Pepe's Electricblue Gallery

I like to let my work speak for itself, this is not MY site, it's the gallery where my most current work can be seen.I consider myself a writer as much as an artist and if and when the funds are there, a filmmaker, which I just see as literature and pictures in combination.It had always been my intention to pursue film as an end someday, but my own ignorance prevented me from realizing that one could actually go to school for such a thing, but that was the state of information back in the mid-1970's, when I was still trying to make up my mind what to do with my life. The film industry was not what it is today, institutionalized and marketed as a mainstream pursuit for student-age creative minds. Back then, it seemed to be about who you knew and where you were, and being on the US east coast, one felt like Hollywood was another planet. It was an unreachable place where the children of those in the business had a shot at a foot in the door, but for me, being a car salesman's son made me eligible for nothing more than a short step up the middle class ladder - that is, I could go to college. Not that my parents paid for my schooling, I was on the hook for 16 years after graduating in 1981 from Parsons School of Design in NYC with a BFA in painting, which is about as useful to finding employment as a degree in navel gazing or card shuffling.Art school was interesting, but limited by it's exclusion of some major means of expression - I was not allowed to take film classes because they were considered a non-artform by the chairman of the Fine Arts department - the old fool. Photography was acceptable, but moving photography was deemed not - go figure. It wasn't until I was out of school and living on my own that I put to use the Super-8 film camera I inherited from my grandfather and produced some films that I really should get on digital video for YouTube consumption (and unintended hilarity), if nothing else.To support myself, I worked art odd/intermittant/temporary jobs until I became gravely ill with kidney disease at the age of 26 (cue violins!) and was unable to live without the costly health insurance that defines American life as difficult for anyone with worse than seasonal allergies - it all became about the money, making pharmaceutical companies rich - so gainful employment beckoned!The pen business, which I became enmeshed in out of desperation, is dull and uninteresting and not worth more than a short paragraph stating that it was something that kept me afloat for a while, especially when I was first in need of health insurance, and later on, when I was faced with thrice-weekly dialysis treatments. Underpaid and underutilized, my employers did allow me to work half days for a full days pay until I left, near the end of my dialysis 'tour' (six long years) and it looked like I'd be checking out of planet Earth sooner than later. The work itself was easy, setting type and creating or manipulating logos for pen imprints, my canvas being nothing larger than 2" wide by 1" deep. I had to do it all as mechanical paste-up for the first 11 years, but upon threat of leaving them high and dry, got my bosses to join the 20th century just as it was closing, by purchasing a nice big MAC graphics computer. I was literally out the door and the president of the company was standing out in the rain trying to persuade me to stay, offering the moon, as I sat in my car quite ready to not return. I never made a lot of money, but I made enough. The vice-president held me back from learning what I could about catalogue production, preferring to hire an outside agency for 3 times the money it would cost to do it in-house, just to keep me down and his job secure. I had no regrets when I left during his reign as president, his predecessor died and the company went quickly spiraling down the toilet after that.Meanwhile, I was painting and drawing all the time, never have stopped like so many of my fellow graduates from Parsons. It was a highly reputable school when I went and is possibly held in even higher esteem now, but to be honest - it's not really all that great - but it was a fantastic place to be in the late 70's-early 80's with punk in full bloom (full BOOM) and NYC as our campus, and the biggest perk being that 9 out of every 10 males were gay - I was swarmed with women!! My art was always out of step with the tends, not object-related as so much what you see in galleries now is, as if painting, i. e.; picture-making, is inferior to something that is bolted together and may have something akin to imagery on it, but the more gimmicky it's materials, the more likely it's going to be praised as an innovation, ugly helps too. Call me old fashioned, but I like making pictures and making them accessible enough to be understood by, if not the average person, then at least the average educated person. Elitism has no appeal for me, and the ultimate way my work should be seen and for me to make some money from it, would be to publish a monograph and in the form of individual prints. All of the artwork exhibited on this site is available as Digital C-Prints (a high grade of paper and printing, used extensively in the printing industry for crisp, rich and accurate reproductions of digital photos or graphic designs. They're known as “C” prints because they share the same