Victor Shanchuk, Jr.

Victor Shanchuk, Jr. is part of the Living Legacy Project at the Burchfield Penney Art Center. Click here to listen to his artist interview. 

Victor Shanchuk, Jr., is a photographer, painter, and art educator who was born in Brooklyn, N.Y.  After receiving a B.S. in art education from SUNY College for Teachers at Buffalo in 1961, he served in the military from 1964 to 1968, then returned to the renamed State University College at Buffalo for an M.S. in the same subject in 1971. He pursued post-graduate studies at the institution from 1972 to 1978.

His early influences were diverse, ranging from Seurat to Rothko and Pollock. Instructors who helped to shape his aesthetic include Roland Wise, George O’Connell, Oscar Bailey, and Wally Green, while newspaper critic Trevor Thomas provided an alternative perspective. Artist friends Wes Olmsted and Ken Peterson  contributed to an ongoing discussion as well.

Shanchuk taught art in public schools in Buffalo from 1961 until his retirement in 1997. During the same period he worked as a lecturer, instructor, and adjunct professor at colleges including State University College at Buffalo, Canisius, SUNY at Buffalo, Villa Maria, and D’Youville, as well as the Albright Knox Art Gallery and Nichols Summer School. Shanchuk’s teaching philosophy was simple: What he learned, he taught. His primary goal was to change the way his students saw the world, and his oft-repeated motto was “Art is life and life is art.”

He was a founding member of the performance group MAP, or Multi-Arts Performers, which was active from 1979 through the mid-1980s. The ensemble incorporated music, dance, theater, and Shanchuk’s own contribution, projections through which the dancers moved. Among other venues, MAP presented its work at Hallwalls and the Burchfield Penney Art Center. Shanchuk has also been involved with such Western New York organizations and events as Artists Gallery (chairperson, 1985-90), AAO Gallery (curator of exhibitions/designer, 1983-87), the Buffalo Society of Artists (1992-93), the Allentown Art Festival (juror, 1994), the Elmwood Festival of the Arts (juror, 2001), and the Burchfield Penney Art Center (volunteer curator, tour leader, and other positions, 2001-2012).

As a painter and experimental photographer, Shanchuk has exhibited at many arts organizations, including the Burchfield Penney Art Center, CEPA, Hallwalls, the Clary-Miner Gallery, Artists Gallery, Nina Freudenheim Gallery, Big Orbit, and Art Dialogue (all in Buffalo, N.Y.); the National Building Museum in Washington D.C.; and the Boca Museum of Art in Florida. He created “Impression Buffalo” for the Herd About Buffalo public art project (2000) and “Roosevelt Rides Again” for the Art on Wheels public art project (2003).

Victor Shanchuk has been designated a Living Legacy Artist by the Burchfield Penney Art Center.

Transcription below: 

LLP Artist:  Victor Shanchuk Jr. (Part 1 of 2)
Interviewer: Heather Gring
Transcriber:  Jordan Anthony
Date recorded:  January 9, 2014
Date transcribed: June 19, 2020

HG: This is the Living Legacy Project interview with Victor Shanchuck on January 9, 2014. And we are sitting at Victor's home. And we're very happy to be here. I'm here with Scott Propeack as well, who's going to be joining us for part of it. Victor, what inspired you to want to pursue a career in the arts?

