Meet Ted Stanuga of Stanuga Arts in West Garfield Park

Today we’d like to introduce you to Ted Stanuga.

Ted, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
My story is the result of the care and work of three teachers guiding me first in the creative process and then encouraging me to find a way to make it my life.

Art first appeared magically as I wandered through the culture rich alleys of Tijuana watching the velvet painters doing sea and desert-scapes on the street. At the same time, I was made aware of the painters in New York and had no idea about what it was that they were doing but sensed a similarity to everything I was seeing in Tijuana and I loved it. When I graduated high school, this art teacher gave me a graduation present of a one-way bus ticket to Montana with the instruction to find a way to live.

Montana taught me about how to go about working, whether in a Zinc Plant stacking ingots, on a ranch stacking hay or in a studio laying out a painting. I met the second teacher here, an abstract painter that had spent time in New York, and that had studied at the School of the Art Institute, it was here that I learned to trust my intuitive responses to shape and color and find the emotional link that would provide the weight I would seek to suggest the real.

Finally, at the School of the Art Institute, I found the third teacher, an abstract painter that challenged me to take things further and be open to experience in a way that I had never thought possible. I took all of his classes and then left school for an assistants position at Landfall Press assisting Master Printer Jack Lemon. This work experience with professional artists in the midst of their creative process, coupled with the discipline required of editioning prints gave me my eyes.

My story is the result of the care and work of three teachers guiding me first in the creative process and then encouraging me to find a way to make it my life.

We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc. – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
I think in choosing art one basically guarantees a rough road if in fact you truly are searching for a way to find yourself in the work, include it and create something that the viewer will sense includes both you and them. My path was to learn to untangle tendencies to get in the way of the painting. Where we are at any point is a direct result of our success in doing this.

We’d love to hear more about your business.
Generally speaking, paintings on canvas and works on paper are my vehicle. They are conceived of intuitively in that I have only a vague idea of where things are going when I start. They are infused with everything that is going on and exists around us. When they succeed there exists a sense of the real fused by emotion and an understanding by the viewer that they are a critical element in the meaning that is attached to the work.

What were you like growing up?
I was always drawing and looking at art as a kid. Not much fine art, but as I said earlier, the paintings by street artists. We had lots of art in school which I thought was the only reason to go to school. My best friend and I did a project in 6th grade where we collected cow bones in the foothills and assembled them into faux dinosaurs, installed them in his carport and charged kids 50 cents to see them. We also got into a lot of trouble about this time trying to build rockets. So creative but trouble.

Contact Info:

• Address: Ted Stanuga
  Stanuga Arts
  4223 West Lake Street Suite 410
  Chicago, Illinois 60624
• Website: www.tedstanuga.com
• Email: tstanuga@gmail.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/tstanuga/
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/tstanuga
• Other: www.MathewRachmanGallery.com

Image Credit:
Nathaniel Smith, Mathew Rachman Gallery

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