Tuesday, September 30, 2003

By Adrian McCoy, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

Artist Fred Danziger is inviting people to be a virtual fly on the wall in his studio, witnessing the gradual birth of one of his paintings.

"A lot of people don't have much of any idea of what an artist does," says Fred Danziger, from his gallery near Philadelphia. His Web site allows people to follow his progress on a Pittsburgh bridge painting. Related article Online gallery expands market for Pittsburgh artists

Danziger is at work on a landscape painting of some of Pittsburgh's famous bridges. Over the past few months, visitors to his site (www.FredDanziger.com) have watched as sky, water and bridge structures slowly take shape. They've watched the artist reject some of his own attempts and start over. And they've read his diary, which traces the highs and lows of the creative process.

Danziger, who grew up in Carnegie, left the area in the mid-'60s to attend the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia. He now lives in Coatesville, a Philadelphia suburb where he paints and teaches art. His paintings are in several museum collections, and he has shown work in galleries in New York and Philadelphia. Locally, he has some works at James Gallery, West End, and a show in the works there.

Many of his paintings are naturalistic landscapes, often of Philadelphia and surrounding areas. But for the Web project, he returned to his childhood home. It was during a visit here, sitting in traffic on the Liberty Bridge, that Danziger found the subject for the current online work -- a perspective of the Monongahela River from the bridge. The as-yet-untitled painting has a working title of "Monongahela."

In his first journal entry, he describes the inspiration: "Driving across the Monongahela. There is a painting on my right. I park and walk to the center of the Liberty Bridge. There is a Charles Sheeler-like 'poetry' in the crisscrossing spans laced across the Monongahela. Haze, steel, a white-grey sky and olive-green water. Somehow ... Pittsburgh seems 'romantic' to me here. ... As the water streams toward 'the Point,' I am 14 again.

"I shoot 57 photographs."

Danziger says he's often approached by people who want to see his studio. Putting it up on the Web was one way of opening the doors to a curious public.

He did it in part to give people a keener awareness of the artistic process. "A lot of people don't have much of an idea of what an artist does. If people understood what it takes to make a painting, especially a naturalistic kind of work, I think they might have a better understanding.

	When former Pittsburgher Fred Danziger visited here, he took 57 photos of the Monongahela River valley from the Liberty Bridge to help him in his painting. Click photo for larger image.

"A lot of people think being an artist is easy. There's a huge amount of work."

Keeping the Web site current has added to that work load. "It takes a fair amount of time," Danziger says. "It's actually slowing me down a little bit on the painting."

Anyone following the online progress will see that making art isn't just a pleasant process of applying the right paint in the right place, but actually a slow series of fits and starts, with the artist often having to scrap a section and start over. "The first time I painted the water, I couldn't stand to look at it," Danziger recalls.

For the artist, working in public is a motivating force. "I feel like I better get out there and work on this, because people are watching. It drives the painting forward."

Danziger likens the work in progress to the fascination some people have watching a skyscraper being built. "It's just interesting to watch. It's sort of the performance side of being an artist. [But] it takes so long you can't go on the stage and do it."

In addition to the painting, there's an artist's journal/log, video and a chronological archive of Danziger's past and recent works. He also has added some new features, including technical notes on how he achieves some effects, and a feedback section where site visitors can communicate with him. "Off the Wall" features writings and essays not related to his artwork.

An alumnus of the Saturday morning art classes at Carnegie Museum, Danziger says he often meets artists or colleagues who are former Pittsburghers and who also came out of those classes.

He wishes Pittsburgh had more of a vibrant gallery scene like Philadelphia "so that so many artists wouldn't be from Pittsburgh" and working elsewhere, he says.

E-mail this story   Print this story