VS: Well, it started, I guess, with Mr. Gilbert, my fifth grade teacher who assigned a project and I developed a series of cartoons that were published in the school paper, and that continued my interest in the arts. I had an art teacher who was also my guidance counselor in grade school, eighth grade teacher who motivated me to go and apply to the SIA, which is a School of Industrial Art, which is now that School of Art and Design in New York City. Back there were three of us that were accepted to that school from PS 29, which was very unusual. Gary Slater, Dale Drummond and myself. SIA was unusual school and that freshmen and sophomore years were downtown and a 51st Street building junior and senior years whereas classes held in 77th Street building of a Third Avenue. So, there was a separation in terms of inexperience and experience and the major concern in terms of developing your own portfolio and yourself as an individual was during the junior and senior year. It was a very unusual school in that it dealt with illustration and fashion design as well as cartooning, advertising art, which I majored in the experience center in terms of experiencing the arts or the techniques in the arts were very unusual in that we experienced all of them and when you think about it, experiencing an art class today, it's just a general snippet of this and that, where we delved into, let's say 15 weeks of watercolor, 15 weeks of clay, 15 weeks of drawing the figure, 15 weeks of calligraphy, and so on and so forth, including photography, which, as a sophomore motivated my interest in photography. In fact, the teacher said that I should continue and pursue photography that I had an eye or a sense or an ability that was unique, that he felt was unique. And the funny thing is, what he taught in photo lab, in terms of techniques were later techniques that I developed and expanded upon in my own personal work in photography. I had to teachers, my Advertising Art teacher and my English teacher, Arnold Burgess and the advertising art teacher and Mrs. Mrs. Schwartz both forced, in a sense forcing me to apply to Buffalo State because Buffalo State had a similar kind of program in teaching art and artistic and the art education program. So, I here I have these two heavyweights including my mother saying you're gonna go, you're gonna go, take the test and finish your portfolio. So, I did finish the portfolio took the interview for US state. And by the way, being in advertising art I won the advertising art award graduation at the School of Industrial Art, which was a shocker for me. It kind of opened the door for me to get into buff state and buff state was the school of all schools, it taught life It taught creativity, it taught spirituality. It was an experience beyond all experiences in education, in terms of faculty in terms of students and relationships that you built within the school itself or the classes that you had. And again, it was the same kind of sort of a replication of  SIA, you experience drawing, you experience photography, you experienced design, you experienced crafts, you experienced painting, you experienced art history, you name it, we had to take it, and it all related to each other in terms of how the faculty taught because the faculty were constantly communicating between each other when we took breaks from classes, we go down to the basement of Rockwell Hall, which was called The State Room, like a cafeteria coffee shop. And we'd sit around a table and the faculty would sit around the table and they would talk and philosophize, and we would listen and learn and ask questions and, and that kind of experience spilled over to Cole’s, which was a bar just down the street from the college. Friday evenings, there would be students and faculty and we have continued learning, whole process and experience of education.

HG: I have to say it's very interesting hearing your perspectives about Buffalo State College at a different point in history. And I want to ask what years were you at Buffalo State College?

VS: I was at Buffalo State from 1957 to 1961, which is really the strongest point or time in relation to faculty and The essence and energy of the school itself. It was a vital force in art education. It was the largest art education program in the country. As I was saying before it, it taught about life. It taught aesthetics, it taught us to internalize. It taught us to look at life differently and look at things differently and interpret those things. Through our, shall we say, reconstruction of what we're experiencing in life. It made us a different person. Because we looked at things differently. I don't think it's an experience that that anyone else could have. Again, in those particular years, Stan Searles organized the faculty and brought all these individuals in that were unique. And, as I said earlier, that functioned together worked together, talked, argued each other Their own sense of spirituality reminds me of Wally green, who I had for art history. He spent an entire semester on one piece of sculpture. And our textbook was the Bhagavad Gita, and the Upanishads. And the sculpture was the creator destroyer, Shiva at the circular one with the flames on the baby. And that taught us a lot and put us in touch with things that we never thought we would experience. And there was industrial design teacher, Victor Papanek, who is an apprentice of Frank Lloyd Wright. Again, he taught us to look at objects differently. He taught us design, industrial design, to evaluate what we come in contact with for a spoon, pot or pan, utilitarian type objects that we use that would were functional and non-functional. And to this date, I'm still very critical about what I use, how I use it, and how things function. For me, things have to function in a very practical sense. And there were people like George O'Connell, who taught drawing. What was so funny and unique about my experience with O'Connell and figure drawing was that I went to the student art league as a teenager in New York City. And here I was mid-teen in high school, drawing the nudes and bring back bring home the drawings that my father went through the ceiling, that I was doing something dirty, you know, by drawing the nude, but it prepared me for college and for O'Connell's drawing class because I was lightyears ahead of the students that were there, which was great because it opened other kinds of doors for me in relation to my experiences and the new experiences that I would be having, and also building personal relationships with faculty. And speaking of personal relationships, that's something that developed over the years at Buff State. We're on a Sunday afternoon, we'd go to Metzger’s [Pub] on the East Side with faculty, and all sit down and have a chicken dinner. And we go to various restaurants and bars occasionally and do the same thing. Or go to it by George O'Connor was involved in jazz, he loved jazz, so we’d go to a jazz club on the East Side. So, this faculty student relationship was a very special kind of experience. Oh, I have to say, one faculty member, Trevor Thomas, who as from England, and was also the news critic for the Courier Express, taught at Buffalo State. And here we were at Cole’s, talking socializing. And I was listening. I wasn't talking to Trevor Thomas looks at me and says, “If you have nothing to contribute to this conversation, you can leave.” It was like a slap in the face a ton of bricks hit me. And it changed my whole point of view in terms of those kinds of experiences that we are we're having with each other. And it that did make a difference. Make a change in me.