developing philosophy used by traditional photo labs, called “C-41”. Rich and vivid results have made them into the professional graphics industry standard for any format of visual displays). Prints are available in up to a 200% enlargemnt of the original, which is larger than what is seen on the site, most of which are reduced from 50-65% smaller for better viewing. Please inquire with the management of The Electricblue Gallery (yeah, me) as to prices and delivery.Over all, my style has not changed dramatically, it's always been sensual and representational and mostly figurative, I love women and drawing them is probably the single most exciting thing I can do next to making love to them, which in some particular cases has been a joint blessing over the years.The movie thing has been a long time coming, I made my first short feature film in 7th grade and haven't stopped wanting to direct since. It's the perfect combination of art and writing, that synthesis of the two main thrusts of my self-expression. In the mid-80's I formed a little troupe of actors and technical support called HAIRBALL FILMS. We made about 8 shorts of varying degrees of interest, some artistic and ephemeral, others were pastiches of old Hollywood B-Movies with a punk aesthetic. My best friend at the time, Rose Csanitz, was my muse and star, working under a pseudonym, people stopped her on the streets of New York and asked if she was indeed Alicia Ultrasuede - and she often obliged them with her loopy autograph. Her name was Warhol Factory-esque not by design, but it just came to us naturally to emulate that scene in our own little way. Subconsciously at first, but over time, I found myself as leader of something that took on a life of it's own and came to incorporate music (a band named Hairball) and the apartment Rose and I shared was, in its own way, a work of art. We called it the Treefort, a second floor walkup railroad flat over a beauty salon. We had film premier theme parties, with 60's Pop and Op art painted walls and a Debbie Harry foyer that Rose put up in tribute to her favorite punk idol. Like any scene, it was short-lived, all good things come to an end, but not before I showed my films in several notable NYC underground venues (8 BC, P.S. 122, The Garage, Cafe Bustelo, etc.) and was selected by the 1987 Hamburg Germany No-Budget Film Festival as first featured short amongst a crowd of 100's of international entries. That particular film was "Cerebral Paisley" - an essay on how the 1960's counterculture effected my generation, featuring muse Ms. Ultrasuede in varying degrees of mod and hippie dress - 'expressing herself'. It focused on those of us who were children at the time and yet embraced the trappings, i.e.: the dress and symbology, if not the meanings and signifiers behind them. But that all kind of came crashing down when I got sick with kidney disease - whatever momentum I'd gained was lost in the struggle to stay alive and only now, now that I'm as well as I'll ever be, fully functioning with a kidney transplant supported by state of the art anti-rejection drugs, 20 years later, that I can say I'm back on track.Currently I'm working as a construction project manager for high-end designer interiors, my employer is also a friend with whom I have a film production company that we hope will one day shift from fulltime construction to exclusively film. We've shot and produced two live music videos for NYC bands Ivan Milev Band and Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra (both on myspace) which will soon appear on their sites. Up next is a creative video with a NYC singer and then a short subject dramatic feature, the script of which is currently being written. A feature-length film has been written and we're hoping to tackle that when we've got a little more experience under our belts.As for writing, I have a finished manuscript, a fictional novel. Finding someone to represent me has been a head beating against the wall experience, if anyone has a lead on an agent who'll READ even a chapter, I'd appreciate their name. I'm an optimist at heart and think that someday I'll make the right connection and it will see print. Meanwhile, I've started the sequel - I'd always seen it as a very long story that had to be split in two - and thankfully, I've given it enough time to germinate on it's own and though I've about 100 pages written, I set it aside almost a year ago, but I'm now on the verge of resuming it to it's conclusion. It seems that real life has to teach us new things in order for us (ok, for me) to write more and in many ways, I'd squeezed the sponge of my experiences up till then in my first book and have had to let new travails, trials and tribulations seep into my consciousness to inspire the next.I have quite a few sites here on myspace, some of them fictional but real and some of them real but fictional, if you're at all interested, go to: www.myspace.com/pepeamsterdam and www.myspsce.com/spacejunkthemovieI also have a hand in what goes on with Miss Trinket - you can find her site on my Top List.table table table td {vertical-align:top ! important;} span.blacktext12 { background-color:transparent; background-image:url(); background-position:center center; font-size:0px; letter-spacing:-0.5px; width:435px; height:75px; display:block; } span.blacktext12 img {display:none;}