Stephen 'Steve' Poleskie (born 1938 in

Pringle, Pennsylvania Pringle is a borough in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, United States. As of the 2020 census, the borough population was eight hundred and ninety-one. History Pringle was incorporated as a borough on January 17, 1914; it was named in honor of Thom ...

) was an artist and writer. The son of a high school teacher, Poleskie graduated from

Wilkes University Wilkes University is a private university in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. It has over 2,200 undergraduates and over 2,200 graduate students (both full and part-time). Wilkes was founded in 1933 as a satellite campus of Bucknell University, and bec ...

in 1959 with a degree in Economics. A self-taught artist, Poleskie had his first

one-person show A solo performance, sometimes referred to as a one-man show or one-woman show, features a single person telling a story for an audience, typically for the purpose of entertainment. This type of performance comes in many varieties, including auto ...

at the Everhart Museum,

Scranton, Pennsylvania Scranton is a city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Lackawanna County. With a population of 76,328 as of the 2020 U.S. census, Scranton is the largest city in Northeastern Pennsylvania, the Wyoming V ...

in 1958, while still in college. These works were largely abstract expressionistic in nature.

Beginning of the artistic career

After graduation Poleskie was employed briefly in

Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania Wilkes-Barre ( or ) is a city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Luzerne County. Located at the center of the Wyoming Valley in Northeastern Pennsylvania, it had a population of 44,328 in the 2020 census. It is the s ...

, as an insurance agent and commercial artist, before moving to Miami where he worked as a designer in a

screen-printing Screen printing is a printing technique where a mesh is used to transfer ink (or dye) onto a substrate, except in areas made impermeable to the ink by a blocking stencil. A blade or squeegee is moved across the screen to fill the open mesh ...

shop. He remained in Florida only three months before leaving for the Bahamas and Cuba. His next job was as an art teacher at Gettysburg High School where

David Eisenhower Dwight David Eisenhower II (born March 31, 1948) is an American author, public policy fellow, professor at the University of Pennsylvania, and eponym of the U.S. presidential retreat Camp David. He is the grandson of President Dwight D. Eisenhow ...

was one of his students. During this time he exhibited at the Duo Gallery in New York, and the

Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts Pennsylvania (; (Pennsylvania Dutch language, Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a U.S. state, state spanning the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern United States, Northeastern, Appa ...

in Philadelphia. Leaving Gettysburg, Poleskie drove to Mexico and California, returning to Pennsylvania, via Canada.

Move to New York and founding Chiron Press

In 1962 Poleskie took a studio on 10th Street in New York City. At that time the New York School of art, also called the Tenth Street School, because most of the galleries were located on or near this street on Manhattan's lower East Side, was considered the dominant art movement in the world. Rather than join the ranks of the

Abstract Expressionists Abstract expressionism is a post–World War II art movement in American painting, developed in New York City in the 1940s. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve international influence and put New York at the center of the ...

, Poleskie enrolled in art classes at

The New School The New School is a private research university in New York City. It was founded in 1919 as The New School for Social Research with an original mission dedicated to academic freedom and intellectual inquiry and a home for progressive thinkers. ...

with the figurative painter

Raphael Soyer Raphael Zalman Soyer (December 25, 1899 – November 4, 1987) was a Russian-born American painter, draftsman, and printmaker. Soyer was referred to as an American scene painter. He is identified as a Social Realist because of his interest in men ...

. Poleskie and Soyer soon became friends, and Soyer painted several paintings of his student. At the time, Poleskie had abandoned his abstract painting and was doing figurative work. When Poleskie had his first one-person show in New York at Morris Gallery, Soyer bought a painting. Morris later sold a large Poleskie to the playwright

Lanford Wilson Lanford Wilson (April 13, 1937March 24, 2011) was an American playwright. His work, as described by ''The New York Times'', was "earthy, realist, greatly admired ndwidely performed." Fox, Margalit"Lanford Wilson, Pulitzer Prize-Winning Playwright ...

. Involved in the New York art scene, Poleskie became friends with many of the artists and critics of the day including, Elaine and

Willem de Kooning Willem de Kooning (; ; April 24, 1904 – March 19, 1997) was a Dutch-American abstract expressionist artist. He was born in Rotterdam and moved to the United States in 1926, becoming an American citizen in 1962. In 1943, he married painter El ...