HG: So one of my next questions has to do about your most important influences, mentors and inspirations and you're kind of touching on a lot of that as you're talking about your Buffalo State experiences, but branching outside of that into your arts career, who are some people who are influential in helping you define your style or how you wanted to work and create art.

VS: One person would be Roland Wise. I work independently with Roland for two years as an undergraduate and also as a graduate student. George O’Connell, of course was an influence on me in terms of in terms of drawing. Let me see who else… experiencing art history was an influence on me, seeing Seurat and the Afternoon on La Grande Jatte in person was a mind blower, an aesthetic experience, seeing Rothko's work and experienced his work after he died. There was a memorial at Martha Jackson, and I walked into the room that had the black and gray and white paintings and burst into tears. Again, another unusual aesthetic experience, even though I don't paint like Jackson Pollock Jackson Pollock was an influence my seeing and looking at things differently. Oh, yes. I worked with Oscar Bailey the photographer for an entire summer. That was just him and myself in the darkroom, working together, which was a hell of an experience. And of course, the extended family and friends, Les Krims was more of a political influence and then an artistic influence on me. Wes Olmstead, both political but his spiritual influence. And then friends like Ken Peterson, a sculptor.

SP: Any other photographers?

VS: Not specifically any photographers because my work when didn't stay within the realm of reality and realism. I did… it still does, but I moved into more experimental approaches in photography. Pinhole photography was a was a big thing for me, making handmade images handmade slides. handmade transparencies, without the use of a camera. Using dyes and plastics, I explored polarization for years and I’m still doing that in photography, creating small miniatures, collages, and then blowing them up and making prints of those pieces, creating unusual animated kind of images. Yes, Scott?

SP: I think that many people think of you as a photographer, but you probably identify more as an artist who uses photography, like you would use a colored pencil. You're using it as a tool to realize the visual result, you're not actually just caught up in aperture, though, that makes you unique for that period. As far as somebody who didn't sort of identify based on a medium. A lot of people would say they were a painter, or they were a photographer, or they were a sculptor, and you sort of tried to realize an artistic object but You just use all of these different approaches as tools.

VS: It was the creating a new graphic process using photography, images coming from other resources. There was a whole series of images that I did from lifts, where you there was on the surface plastic, that I adhered to images, magazine images, and then soaked them and lifted the ink off the surface of the paper. Then I’d collage those images and in some cases, applied collage material or colored pencil or black and white, just graphite to the surface of those photographs. And those became very unusual and unique as images. So, they were, they were photographic but somebody else's photo. But I created the just collage distortion of those images. There was also a series of photographs that and maybe this is what, what people recognize me for other than the handmade colored images was a series of masks that I had people put on, and I worked in that series for a number of years, even had children put on these plastic masks and photographed them and then blew those up.

SP: That's like the piece of self-portraits that's in the Burchfield Penney collection.

HG: That's correct. Yes, we have with us here today. We brought one of your works to talk about on video.

VS: Oh, that was that's a pinhole image self-portrait with a female mask. The unique thing about that is the camera that I used where I had, it was a broken camera. I took out the lens and constructed a pinhole cover on the opening and use to pass popsicle stick as a as a shutter. So I set the camera up in the room in at City Honor school where I taught photography, and just reached over and moved the popsicle stick, and took a picture, and closed it, advanced the film that was using film with it in in my pinhole work and did a whole series of those. In fact, what I'd like to do is print the entire series and possibly donate them to the Burchfield so that they have that complete lineage of that that series. Yeah, pinhole was a big exploration for me also, again, I always like to delve in these non-photographic approaches to creating images that you can project or print, I don't think is in all the experiences I've had with handmade collages, I don't think there's anybody else in the country that's doing what I'm doing, and creating those kinds of images and that kind of the color from the distortion that is created with polarization. But the funny thing is the whole concept of that work started with me working at Bennett High School, we were…just for fun drawing on film drying on 16 millimeter film. And it was a project that one of my student teachers was working on with my students. And we were creating images that moved on film when projected with a 16 millimeter camera. In fact, I still have some of those films. And that motivated me to create other kinds of images in the handmade area slides. So, I was projecting these images and drawing on black film and doing figurative kinds of things or textural kinds of things, even to the point where I was mounting pieces of woven cloth, and then projecting the cloth. You name it, I kind of did it in putting those kinds of things together using them in a group that I was part of was MAP, Multi-Art Performers. We were a performance group from 19… late 1979, early 80 through 80. I think our last performance was at the Burchfield in a 84 or 85. And it was dance. It was a play, it was music, and it was projections. And projections were the images that I had created. And the dancers worked through those images. In fact, there was a series I did, using the handmade images that we put together and performed at Hall Walls. They had a big event, and different artists were invited to perform and speak and so on. And we did a performance, and I did projections, and I created a sound piece. I forgot what piece of music I used, but I repeated it four times on four different tape recorders and played them all out of sync while the dancer danced, and I projected these images on the dancer. And the funny thing is, after we were finished and took our wares, we left and when we left half the audience left, which really P.O.’ed quite a few people at Hall Walls and put us in bed, the bed stage or bed position. There is one other unusual approach that I used. I used photographic gels but the utricle gels and I cut them into strips and mounted them in the slide holders the plastic slide over and as I projected them in this one performance, the dancer had to move from one slot of color to another slot of color and didn't know what was going to be projected on her as we were going through the performance, so it was rather different and very unique. And also another unique thing about the projection of the color gels, using three different projectors or even two different projectors and overlaying the colors once they were projected, and overlaid and somebody walked through the colors, it created other kinds of colors behind them. It the body sort of acted as a as a prism, but it's more black, some of the colors so to create other kinds of colors. So my experimentation still continues creating different kinds of images different from points of view, you know, looking at the images here, you can see many different things, many different kinds of distortions or images that you want to create for yourself in them. I find a sense of spirituality in the work itself.

