It has been said that Milwaukee is a great place to be from, offering green space, a slower lifestyle and the ability to move into a suburb, hammer down a white picket fence and live a good life.
Milwaukee could be the little city in the worn cliché that sends its determined artists out into the world to forge identities as artists and make it big in their chosen field.
For Milwaukee-native Chip Zien, that makes perfect sense. “Milwaukee’s a great place to grow up. I actually believe that people who grow up [there] are more stable,” said the 56-year-old actor, who has lived in Manhattan for more than 30 years.
On a recent visit, Zien recalled, he was “amazed” by how “organized and neat” Milwaukee seemed.
“I can’t believe how great Milwaukee is,” he added, noting the lush green and pretty calm of his hometown.
Like Zien, San Francisco glass artist Reed Slater praises his Milwaukee roots. “I’m glad I’m from the Midwest. I think it gave me a nice anchor,” he said.
“There’s a voice inside me that says, ‘You’re a 50-year-old man but you’re a boy from the Midwest’ and that informs a lot of how I interact and function in the world,” said Slater, who was born in Madison and reared in Milwaukee.
But for Zien, his affection for his hometown is double-edged. “[The order and neatness I felt on my last visit] made me exceedingly nervous,” he admitted during a recent telephone interview.
“Sometimes if I stay in Milwaukee too long, I can’t actually believe I do what I do,” said the actor, who’s achieved considerable success on Broadway and has appeared in films and television.
“We’ve led a very artsy craftsy life, the life of real New York performers and it’s been really exciting,” he said of his life with his ballet dancer wife Susan Pilarre and their two daughters.
Next week, Zien will perform in the Berkshires a one-man show that he wrote about his family. Called “The Little Immigrant,” it is “an homage to my mother. It’s funny and very dark,” he said.
Artistic destiny
Another native son now in the dramatic and musical world of Manhattan is Andrew Suvalsky, 34, who moved to New York almost five years ago to pursue his dreams of singing and acting.
“I was definitely meant to be here,” Suvalsky said during a telephone interview from his office at the design firm, Benjamin Noriega-Ortiz, LLC.
Though educated in architecture and urban planning, Suvalsky works as an interior designer while pursuing his career as a jazz vocalist and actor. He has performed in an off-Broadway play and sings in venues throughout the city.
“My biggest issue is that I have this career that is full-time and I’m doing freelance design work, but if you ask me what I’d rather make it in, it would be music.”
“I feel like I have to [perform.] If I don’t, it feels like I’m dying,” he said.
Painter Leo Neufeld talked equally passionately about his art during a phone interview from his Albuquerque home. “I really feel this is my destiny — making art and sharing with people,” he said.
Neufeld, 53, teaches at a local art center and paints representational work, particularly portraits. He fervently defends classical painting, as opposed to conceptual or “trendy” art. “It’s really a religious pursuit…. You’re committed to this thing and it becomes your life.”
Neufeld arrived in New Mexico in 1994 after five years in Indiana and 13 years in New York, where he taught at the National Academy of Art, among other places.
Being Jewish, particularly being the child of Holocaust survivors, plays a deep and critical part in his work. When a rabbi asked Neufeld if he’s a Jewish artist or an artist who’s Jewish, he answered, “Both…. You can’t separate it. My Jewishness has a lot to do with who I am as an artist — my history, my compassion, my sensitivity.”
“My mother lost every single living relative to the Holocaust. I think part of my love of painting people is to document life.”
Last spring, the Albuquerque Jewish Community Center presented a retrospective of his work, which was dedicated to his parents. “It was really awesome to be able to do this for them.”
Fluidity, sensuality and grace
Though Zien and Suvalsky took routes that brought them first to Chicago and then New York, Neufeld and Slater globe-trotted a bit before landing in the west.
And though he defines himself as a “colorist,” Slater spends much of his day dealing with money. His career in the stock market began as runner on the Pacific Stock Exchange. “I was one of those people who got up early in the morning and screamed and spit at people all day.”
Now Slater owns and manages a hedge fund with his brother Joel. “My father, Al Slater, and his brother were in business together. They sat side by side for 30 years. It’s a nice tradition,” he said.
But at night, Slater deals with color and angles, heat and molten glass. When he began blowing glass seven years ago at a class at San Francisco State University, he immediately thought, “This feels so right to me.”
Though relatively new to the field, Slater takes his art seriously. He works in a non-profit group studio in San Francisco and recently traveled around Japan, visiting and working with glass artists.
“I didn’t even speak the language but held up my tools and showed them my scars, and they welcomed me into their studios and I worked with them. I even gave a short demonstration in one of the studios,” he said.
“[Glassblowing] is a very demanding activity,” he said. “You can’t let your mind wander because you’re dealing with something very hot and molten. I love things that make time both stand still and fly by.”
But for Slater, blowing glass is also an emotional experience. “Fluidity, sensuality and grace are governing concerns,” he wrote for his Web site, www.reed slater .com. “I try to use my vessels and shapes to capture the play of light and evoke an emotion in the viewer.”
For the future, Slater hopes to develop a “recognizable style, so that when someone looks at my work, they’ll say, ‘That’s a Reed Slater.’”
And as he hones his skills, Slater hopes to allow his art to convey more of himself. “I hope that I become more expressive as my skills increase. I can’t think of asking much more than that.”
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