FeedsPainter's work goes from auto plants to art galleries
Tony Roko doesn’t like secrets.
Especially those about art.
That’s one of the reasons the popular artist volunteers in classrooms in partnership with Art Around Town, a non-profit agency, to bring art education to area schools.
“There shouldn’t be secrets about art. Every kid wants to know why a painting works, why his painting is good. I want to teach kids to feel good about it and to find art,” he said.
Roko’s determination is rooted in his childhood experience, when as a 6-year-old his first-grade teacher in Canton made a tremendous fuss about drawings of Abraham Lincoln and George Washington he did for a report. Praise from other educators followed.
“I didn’t understand what they meant. I didn’t know why it was good, and I thought to myself, ‘Did I trick them?‘” he said.
Roko, born Antoni Roko Ivezaj, now has collectors clamoring for his unique paintings, often done in series. His murals can be found throughout the area in Ford Motor Co. plants and facilities, and he is currently working on a series of recording artists for the Motown Museum in Detroit.
All this from a guy who uses only automotive paints and recycled wooden skids for frames.
Obviously, Roko’s road to his current position in the art world wasn’t easy, or smooth, but, as he says, “I’m so lucky, so blessed, to be where I am.”
Roko’s parents emigrated from Montenegro to Italy and from there came to the United States, and Roko is the only natural American citizen in his family.
“My parents came from a culture that concentrated more on survival than aesthetics. Because of that, I wasn’t a child who went to the DIA, or who experienced art in my home. It wasn’t something valued in my parents’ world,” he said.
When he entered the Plymouth-Canton school system, his first brush with art was that first grade report he illustrated.
“My teachers understood the situation. They understood the cultural differences which separated me from my peers. They gave me art supplies and allowed me to draw for an hour a day to encourage me,” he recalled. “I will always remember them.”
When he graduated at 18 from Plymouth Salem High School, he immediately fulfilled the American Dream of his parents and went to work at the Ford plant in Wayne.
His dream of an art career was a fantasy he never expected to realize or enjoy. He had no formal training and no means of attaining any art education.
“There had been no real hiring at Ford for nearly 20 years. So there you had the new kids, like me, and the guys who were 40 and 50 who had been there for years and years.
“I didn’t know anybody and nobody seemed to want to know me. I would take my lunch and breaks alone and draw,” he recalled.
Unknown to Roko, his fellow workers did notice, and when it came time for a union election, one of the candidates asked him to help illustrate his campaign literature.
“He won by a landslide, and he always said it was my help,” Roko said with a laugh.
Ford executives, at the union urging, instituted an employee morale plan a few months later, and as a part of that effort, decided to have some murals painted on the factory walls.
Roko was the first guy the plant and union officials approached, having heard through the grapevine of his skill.
“I told them I had no experience,” he said, “but they told me to try.”
Roko decided to use what was on hand in the plant, and the most vibrant colors and durable paint was the automotive enamel being used to pin stripe vehicles.
“It was the best thing, I realize now, I could have used. The walls were gritty and dirty and traditional oils wouldn’t hold up in that environment. I needed a paint that would hold up to anything, This does.”
He painted the murals in Wayne, then went on, at the urging and insistence of Ford officials, to paint murals at numerous other plants and facilities, including Bill Ford’s home.
“I did easily 40 murals. That project lasted almost 15 years,” he said. “I did a lot of Henry Ford paintings. A lot of Henry Ford.”
Now 39, he still works at Ford Motor, doing safety graphics but stopped painting and drawing altogether after the mural project was completed.
“Then I met my wife,” he said. Roko says that if it weren’t for Emily, better known as Mimi, a special ed teacher, he might not have started painting again. “After a couple of years she said to me, “Where is all this painting you talk about? I’ve never seen you paint.”
She urged and encouraged him into painting again which he now does in a basement studio in their Plymouth home.
“She says, ‘Tonight, you paint’ and these (the paintings) are as much hers as mine. She’s given me the confidence to do this.”
He still uses the same automotive enamels with which he began.
“That’s what I was used to. Acrylics dry too fast for me. You only have about 15 minutes to manipulate the paint before it begins to dry. Oils on the other hand can take a week to dry.”
His transition from the representational murals to his current stylized artwork was slow and is influenced, he said, by his early exposure not to fine art, but to cartoons.
“That was the example of art that I had,” he said. “And I had painted in black and white and sepia for so long. I wanted vibrant colors, stylized techniques.”
His studio is equipped with a specially designed ventilation system to protect the environment, and his two sons, Bako, 7, and Ethan, 5, from any exposure to the paint fumes.
He continues to use recycled boards rather than traditional canvas and his frames are still made with recycled wood from palates.
“We often joke that after the apocalypse, the only thing left will be my paintings,” he said. “After they are done and sealed, they are nearly indestructible. “We try to stay as green and environmentally friendly as possible.”
Each of his paintings is a narrative. Some are stories of women in his own life, and some from his imagination. His series Loft Girls includes a painting of his sister-in-law who arrived in the U.S. with only a religious icon and a traditional musical instrument from her culture. It sold almost immediately.
His paintings usually take about 40 hours of technical work-after the themes and narratives “float around in my head” sometimes for a week or more and after the initial sketching and design. Currently, his art commands about $1,200 to $1,500 per painting.
“I try to find aesthetics in a not-so-pretty reality,” Roko said.
The works he is currently producing for the Motown Museum began with a study of Marvin Gaye-an artist Roko always admired.
When he went to the museum to research Gaye and explained his interest, officials there immediately commissioned the series and provided him with a great deal of little known background about the deceased singer’s life and other Motown artists who worked with him. He intends to incorporate as much of that in the narrative of each work-evident in the unfinished Marvin Gaye in his studio.
Roko’s work can be seen at the Lotus Arts Gallery in Plymouth and also exhibited frequently at the Plymouth Coffee Bean and at the Inside Out Gallery in Traverse City, in addition, of course, to the schools he visits.
“I take recycled cardboard and recycled paint and demonstrate for the kids, then let them paint. I try to teach them about successful painting so that they can feel good about what they do. It’s about freedom, but I want them to understand color dialogue and key compositions.
“Nobody told me why paintings worked. Every kid wants to know why.
“There shouldn’t be secrets about art.”
Roko can be contacted on his website, TonyRoko.com.