HG: I was going to say it seems that experimentation is the central theme within your work. Whether It's you know, performance or installation or moving image or handmade moving image or photography or painting. It's, it seems like there's a lot of exploration that runs through everything that you do.

VS: Right.

HG: Do you see a relationship between your background as an art educator and then your career as an art educator? And then in your personal work, there is this large degree of exploration that you keep so active with, is there any sort of relationship between all these different facets of art and how you sort of move between them all?

VS: What what I experienced in at Buff State as well as through the faculty and in my own exploration in the arts, I applied to my teaching, what I learned, I taught, my students looked at life very differently because of the kinds of assignments that I gave them, like in photography, and assignment, why it would drive them nuts, of course. They were standard kinds of things like reflections, shadow. Shadow was a good one for some students. But I was always challenging the students both in photography visually as well as the drawing and painting and student art students to think differently. What changed my point of view in teaching at Bennett High School, I was there for 10 years, it was more structured, more in Achtung approach because of the nature of the school itself and the students. But going to City Honors, it was a total change of how I viewed myself as well as how I viewed the students and teaching the students, because we were dealing with students that had problems. That's how student City Honors was developed. The traveling student that was taken out of the classroom and dealt with on a small basis or a one to one basis or small group basis. So, when city owners move data, Bennett in into school 17. And you had larger classes. You had a group of students that had difficulty in dealing with life and dealing with life's experiences or having difficulty at home. And we dealt with kids that had divorce problems, growing problems or drug problems, whatever it is, in the late 70s, early 80s was unique and that a student with a problem could knock on your door. You could be teaching a class and ask for help. And you'd leave your class and walk around the hall talking to this student while you assign somebody in the classroom to take over the classroom, or the classroom took over itself. It was a very, very different experience. It was challenging because the kids could not draw. They couldn't paint, they had no concept of what art was all about, and they were thrown into an art classroom with me and, and I approached them from a verbal standpoint. In fact, I developed the program verbal and visual thinking, which I also presented to the humanities conference in New York State at that time back in the early 70s. And approaching art, from a verbal standpoint, improved the visual approach that these students had it created a visual understanding through verbal, it was exploratory and it worked… going back to the why concept in one class, I would sit students in a circle, and I'd sit them in the middle and I’d start the class by saying “why?” and the students just sat there looking at me as if I was an idiot and somebody that should be in the state hospital, but it took a while but it the students got involved in the whole concept. Understanding the concept and then as soon as they could understand the concept verbally, they could apply it visually. And that was the success of the program at, at City Honors.

SP: And City Honors on grew to be a school that everybody wants their kids to go to not just

VS: That's true.

SP: So how did that happen? How did it go from sort of kids that needed a bit more attention to kids with high achievement ability and so on? Was the focus on the individual, do you think?

VS: And also, the development of the program, the classes, the classes became more intense, the achievement of the students was recognized. I mean, they were getting into to Ivy League schools and colleges that nobody else in the city was getting into. And we were still small as a school when we first moved to the plastic master building. We were about 400 kids and a faculty of 40 or 50, but the faculty itself was unique because we were sort of like, all on the same page.

SP: You were a team that really built the school. Right?

