Tony Leuzzi

‍ARTIST STATEMENT

I write poems. I make art. In neither case was I formally trained. As a poet, I developed my voice over time, through sustained reading and concentration, balanced by a strong urge to explore and play. Making art came later, but my approach to this latter process was similar to the former. My marker drawings on printed paper represent one strand of my visual work. The resultant shapes—situated somewhere between the figural and the abstract—are born out of improvisation, beginning with a black line dictating how each figure will emerge. That black line runs for as long as I see fit. Then, another line reacts to it—and another. Some of these shapes, elaborate as they are, can be reconstructed out of two or three long strokes. Later, the “word cells” formed by the black ink are colored in using a mix of high-end “art markers” and basic Office Depot markers. Sometimes, I am forced to use whatever I have left in my collection, so the pallets may seem strange or counter-intuitive. Most frequently, however, I work from intuition and have a sound color sense.

Why do any of this on printed pages? Initially, it was to save money. I would repurpose materials that others deemed disposable. I chose discarded library books and/or books I would find at garage sales, mass-produced best sellers available virtually anywhere, or obsolete text books invariably destined to the garbage can.

But there is more to my project than eco-salvage. As a writer and avid reader, I never like to be too far from words. I grew up with books, took refuge in them, became less lonely through them. Their omnipresence in my life led to a kind of fetish of the printed word, in which I found pages in and of themselves graphically stimulating. I decided to incorporate print culture into my art and, once that decision was made, I sensed something unlock in me. I had discovered beauty in that liminal space between art and literature and fused them. Finally, these improvisations allow me to engage with my musical self. Unlike my work in poetry and visual art, I am a classically-trained pianist who fled from the instrument once I reached college. Decades later, I returned to it and now find joy in working out musical passages, tinkering with figures—a key word, since these marker drawings are, in a sense, a visual expression of certain musical phrases. I could say more but fear doing so would bore you. And me.