Meet John P. Schmelzer

Today we’d like to introduce you to John P. Schmelzer.

Every artist has a unique story. Can you briefly walk us through yours?
I was born in Madison Wi, attended the University of Wisconsin Madison, majored in art and started making art for money before my freshman year by painting signs at the Student Union, From that job I received a job offer at the Multimedia Lab on campus drawing cartoons to illustrate professors’ lectures, I then went to work for a small Madison ad agency and did art direction, illustration, design, key line and paste-up and brainstorming, The agency was small so I had to learn and do all aspects of advertising and production, it was true on the job training under fire. I then went to work for an art studio in Madison and then graduated from the UW.

I was fired from the Multimedia Lab, the ad agency, and the art studio mainly because once there was nothing left to learn the job was no longer very interesting and I found office politics unbearable, so I opened my own studio in Madison in 1969 under the name 1000 Miles West Art Studio, so named because one of my fellow employees at the ad agency said it was a good idea to open the studio, but my work was more suited to New York tastes so I opened it 1000 miles too far west. I did work as a full service art studio, doing illustration, design, key line and art direction.

I did a lot of work in Madison and Milwaukee and received awards for my Illustration and design work, but once again I needed a bigger challenge. I put together a portfolio of my work and I had one of my employee’s rep my work in Chicago. She got positive responses showing my stuff and found a Chicago rep to handle my illustration. I started doing work for all of the large agencies in Chicago, and I started getting editorial work from Playboy, Esquire, and agencies in New York and around the country. I decided my market was in Chicago so I moved to the Chicago area changed my business name to J.P. Schmelzer and Associates, Ltd. and eventually represented myself.

I also did “fine art” during and after college and sold many drawings, prints, and paintings during my career as a freelance illustrator. I started doing a lot of editorial illustration in the 80’s as tastes in advertising art changed and did book illustration, children’ book illustrating, and advertising. I still create illustrations for a wide variety clients and needs.

Doing both ad art and editorial art as well as fine art until the present.

Please tell us about your art.
I am a drawer, I have been drawing since I was six years old. I like to draw with a pen on Arches watercolor paper. I also fill sketchbooks with drawings and draw when I travel, attend lectures, watch TV, and when I relax. I am very interested in drawing people, animals, and places that exist and those that don’t except on the page where I draw them. I also add watercolor to some drawings and I paint in acrylic and I also do some small sculptures and linoleum prints. All or most of my work is meant to amuse, or to give the viewers a departure point to make up their own story of what is going on in my pictures.

I also draw with conte and charcoal and pencil, but I like clean drawings and I like the fact that pen and ink is very unforgiving, if you screw up you have to start over. The eraser is a tool in making conte, charcoal, or pencil drawings, but an eraser doesn’t save a pen drawing, you have to use a blade to correct a pen drawing and you risk ruining the surface of a drawing if you correct too much, I occasionally cut out an area on a piece for reproduction, but as nicely as I patch the drawing it always seems damaged to me.

Do you have any advice for other artists? Any lessons you wished you learned earlier?
My advice to aspiring artists is, if you are really an artist, if you need to draw or create or write or make music in order to survive then figure out how to make a living doing what you love and need to do. Don’t wimp out and become a teacher who makes art, throw yourself at your passion and do it with every fiber of your being. Don’t be distracted, go at it full speed, fail, and start again and continue starting and failing until you get it right, and then when you finally get it right, then maybe you might decide whether or not you want to teach others how to succeed as a professional artist. And remember, very few of your students will have the passion that you had and most of them will fail as artists, but maybe you can instill in them the idea that you need to be fully committed in order to be a success at anything in life.

How or where can people see your work? How can people support your work?
My work has been seen locally in the Chicago Tribune and the Sun Times in the days before the newspapers decided that assignment illustration was a luxury they couldn’t afford. My work was in Playboy magazine before they left town, I did work for the ABA Journal for many years and for various other magazines.

I currently have done work for Yankee Magazine, my work can be seen on my website jpschmelzrart.com, or by appointment. Or you can Google my name J.P. Schmelzer, Illustrator and you can view the images sucked off of the internet by Google images.

The best way to support my art is to buy my art, that’s how all artists should be supported. If you like someone’s work, buy it and live with it, and buy some for your friends and your relatives.

My commercial clients buy my art because it fulfills their need and purpose, it sells their product, or their story. That same art looks good framed and hanging on the wall.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.jpschmelzerart.com
• Phone: 708 386 4005
• Email: jthepen@ameritech.net

Image Credit:
All images are © J. P. Schmelzer

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