VS: That's correct. That's correct. In fact, I was initially part of the team, from the art standpoint from the visual arts. And that's where also where I developed my photo program, which became challenge for every other photo program in the area. Because anytime we entered the Kenan center photo competition, we won. I mean, you think I think we won best school five years in a row photographically. And again, because of the experimental approach, and in the assignments that I gave, there were very many students that came out with unique points of view to creating art and life. Some ended up in in the arts, some in photography, some in art history, some in fashion summon architectural design. High achievers because of the experiences that they had, and, you know, building a kind of inner spirit, creating… I don't know what you would call it…like a putty that that filled the gaps in their life, you know, art became too many students at City Honors, a sanctuary. There were students that lived in the art room. It was the same at Bennett High School for some reason, I don't know what, what unique thing that they saw, but they saw comfort. They saw protection, they saw understanding, it was a way of shaping their life, you know, through aesthetics through the arts. Well, one thing that I did use in my teaching was the inquiry process, looking at things from a sensory point of view, from an affective point of view and emotional point of view, and from the brain, the mental approach, applying those things, you know, to the artworks but also to life buildings. A sense of diversity and focus on the individual can create in their own life. You know, it's funny, our new director came, Tony Bannon, he asked us all to write something about ourselves in terms of what kind of force we were. And I'd like to read what I had written. “It's the action of my soul. I am a force of momentum, the aesthetic that is shaping the choices in personal values and experiences in life. I am changed the changer the action of vital force and animating force a person of action experimenter, inspiring spirit that fills the gaps in the life of the virtual Penny Art Center and my own by action. My soul is the embodiment, essence, the epitome personification, and quintessence of the art experience in art education.” And in life, you know one thing also, we were supposed to write about our individual goals and the Burchfield, and self-improvement, and one thing I did right in relation to that was to listen better to do and realize the truth, build a better spiritual foundation for without a spiritual foundation there is destruction. And of course, my phrase that I developed years and years ago, “Art is life and life is art.” That is, that is my phrase that I have been dealing with for years and years and years. Since the ‘60s, you know, I look at the arts as a life force and momentum. It has an aesthetic that that binds us. It shapes our choices and creates well shapes our choices and personal values and choices in life. art as in education as a spirit and energy of life, a vital force and essence, I feel it's an essential part of life. It's a driving force for students, as well as artists.

HG: I want to talk a little bit about your about some other projects you've been involved with as an artist in Western New York, such as maybe your time with the artists gallery, which is where you met Wes Olmstead, or did you know him before that?

VS: We feared West Olmstead before that. That was I took over in ‘85, Director, Chairman of the Board, whatever you want to call it, and I was there for five years, we had some very, very unique exhibitions. But prior to that I was involved in the artists gallery through exhibitions one unique exhibition that she exposed me to Denis Maloney, poet and publisher, where artists were invited to have the poets create an artwork to go with the poetry. It was an exhibition that was put together at the artist gallery, which was fantastic. I want to say mind blowing in many aspects of just the word as well as the image. That that was my first experience with the artists gallery, and getting involved with the, the artist gallery and the board and the people, which became also part of my life and extended family. And we still meet and still come together many, many occasions during the year but the artists gallery What a pain, trying to keep that thing about board. I was the last person to write a grant for the NEA to get money for the artists gallery back in ‘85. He also got New York State Council grant, and I was able to use that money and survive for almost four years. We had many, many unique exhibitions. We had Paul Sharits, his new work, we had Tony Conrad, Tony Conrad did the most unique thing at the artists gallery, he created an entire apartment in the environment. He took the entire space and created walls, moved in furniture and so on so that you move from one room to the next room to the next room and so on. That was amazing. That was one of the “far out” exhibitions. We had another unique exhibition with several artists, stapled them wrapped themselves…well, stapled themselves to the wall and just hung there for the entire exhibition.

HG: How long did the exhibition go for?

VS: Well, the opening was from like 7:30 or 8 o'clock until 11. We also had a guy hanging from ropes in the middle of the gallery. It was fun, trying to put together a lot of the exit. In fact, I got to get all of my slides together from the artists gallery and get them over to the Burchfield.

SP: You know, I think because this is what you're saying throughout all of this is that this link between identifying as an artist artwork in general and community and that all of these things are connected. And, you know, in that way you were you were aside from being an educator and an artist, you were connected to so many arts organizations. I mean, obviously, the Burchfield, an artist gallery, but you know, how many different galleries and art organizations you think you've worked with over the years? It seems like some almost every, at least some sort of involvement in almost every gallery that was in Buffalo from the late ‘50s, on.