Frank O'Hara Francis Russell "Frank" O'Hara (March 27, 1926 – July 25, 1966) was an American writer, poet, and art critic. A curator at the Museum of Modern Art, O'Hara became prominent in New York City's art world. O'Hara is regarded as a leading figure i ...

, and

Louise Nevelson Louise Nevelson (September 23, 1899 – April 17, 1988) was an American sculptor known for her monumental, monochromatic, wooden wall pieces and outdoor sculptures. Born in the Poltava Governorate of the Russian Empire (present-day Kyiv Oblast ...

. In 1963 Poleskie opened a screen-printing studio in a storefront on East 11th Street. This became Chiron Pres

the first fine-art screen-printing shop in New York. The business was soon moved to larger quarters at 76 Jefferson Street. During the five years he ran the operation the names of the artists who had prints made at Chiron Press reads like a who's who of the artists of the 60s and includes such figures as Robert Rauschenberg, Roy Lichtenstein,

Andy Warhol Andy Warhol (; born Andrew Warhola Jr.; August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987) was an American visual artist, film director, and producer who was a leading figure in the Art movement, visual art movement known as pop art. His works explore th ...

James Rosenquist James Rosenquist (November 29, 1933 – March 31, 2017) was an American artist and one of the proponents of the pop art movement. Drawing from his background working in sign painting, Rosenquist's pieces often explored the role of advertising a ...

Alex Katz Alex Katz (born July 24, 1927) is an American figurative artist known for his paintings, sculptures, and prints. Early life and career Alex Katz was born July 24, 1927, to a Jewish family in Brooklyn, New York, as the son of an émigré who ha ...

Robert Motherwell Robert Motherwell (January 24, 1915 – July 16, 1991) was an American abstract expressionist painter, printmaker, and editor of ''The Dada Painters and Poets: an Anthology''. He was one of the youngest of the New York School, which also inc ...

, and

Helen Frankenthaler Helen Frankenthaler (December 12, 1928 – December 27, 2011) was an American abstract expressionist painter. She was a major contributor to the history of postwar American painting. Having exhibited her work for over six decades (early 1950s u ...

. One of the printers at Chiron Press was the young artist

Brice Marden Brice Marden (born October 15, 1938) is an American artist generally described as Minimalist, although his work may be hard to categorize. He lives and works in New York City; Tivoli, New York; Hydra, Greece; and Eagles Mere, Pennsylvania. Lif ...

. Poleskie's own screen prints from this time, rather minimal landscapes, the figures of the earlier works having walked out of the picture, were purchased by numerous museums including the

Metropolitan Museum The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

, the

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...

, and the

Whitney Museum The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is an art museum in the Meatpacking District and West Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875–194 ...

, in New York, and the

National Collection The UK National Collection is a collection of around 280 historic rolling stock, rail vehicles (predominantly of British origin). The majority of the collection is kept at four national museums: * National Railway Museum, York * National Railwa ...

Aerobatic performances

In 1968, wanting more time to devote to his own art, Poleskie sold Chiron Press and accepted a teaching position at

Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to tea ...

in Ithaca, NY. It was here that he learned to fly, and developed his ''Aerial Theater'', a unique art-in-the-sky form, for which he is best known. In his Aerial Theater performances Poleskie flew an aerobatic biplane, trailing smoke, through a series of maneuvers to create a four-dimensional design in the sky, e.g. in Hollywood/FL (1983), Richmond (1985), Southampton (1989), Clemson (1989). Musicians, dancers, and parachutists often accompanied these pieces. This work was very popular in Europe, especially Italy, where Poleskie lived on and off for over three years. Italian art critic Enrico Crispolti called Aerial Theater the logical extension of Futurism, and the French art critic Pierre Restany, writing in the Italian art magazine D’ars dubbed it "Planetary Art" on the scale with

Christo Christo Vladimirov Javacheff (1935–2020) and Jeanne-Claude Denat de Guillebon (1935–2009), known as Christo and Jeanne-Claude, were artists noted for their large-scale, site-specific environmental installations, often large landmarks and ...

