Arts Beat talks with Elyse Carter and Ken Stanek about their art, communities of artists, inspirations drawn from our communities, and more.
Post-World War II, when abstract art reigned, a few artists kept the torch of figurative art burning. Elyse Carter and Ken Stanek are admired veteran visual artists holding high that figurative flame. Each are part of a loose community of area artists shown in group exhibits, recently at nearby Millburn’s Green Door Studio. Carter and Stanek have different styles—Arts Beat will take a closer look separately at each artist—but let’s start with what they have in common.
Both have classic fine arts training, Carter at the Maryland Institute College of Art and Stanek at Syracuse University. Each felt the pull of figurative art as children. As adults they developed that vision.
Growing up, a very young Carter took art classes at the Baltimore Museum of Art. She was transfixed by what she saw in its galleries.
“I have very clear memories of wandering through the extraordinary Cone Collection of Matisse’s paintings and the wonderful print exhibition of etchings, engravings and lithographs by European masters, especially Rembrandt,” Carter said.
For Stanek, it was first comic books, then graphic novels. “I grew up reading comic books. It’s how I taught myself to draw,” Stanek said. “I developed my style on own, no classic influences. Now I look at artists’ works posted on Instagram. I study how they create shadows. We exchange messages. I find out about materials.”
There are other commonalities: Both have extensive graphic design experience. A longtime designer, illustrator, and art director for major clients including locally Seton Hall University, Carter continues to freelance as a graphic designer, enjoying loyal clients on both sides of the Atlantic. In the past, the demands of raising her family and full-time positions left scarce time for fine art. When her children were grown, she made more time to pursue her first love.
Stanek remains open to calls for the graphic design, which he did freelance, largely for ad agencies, for years. Now, private commissions supplement income from his art, documenting life at favorite hangs throughout Maplewood and South Orange. (He makes forays into other New Jersey towns, too.)
Both Carter and Stanek draw inspiration from the people and places around them—local buildings, small businesses, a PSE&G crew replacing gas lines in West Orange or folks lined up for homemade ice cream at Honey & Hive in Maplewood. Stanek goes inside buildings, Carter favor exteriors, and both celebrate our towns.
Each are key players in SOMA Figure Drawing Sessions held at Maplewood’s DeHart Community Center. Carter was among the founders of the sessions; Stanek oversees operations. Their life drawing skills undergird their fine art. Let’s pause and consider life-drawing sessions before turning to the featured artists and their art:
Arts Beat: Why Life Drawing?
Stanek: “It’s a staple of art education–nude figure drawing is one of the first things you do… You learn the body in basic form. All other drawing comes from that. Whether you’re putting clothes on a figure or you’re putting a person in a car for an illustration, you need to understand the human form—how shading, shadows, muscles, parts work.”
Carter: “The human form has always fascinated me – the way light hides or highlights details, the variety of shapes and sizes we come in. In these drawings, I enjoy the looseness and freedom of getting the rough form on paper, then carving the details of the form with my pen. Drawing a live model with a group of artists means leaving the everyday world for a few hours and tuning in to an artform that is as old as humanity.”
Arts Beat: Tell us more about the origins and workings of the SOMA Figure Drawing Sessions
Carter: A group of us were taking classes with Larry McKim, the SOMA artist and public-school arts educator who also taught adult classes and conducted a life drawing series at the Baird Center. When I moved to South Orange, those sessions introduced me to a community of artists. When Larry died, a group of us carried on the class without a teacher. We kept it going via Zoom during the pandemic lockdown. Then Nicolas Guillen, a few others, and I started a new class. Ken Stanek now facilitates the sessions at the DeHart Center.”
Stanek: “There are no requirements, just a small fee to offset paying for the model and the space. We usually have about a dozen participants from a shifting group of about 20 artists.”
Arts Beat: How do you each benefit from working with other artists?
Stanek: “It’s great community building, an awesome space to learn from each other or work on your own. I work mostly in pen and watercolor, sometimes in charcoal, pastels, pencils. Most of the artists are very generous with one another.”