VS: I was an installer and curator for the CEPA gallery. That was a gallery on Main Street, underneath the halls and CEPA when they moved from the street site, created the first call it national photo show that was curated by Les Krims. We did several craft shows. National craft shows came into Buffalo through the AAO gallery. Again, we were people that were ahead of our time. And this was all after the artists gallery. And the artists gallery was dealing with emerging artists, artists that couldn't find spaces for exhibitions in AAO was sort of the same thing. It was more or less an arts organization with artists, a group of artists were members and supported the gallery. And then we got involved with the… or I got involved with the Buffalo Society of Artists then that was due to Shirley Gasman. So, I was involved with them since I think 1984. So, I was one of the few craftsman… I also did crafts on the side. So, I was one of the few artists that was involved in the buffalo Craftsman from the mid-70s. through to the mid-80s. We had exhibition sets the Theodore Roosevelt site. In fact, we had a store an exhibition room at the Theodore Roosevelt site. We get people like Sylvia Rosen that was a member of the Buffalo grass with Olivia Godfrey and Carol Townes and you name it. They were people were there.

SP: Well, you were very active with Art Park. Yes. And you were you were active with them in cooking arts, and in all sorts of different…

VS: I did two or three stints at Art Park. One was a major stint for pinhole photography, again, where I got involved with artists where I got them motivated them to cook at because I cooked a lot. So, I would cook a meal and once a week and then they would cook on a rotating basis; but when I cooked, I cooked for art. So, when I cooked the meal, I got a piece of artwork from the people that were at Art Park because I came to Art Park even after my residency and continued to cook for the entire summer.

HG: That became quite theme, the cooking workshops over the years.

VS: Yes, Art Park.

HG: What year did you do a residency at Art Park?

VS: ‘92? I think it was 92

HG: One of the last [years].

Yeah. It was close to the end. Yeah, I think they continued with the program for another two years after that. I also did residency for cooking. It was called Chili up Chili down. That was held in a loft. So, I was there for a week cooking for the general public. And for the artists.

HG: The Burchfield Penny has received the archives of Art Park.

VS: Yes, I've heard.

HG: And so, as I continue processing those, I'll keep an eye out for you.

VS: I don't know what files you have, whether you got Jones MacDonald's files or not, but there were a lot of photographic images that I had created and made that should be part of the archives. If they're not, I'll have to make some and get some to you.

HG: I'll keep you posted. We have about 80,000 in pictures to go through, but we're plugging away at it.

VS: Great.

SP: But Art Park really in in a lot of ways sort of operated from a similar a similar approach that you have to art making and in encouraging people to make artwork It was very opening, sort of about exploring creativity as much as working together.

VS: And spending time together it kind of goes back to the student and the teacher at Buff State when I was a student, we would hang together and not go off campus or off Art Park because they had cabins and I decided to in my residency to stay there to live there. So, I was living with the artists for a week. We were living with each other cooking for each other. It was a wonderful, wonderful experience.

HG: Now that we're talking about organizations that you've been involved with, do you want to talk a little bit about your time with the Burchfield Penny Art Center?

VS: Well, I've been involved With the Burchfield Penny Art Center for this past summer was makes 13 years. And it's funny the story and how I became involved with the with the center. I say it started with a Q-Tip. I, I walked into the partial installation of the Frank Lloyd Wright windows exhibition at the virtue. I was being trained as a docent. I had photographs that I had taken the building of the Frank Lloyd Wright Martin house in 1959. And they became part of the exhibition in a supplemental room, which I was very pleased and very honored to be part of, but I walked into the exhibition two things got me number one, nobody was documenting the exhibition, photographing the installation. So, I got involved with taking photographs, prints, as well as slides. But then at a closer look, I found that the windows were dirty. And I said, “Hey, we got to get these, these windows clean.” And we got the art restoration people from downstairs to come upstairs and check out the windows and evaluate how we would operate in terms of cleaning the windows, they did an extensive evaluation of how we would do it. And we used cotton swabs and Q-Tips. And once you started cleaning the Tree of Life windows that were in the, in the house, or in the exhibition, you got all kinds of black muck and so on the Q-Tip and we were using distilled water. So, I got a team of people to work with me, students as well as adults from the BSA. And we managed to clean, clean everything before the exhibition opened.

