Toledo Artist Series-Phil Hazard 

Phil Hazard-Neon Artist

What is the motivation for making your work?

Curiosity motivates me-to investigate, explore, discover and then share and communicate these images. I have lots of stories to tell and visions to share, and this sharing is what motivates my work.

What is the main theme of your work?

Pop culture plays a strong role in my work. Some major themes are memory and longing, which stem from personal obsessions, idealized popular culture, urban decay and ready-made found materials. Mixed media and neon are layered on the canvas to explore the larger context of the relationship between disparate images and their dialogue. They attempt to evoke interpretation with regard to my various ironic, melancholy or enigmatic content.

What are your goals for your work?

The question is “would you make art, if no one else would ever see it?” and for me, the answer is a resounding yes. I continue to create, because there is much within myself to express. The subject matter in my work is intended to produce universal, timeless and iconic images. My goal is to reflect a universal narrative taken from my personal life experience and a tiny bit of the human condition.

What are your thoughts on the Toledo arts scene?

Toledo has a very strong arts community with many talented artists. Toledoeans simply need to get out there and support the arts as much as possible.

You can check out more of Phil's work at http://philhazard.com/

Natalie Lanese

What is the motivation for making your work?

American culture and my experience with it are behind the motivation for my ideas. This ranges from places I’ve visited to behaviors in society I have observed as well as nostalgia for American history. It’s fascinating to me to look at old advertisements, to see how men and women are portrayed, how society was back then. My motivation is to make a comment on these things, though it be an open-ended with much interpretation is left to the viewer. Also most recently it’s been about overwhelming the viewer because I am often overwhelmed with places and their nostalgia.

What is the main theme of your work?

Overwhelming the viewer with scale of the work, loud color and patterns. By using common imagery, like donuts and hot dogs for example, anyone can have a response to my work. Places that I’ve been to influence the theme of my work, and the popular nostalgia that is associated with these places, Coney Island and Niagara Falls for example. The piece “Panorama” on the other hand, mimics my experience being in the mountains which can be overwhelming sometimes. It can feel as though you are very small and insignificant. I use food in a lot of my pieces because it symbolizes American culture, and also the nostalgia associated with certain foods like corn dogs and donuts. Food also symbolizes the excesses of American culture. Ultimately, I’m trying to present serious issues in a humorous way. Humor is an important part of my work and my life. 

What are your goals for your work?

I have a lot of goals. I’ve been lucky to show in a number of galleries and in a museum exhibition, and I hope to keep on showing. Because a lot of my work is site-specific, I welcome any chance to show it. I had my first public-art experience recently, and I feel like this could be a new type of venue for my work, with potential that I hadn’t seen before.

What are your thoughts on the Toledo arts scene?

It’s been a real treat to be here for the past year and a half. I was pleasantly surprised with the arts community after moving here from New York. But there is room for growth-it would be great if more artists participated in the community and even were driven to open up more spaces or have more events. Toledo is such a great place for that to happen right now, for there are so many spaces available. It’s relatively easy to have an idea here and make it happen, especially as a young person with limited resources and there is a demand here for art, so I think it would be welcomed.

You can see more of Natalie's work at Natalie Lanese.

Jan Thomas

What is the motivation for making your work?

What motivates me to make my work is a desire to communicate, a communication that I do better with my hands than with my words. I found out an early age that I was not talented in a two-dimensional way but in a three-dimensional way. Also, after having a career in interior design and seeing some of the way people design their homes, I’ve been motivated to make original work. I’m rejecting the contrived and the reproduced. If you look around, the market is flooded with these kinds of things. I aim to make original, imperfect work, that has meaning.

What is the main theme of your work?

A big theme of my work is nature. I also portray women in my work, and showing that no matter whether a woman is short, fat, thin, tall, she needs to be happy with herself. Women feel pressured to be attractive to men, and I’m trying to show that women, foremost, need to be comfortable with themselves. I also like to portray fish and flowers and these themes relate to nature. Flowers are a huge theme in my work, because flowers are present in life from birth to death. You give flowers at births, at weddings, at funerals, at many milestones in life.

What are your goals for your work?

One of my goals is to get my artwork out of Toledo and into other cities. I also want to get a stronger online presence and to create more public art, namely outdoor sculptures.

What are your thoughts on the Toledo arts scene?

I think Toledo is lucky to have such a strong arts community. Unfortunately, I don’t think that Toledo supports these artists. The best way to support art is to buy art. That way, you can give artists the freedom to continue making their work.

Timothy Gaewsky

What is the motivation for making your work?

I enjoy the creative process, spending hours and hours getting lost in the studio, focusing on what I am making. I have this innate desire to create something and to communicate, and the easiest way for me to communicate is through visual means, through my artwork.

What is the main theme of your work?

