IT WAS THE BEST OF TIMES

      As my family, friends and a few contemporary art lovers know I closed my 8,400 square foot art studio/gallery in Boca Raton several years ago after having a one-man show of my art at O.K. Harris in New York City. My "FIFTEEN MINUTES OF FAME" was more than I could possibly have imagined when I embarked on a second career 17 years prior to that one-man exhibition. Quite a few of my friends and family made the trek to Manhattan to witness this event, lured no doubt by the free meals and wine experienced over a two-day span in the summer of 2005. Unfortunately, no art critics came to review my show - - - or maybe it was fortunately - - - and my artistic efforts made not a ripple on the art world. I was reminded of the philosophical query, 

         "If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

     I closed my studio several months later, not in a pique over the failure of the New York art cognoscinti to take notice acknowledge my existence (or at least acknowledge my existence, but because I felt I wanted to move on and try my hand at writing. The art world drew a collective sigh of relief and the literary world shuddered.

Closing my studio and having to dispose of the works I had created and lived among for 17 years was a wrenching experience. I used my studio as a gallery to show my work to visitors. Almost all my installations (room-sized environments) were too big for any individual to consider purchasing. My goal was to sell to museums and collectors who had mega-facilities. 
I wound up with a tremendous amount of “unsold inventory” that I had to dispose of 1) via sales of some of the smaller pieces to friends, 2) placing quite a few in our home, 3) storing some in a mini-warehouse, 
(4) selling off articles that I used in my installations to junk dealers (the mannequins for example),      

and 
5) trashing the rest in a dumpster.

    One of my earliest pieces, when I was just starting to make a transition from photography to installation art, was an 8 x 8 foot wall of photographs taken in Times Square. I spied a wall of chairs that had been attached by an artist along a long wall on 42nd street, and which invited passersby to step up and sit on the chairs that were raised off the ground. This very imaginative installation attracted people of all ages and sizes who spent moments or minutes suspended on the wall looking out at the world and the world looked back at them. I got up and sat self consciously in one of the chairs eating a hot dog from a nearby pushcart.

     This photograph shows how I lugged this work of art to a dumpster on its way to its final resting ground in a huge garage dump. Every now and then I drive past this mountain of refuse and pay my respects.

       I miss my studio. Those years were the happiest of my life, but I’ve found writing equally challenging and exhilarating _ _ _ and no more financially rewarding.

       I was prescient enough to have made a video of many of the pieces in my studio and when I happened to come across a Blog about my work as I was browsing the Internet I decided to reprint is as a way of introducing my art to those of my readers who are not familiar with it. There’s a link at the bottom of the article that will take you to this video. I tip my glass to anyone who makes the journey.

Earl Bronsteen – Conceptual Artist

 by easelyspeaking

I recently discovered an artist by the name of Earl Bronsteen, a 79 year- old conceptual artist from Boca Raton, FL. Before you read on, grab a glass of wine and get comfortable, Earl has developed a video tour of his 8000 square foot studio that I am sure you will find interesting. If you don’t have the time to view all 38 episodes, do take the time to view “rejection letters”, this is the epitome of the “glass half empty or half full”. 

To enjoy more of Earl’s work you can visit him at his web site: 

                       http://www.earlbronsteen.com/art.htmlA

P.S. The episode he refers to, “rejection letters”, that is shown in the photograph, consists of 450 rejection letters I received in my 17-year art career from museums, collectors and art critics. The map that can be seen at the far end of the wall of this exhibition at the Ft. Lauderdale Museum of Art uses pushpins to show the location of the “rejectors”. Most of 50 states harbored at least one rejector, and I am confident that if I had continued my art career I could have filled in the rest of the states.