SP: I can't remember exactly. So, I might be off on this, but you know, I was there. Just try the time and condition reports on the windows and I want to say that the true life windows consisted of 480 panes, little tiny panes. Yes, yes, per window. And there were over 70 windows in the exhibition. So, it wasn't it wasn't just a cleaning a window here or there with a Windex and a paper towels…talk about Windex paper towels is some of the people when they when they first got the windows, how they took care of them and some of the women, who will remain unnamed, said that they clean the windows with Windex. And that's like putting acid on the surface of the metal on the brass that was used to hold the glass together, we resolve the issue and corrected everything that had to be corrected. And it was very successful. It was quite an experience.

VS: Another experience about that particular exhibition was the installation, in Boca Raton. Phil mentioned Scott Propeack and myself, we were the people that took the exhibition down to the gallery. We had to lay out the show. We had to build all the pipes and then install the glass works, just the three of us.

SP: We were there for three weeks, I think maybe two weeks, two weeks, the three of us built an installation that required 12 people to put together in Buffalo when we first installed it. That's right.

HG: Never say that magic can happen at the Burchfield Penny Art Center!

VS: And the funny thing is, I still was cleaning a window with a Q-Tip. The last window that was part of the exhibition, and in fact it was the window that was in the collection of the Albright Knox art gallery. What was unique about the cleaning of the windows, the Buffalo news that come out here in the city, to the virtual took a picture of me through the windows cleaning the windows, so that was on that page and in color. In the Buffalo paper go down to Boca Raton: what the hell happens? Me cleaning a window! Now that photograph and so I'm synonymous with Q-Tips and the darn Martin windows. Some of the unique things, unique experiences I've had at the Burchfield was curating exhibitions that are being allowed to curate an exhibition or co curate an exhibition, curated.

HG: You volunteered close to 40 hours a week there.

VS: Oh, occasionally, yeah, depended on what was happening at the time. I've curated Milton Rogovin exhibitions. I'm really quite involved with the with the whole Milton Rogovin thing because I did write an essay about his work and Appalachia. I'm currently working on what I call the Milton Rogovin aesthetic. No one has ever written anything about Milton and his aesthetic approach or a point of view. He claimed that he never had an aesthetic point of view. I was fortunate enough in 2002 to go on a photoshoot, he called me to assist him set up and take some images on the lower West Side, which I did, so I saw him in action. I saw him in working, I saw his wife, Anne work with him. And so, it opened some secret doors for me in viewing the man at work, which I won't discuss now, but it was quite a unique experience.

SP: What year was that?

VS: They say 2002; he was finishing a quartet.

SP: So, you were on his last photoshoot.

VS: It was his last photoshoot. Then also curating and working on the Adele Cohen exhibition, which was a phenomenal experience working with Ben Perrone and Don Metz. Then there was the one exhibition I really enjoyed working on was Less, I want to say Les Krims, maybe Les should have a great exhibition.

HG: Well, was it Wes Olmstead?

VS: He is a good friend of mine, and I've known him for years and the exhibition became a religious experience as well as an art experience and putting that together was outrageous. Don't you think about the same? Oh, yes, of course. The cartoon exhibition.

HG: Oh, Tom Joles, Tom Joles. Anything.

SP: There's so many new Art on Wheels that you worked on. You worked on multiple Rogovin exhibitions over the years.

VS: Yeah. I created two cars for Art on Wheels. And the Herd about Buffalo. In fact, it painted the buffalo right in this room, in the dining room. It was a life sized buffalo. The funny thing is, when they moved it in clearance was one inch on each side of the doorway.

HG: That is exactly what I was thinking right now. I'm like “how did they get it in here?”

VS: In fact, there are still paint marks. Yeah, that was that was a wonderful experience.

SP: When did you retire from teaching?

VS: I did early retirement in 1997.

SP: Okay, I thought it was a little bit before you started working with us at the Burchfield, but I didn't know how much.

VS: I was working at part time at D’Youville College. I just finished my 20th year, part time D’Youville College teaching art history, architectural history, history of Western art, history of modern art, history of visual history of American art, history of American architecture in Frank Lloyd Wright. And then, a few years ago, we developed a course called Art of anatomy where I'm working with the gross anatomy professor in the clinic, and teaching drawing to students, non-art students that are taking arts liberal arts credit as well as biology credit for art of anatomy where we're working from cadavers. So, I'm teaching the drawing techniques and they're drawing. We're the only school in the region and in this part of the country that's doing it. I don't know if anybody in New York State city is doing any of the colleges there, but no other college that I know of has that program.

SP: It seems like the core principles are like in teaching art that a lot of places don't teach anymore, like drawing the figure from life is something that, you know, I know that people will do that with models and but not with the cadavers in that way, in that and that sort of medical science way. I think that people you know, and teaching principles, teaching, drawing, teaching, color teaching, happening less and less.