’s installations. Poleskie's biplane and drawings for various performances were exhibited at the Louis K. Meisel Gallery in New York in 1978 and 1979. Twenty-seven years after he began to fly, in 1998, having reached the age of sixty, and feeling his body could no longer take the excessive

G force The gravitational force equivalent, or, more commonly, g-force, is a measurement of the type of force per unit mass – typically acceleration – that causes a perception of weight, with a g-force of 1 g (not gram in mass measure ...

s imposed on it by the

aerobatic maneuvers Aerobatic maneuvers are flight paths putting aircraft in unusual attitudes, in air shows, dogfights or competition aerobatics. Aerobatics can be performed by a single aircraft or in formation with several others. Nearly all aircraft are capabl ...

, Poleskie ceased flying altogether, and sold his airplanes. Works on paper from his Aerial Theater period are in many public collections including the

Victoria and Albert Museum The Victoria and Albert Museum (often abbreviated as the V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.27 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and nam ...

, and the

Tate Gallery Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the U ...

in London; the Kunstverin in Kassel, Germany, the Castlevecchio in Verona, Italy, and the State Museum, in Lodz, Poland. Poleskie's work has been exhibited widely. Among the cities he has had his work shown, or done performances, are New York, Boston, Washington D. C., Los Angeles, San Francisco, Berkeley, Toledo, Richmond, Williamsburg, San Antonio, and Miami, in the USA; London, Southampton, Loughborough, and the Isle of Wight in the UK; Rome, Milan, Bologna, Brescia, Como, Trento, Turin, Verona, and Palermo in Italy; Munich, Stuttgart, and Kassel, in Germany; Linz in Austria; Ljubljana, Zagreb, and Belgrade, in the former Yugoslavia; Moscow and Saint Petersburg in Russia; Warsaw, Gdansk, and Lodz, in Poland; Tbilisi in the Republic of Georgia; Vilnius in Lithuania; Freetown in Sierra Leone; Stockholm in Sweden; Rio de Janeiro in Brazil; Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula in Honduras; Barcelona, Madrid, and Cadaque in Spain; Locarno in Switzerland; and Tokyo and Kyoto in Japan.

Writing fiction

Since 1998 Poleskie has been devoting himself mainly to writing fiction, including a

biographical novel The biographical novel is a genre of novel which provides a fictional account of a contemporary or historical person's life. Like other forms of biographical fiction, details are often trimmed or reimagined to meet the artistic needs of the fict ...

on the Civil War Balloonist

Thaddeus S. C. Lowe Thaddeus Sobieski Constantine Lowe (August 20, 1832 – January 16, 1913), also known as Professor T. S. C. Lowe, was an American Civil War aeronaut, scientist and inventor, mostly self-educated in the fields of chemistry, meteorology, and ...

. In 2000 he destroyed a vast number of his early art works, and withdrew all the rest from the market. In 2004 Poleskie took up digital photography, and had his first show of these images in Ithaca in January 2006. Stephen Poleskie was married to the author Jeanne Mackin. The couple lived in

Ithaca, New York Ithaca is a city in the Finger Lakes region of New York, United States. Situated on the southern shore of Cayuga Lake, Ithaca is the seat of Tompkins County and the largest community in the Ithaca metropolitan statistical area. It is named ...

. Additional information on Poleskie can be found in Who's Who in America, (2006) and Who's Who in the World, (2006) and on his web site
www.stephenpoleskie.com

Death

Steve Poleskie passed away on December 21, 2019. He is survived by his widow, Jeanne Mackin.

Bibliography

* Poleskie, Stephen (2007) ''The Balloonist: The Story of T. S. C. Lowe---Inventor, Scientist, Magician, and Father of the U.S. Air Force,'' Frederic C. Beil, Publisher, Savannah, Georgia, * Poleskie, Stephen (2008) '' The Third Candidate'', Wasteland Press, Shelbyville, KY, * Poleskie, Stephen (2009) ''Grater Life'', Wasteland Press, Shelbyville, KY,

References

External links

Where is Stephen (Steve) Poleskie Now?
(Blog)

Stephen Poleskie Web Site {{DEFAULTSORT:Poleskie, Steve American artists 1938 births Living people