My work is an examination of a desire for instant gratification that is often seen in the world- what makes us want to satisfy that desire of instant gratification, where we act on our impulses to either buy something or that desire for quick fortune. I’ve been curious to that which I’ve been victim to as well, being an impulse buyer-and I think a lot of is due to the way packaging is designed-the formal aesthetics of the bright colors, the text, the visual means that is able to catch someone’s eye get them to buy the product. For example, the lottery tickets that I use in some of my pieces inspire the pieces themselves- the color scheme, and design aesthetic-bold colors and shapes to draw the viewer into the work. Also, because the viewer cannot themselves scratch off the tickets, this denial of the impulse is making them aware of that impulse in the first place.

What are your goals for your work?

My goal is to communicate ideas to the viewer. I would love to be a working artist and to be able to make a living from my work, but realistically making the work and getting it out there is the most important thing-and anything that comes as a result of that is a bonus.

What are your thoughts on the Toledo arts scene?

It’s definitely been growing in the 5 years since I’ve been here. There are a number of talented artists in Toledo. I would love it if more artists moved here and if more galleries opened. It’s a great community here, people really support each other.

You can check out more of his work at:http://timothygaewsky.com/

Jane Kessler Petitjean

What is the motivation for making your paintings?

Most of my paintings are very colorful, so I feel a need to bring color to people’s lives, making the world, I believe, a more beautiful place. I have this need to create joyful and uplifting imagery.

What is the main theme of your paintings?

Color. Though I like to use religious imagery that is Judaic in nature, I don’t work exclusively this theme. I also like exploring the human form, human ideas, as well as using animals in some of my imagery-especially flamingos. Flamingos to me represent diversity and I love that I live in such a diverse neighborhood like the Old West End. I love that art is a great way to express different subject matter and to celebrate diversity.

What are your goals for your work?

My main goal is to leave a legacy for my children and grandchildren. As I get older, I realize that I have less time to make artwork, so I’d like to concentrate on work that I can leave behind and that can communicate a strong message, especially about Judaic traditions, and that will hopefully explain something about the culture that my family comes from.

What are your thoughts on the Toledo arts scene?

I love the Toledo Art Scene. I think it’s very inclusive, and I think we have a dynamic arts commission that does wonderful things for the community. I also appreciate that the Toledo Arts Museum is becoming more involved in the community. This is a great place to be as an artist.

Check out more of Jane's work at http://www.janepetitjean.com./

Josh Byers

What is the motivation for making your paintings?

I work in masonry, and after a day of doing hard labor, making art is a way for me to clear my head, a release from all the shit I’ve dealt with all day. Without art, I don’t know what I’d do. It’s my form of entertainment-it’s what drives and motivates me all day. It’s what I think about when I go to sleep-what else do I need to do to finish a certain piece, to get it to where people know what it’s about. I try to work every day, always trying to produce, trying to make stuff. It’s a perpetual motion. It’s the machine inside my head that never stops.

What is the main theme of your paintings?

A lot of my paintings are self-portraits, symbolic self-portraits. They’re representational-representing the strain I put my body through at work, money, doubts, the general pain and stress of everyday living. I’m putting myself out there with my paintings, they’re self-narratives.

What are your goals for your work?

Every show I have I just want to blast people with a really strong body of work. I want to show strong imagery, paintings on the wall, and have people feel something after they walk away from one of my shows. Like they could relate to it, almost like they were inside my head while I was making it. 

What are your thoughts on the Toledo arts scene?

The scene here is growing, but I wish there were more non-artists who attended shows. But besides that, the art scene is very supportive. It was easy for me to get started here. When I moved from Akron to Toledo, I drove in with a truck full of paintings and passed right by Bozarts. I talked to Jerry and got things going pretty quickly.

Check out more of Josh’s work at http://60wattfunnel.com./

Ivan Kende

What is the main motivation for your paintings?

I’ve never done anything else. It’s inconceivable for me not to do artwork. It’s what I know. It’s a meditation, both mental and physical, it’s a movement that I feel inside of myself, and then need to get it out on canvas and paper.

What is the main theme of your paintings?

The drawings of the Lascaux caves in France have greatly inspired my recent work. Of course I learned about these caves way back in art school, but it was only in the last two years that I’ve gotten inspiration from them for my work. I love the simple lines, the intention and accuracy of gesture of the drawings, the rawness of expression. I find it fascinating to think of what instincts drove early humans from making marks and scratches on rocks to making the magical animal portraits at Lascaux. Inspired by the cave drawings, I aim to use the same archetypal, naive, and primitive aesthetics as a means to narrate my interpretation of the world around us.

What are your goals for your work?

I am going to eventually exhibit this body of work, and hopefully sell some pieces. I hope the viewer will see the rawness of emotion of the primitive aesthetics I’ve been using in my work.

What are your thoughts on the Toledo arts scene?

Frankly, I am always working in my studio and so don’t get out that much.

Check out more of Ivan's work at http://www.ivankende.com/