Carter: I was once drawing in pencils when an artist put a pen in my hand. It changed how I drew. Now, I am also part of a small group who work at Barbara Minch’s home studio here in West Orange. (Minch is a widely exhibited artist and past longtime teacher.) Our artist group gives sensitive feedback. When you have a group involved in your process, it makes the work stronger.
Time to Zoom In On Each Artist
Elyse Carter: First, Her Drawings…
Carter, a former member of the South Orange Historic Preservation Commission, is (like me) building-mad. We chatted about her Maplewood Village series. “Tom [husband Tom McGee, a classical musician] and I thought we had just a two-week gap between selling the house in South Orange and a closing date in West Orange. A friend generously offered us a house in Maplewood near the Village center,” Carter said.
Those two weeks turned into many months: That closing, then another, fell through before the couple found their current home in West Orange’s Gregory neighborhood about five years ago.
It was an unsettled time. Drawing settled her.
“I had decided to leave my full-time Art Director position. For the first time in years, I had free time. I would sit in Maplewood Village with my sketch pad.” Carter said. “I loved the Village’s architecture, and everyone was wonderful–warm, friendly. It was summertime and kids would come over to look or talk,” Carter said. “As a kid I was always excited to see people doing art work, too.”
Arts Beat: “There’s a textural quality in your drawings—you almost feel the low relief decorative elements and the lettering on Belmont Building 1932. ” “I had many wonderful Instagram responses to that drawing,” Carter said. “I heard from artist Mikel Frank. He wrote how his grandfather’s Maple Pharmacy was in that building.” (Frank, now a transplant to North Carolina was in NJ recently for the SOPAC launch of Shifting Construction Plates, his and area poet Judith A. Christian’s collaborative book.)
Carter’s Paintings…
Carter’s agility at drawing give solidity—a hereness—a psychological weight to her paintings. She has an eye for engaging subjects. You feel the rightness of where she places her subjects, the balance and strength of the classic composition underlying her scene from everyday life: “That’s how I see things,” Carter said.
Her subject may be a PSE&G crew replacing gas lines in front of her house or her brother taking a backyard break years ago with his posse of friends. Stay with each work and figures on an ancient Greek frieze or Winslow Homer’s classically composed, 1872 Snap the Whip (like Carter’s Boys in the Backyard, a paean to boyhood friendship), come to mind.
Here’s how Carter often works. Something engages her imagination. She captures the moment with a fast photograph. Later, elements are adjusted–some moved, some eliminated. She goes for the essence. We chatted about her 2023 open acrylic PSE&G Crew. “Originally, I had details in the background but took them out to focus attention on the figures,” Carter said. How did the crew respond? “They got a real kick out of it” Carter said, “Crew members were calling guys over, saying, ‘There’s Armondo’…” “I hope it made them feel good about the hard work they do.”
Carter has just completed Tier 2, a painting of an audience member at a Carnegie Hall concert. The woman’s angular facial structure and features are sculptural, intriguing. The woman ignores nearby audience members, the splendor of the hall, the seats fanning out beyond her. Carter’s focuses on the woman’s face and presence. A powerful work, it leads to speculation…what is absorbing the subject?
That is Carter’s gift: active in both SOMA Arts and Studio Montclair, she engages with people, buildings, moments which others pass by. She takes the familiar and reveals its dignity and import.
Ken Stanek
A bit younger, more irreverent, and like Carter, open-hearted, Maplewood’s Ken Stanek puts fans—and he has a lot of fans–in the same happy place as, say, veteran artists Ed Sorel, Jules Feiffer or Ed Koren, all best known for their work in The New Yorker and the old Village Voice. With kinetic lines, a super color sense, and hip observations, Stanek’s art elicits smiles.
