq. I was so moved, I did a painting with a similar subject. I just knew I had to do it. It's waiting to be put someplace. Each painting has its own life and time period.
Q: You have continued with your support of veterans.
A: Yes. I do work based on combat photographs in the Iraq War for the Fisher House. I am driven by passion to this cause and subject matter. I will go to the ends of the earth to continue it.
- Marion Wolberg Weiss
Mr. Alpert will be showing at Greenport's Atelier Gallery starting August 2. Visit www.stevealpertart.com
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