Stanek is also a terrific storyteller and lately, with the upcoming publication of About Town SOMA, the Illustrations of Ken Stanek, a lot of people will be digging his stories: He reached his initial GoFundMe goal of $3000 in one day. He tripled the goal. “All 100 copies from the first printing of About Town were reserved right away. I want to sell 500 copies by Christmas,” Stanek said. (His book launch will be October 4 at South Orange’s Player Agency.)
Ken likes to connect with people and connect people through events. “I’m a mixture of introversion and extroversion,” Stanek said.
When we first spoke, he had just finished a full day of doing rapid portraits at Maplewoodstock, the township’s annual outdoor music festival. He’s a fixture at other community-based art walks, exhibits and events. Upcoming events include September’s Porchfest and Pollock Arts Fair, October’s Maplewood Arts Walk, and November’s SOMA Studio Tours. (Carter is at the last, as well). A confection of an exhibit alongside fellow SOMA artist Sandra Charlap just completed a summerlong run at South Orange Avenue’s Co-Lab .
A 20-plus year graphic designer working for ad agencies or freelance, in December 2022, Stanek found himself “doodling” (his word) in local coffee shops, diners, cafés, and many idiosyncratic, small stores in Maplewood and South Orange. Not back-of-the-napkin doodles; drawings filling the square pages of the sketchbooks recommended at A Paper Hat, the Ridgewood Road art and design supply store Ken favors.
He also was getting more portrait commissions—people, pets, houses. These works are more formal, more modeled with light and shadow than his About Town works, but all share vitality and liveliness. Lately, Stanek has expanded to commissions for private events.
With the commission income stream, Stanek “took the plunge” to full-time fine artist. Exchanging the office for the coffee shop, here’s how he works: He finds an unobtrusive corner, observes a bit, then takes an hour or two or three to sketch the interior architecture and the stuff—fittings, fixtures, signage, merchandise—of his favorite places. He snaps a photo as a color guide and paints at home. Watercolor is challenging. In Stanek’s masterful hand, it’s a delight of hues shading from bold to subtle. Observe the subtle color shifts and shadowing in his Studio Nine signature Baby Chick, pictured here.
Details mound up like the cake boxes piled on tables at Able Bakery, a favorite haunt. Then comes the people—customers in conversation with countermen or waiting silently in line or a little boy, his head swallowed by a homemade Christopher Robin-like paper bag hat. Some of the spaces have just a few folks. Others like the community pools in Maplewood and South Orange are chockablock with neighborhood swimmers and sun lovers.
“I draw quickly, rarely lifting my pen,” Stanek said.
There is planning and there are workarounds, too: “The coffee shop counter is not going anywhere. The line of the counter isn’t going anywhere. When I add the people, I have to think about that line. Can I mask it by turning it into a belt?” Stanek said.
Stanek circles back to our discussion of the life drawing sessions. “I have to sketch people fast. It goes back to figure drawing and one-minute poses. You get the gesture down. That’s what I do.” And, in doing, he captures the spirit of community.
Two artists, two different styles and approaches, but both engage you with their mastery of their chosen mediums and their acute observations. They both say, slow down, take the time to see, enjoy the moment–the life and beauty around you.
LEARN MORE, SEE MORE
Learn more about Elyse Carter and see many more images including her life drawings on her Instagram Account.
Learn more about Ken Stanek and his Studio Number Nine at his website where you can order a copy of About Town, SOMA. Easy to carry in your bag or briefcase, I suggest the book of 50-plus drawings as the antidote to being stuck on NJ Transit or in a doctor’s waiting room. There is also a complete calendar of his many local events and instruction. Classes in drawing and another in watercolor start soon at the Baird Center. Residency not required.
Both artists are fixtures at SOMA’s Fall Studio Tour, running this year on Saturday, November 2 & Sunday, November 3, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. profiled in last fall’s ART BEAT.
Carter returns to South Orange’s SKATE HOUSE, near the Duck Pond. In addition to an exhibit of her paintings reproductions of her Maplewood Village drawings are available, including as note cards. Stanek will be at 78 Hilton Ave, Maplewood, doing rapid portraits for $20 and with copies of his book on hand.