Todd Stevens is the professor I've worked with at D’Youville College. He teaches the biology.

HG: Are you still teaching?

VS: I'm on leave right now.

HG: Your impact into the arts in Western New York is so broad and far reaching!

VS: Well,haven't mentioned where else I taught I've taught I taught for Villa Maria photography for four or five years. I also took over Vince Arnone’s job at the Albright Knox Art Gallery, and taught there for five years in the art program they decimated, because they wanted, quote, “artists to teach the classes and not professionals,” which really hurt them and hurt their program. That was back in ’80 or ‘85. And I also taught at Buff State for four years, lost my position because of politics, political cutbacks. Yeah, I've been around for quite a while and if you put all the years separately if you count all the years, in terms of teaching, I think it goes somewhere between 73 and 76 years of teaching.

HG: Just teaching that's just teaching.

SP: Well, I know that I run into students of yours all the time, and, and they brag about what it was like taking classes from you, whether it be at City Honors or at one of the colleges.

VS: And what do they say?

SP: They say that you're the art teacher that had the most influence on them in their entire art careers. And that that's people who are now going on to have commercial art success, or they're teaching at universities and colleges around the US. They always remember Mr. Shanchuck.

VS: That's great to hear.

HG: I think the last question I have for this interview, I often asked this one of two ways depending on which resonates more for you. But what advice do you have for emerging artists? Or maybe another way to think about it is specifically for you, maybe, what advice would you have for some of your art students as they would be graduating and going on to pursue a career in the arts wanting to build a career as an artist themselves?

VS: Well, I wrote a statement before you guys came this morning. It deals sort of with what you're asking, sort of advice to those people: “Art is not a copy of reality, one must know the vision or the object or the concept and focus on the object, become one with the object become one with the concept. Then comes transformation, reconstruction, reorganization, and an understanding of the concept, through the elements and principles of design. It becomes an interior aesthetic action, which moves the individual artists to create a new object, a new concept, a new art, a new reality.” When they were cutting the arts at City Hall, I really got involved and wanted to go down there and say something and that same thing occurred back in the ‘70s, and I did speak Board of Education then I said, “Are we at war with the arts?” And that was the headline of an article in the paper about that conflict. Let me just read this because it deals with education. In my 50 years plus teaching, the visual arts in art education I found the visual and music education are limitless and its influence in the general education upon math, science, English, history, physical education, the creative process, inquiry, sensory, cognitive and effective ways of learning. The arts fill the gaps in life. Art reflects us. The arts are a force and momentum and the aesthetic that binds us. The arts are shaping our choices in our personal values, and choices in life. The arts in education has a spirit and energy vital force in essence, it's an essential part of life, a driving force for the student. The arts, as inspiration, creates a conduct and behavior and respect.” Thank you.

SP: Thank you.

HG: Thank you. Thank you so much, Victor for taking the time to talk with us today and for participating in the Living Legacy Project, because the Burchfield Penney and Western New York would not have been the same without you.

VS: Thank you.

LLP Artist:  Victor Shanchuk Jr. (Part 2 of 2)

Interviewer: Heather Gring

Transcriber:  Jordan Anthony

Date recorded:  February 27, 2014

Date transcribed: June 13, 2020

HG: This is the Living Legacy Project, part two, with Victor Shanchuck on February 27, 2014. So, Victor when we were here last time, we talked a lot about your time at City Honors, as well as some of the different art projects you've been involved with. I know we talked about the artist gallery last time. I know you were interested in talking about your childhood growing up in New York, and…

VS: We'll probably cover some of the same things in a different way. As opposed to last time. I don't know of many artists talk about themselves in growing up in a particular area or particular neighborhood, whether they have pride in that or fear because of the experiences they may have had. I grew up in in Brooklyn, New York in Bedford Stuyvesant. I always felt I left Bed Stuy as a survivor. And you might say, well, that's funny. Why a survivor? Well, it was a tough neighborhood to grow up in. It was multicultural, multiethnic, multiracial, and it was a neighborhood where you had to protect yourself, or learn to protect yourself. We walked to school elementary school from k to eight. I had my first girlfriend in the seventh grade. Maria Gonzales was her name. That was quite an experience, learning to relate to Puerto Rican people. And the funny thing is they were the minor minorities in the neighborhood. They were minorities moving into the neighborhood. And that is where a lot of the conflict took place between the regular people that lived in neighborhood as opposed to the new so called immigrants that were coming into Bed Stuy. But we all got along. You just didn't go out at night. So, learning experience, my landlord was Black. Why should I say my, my parents’ landlord was Black. My sister and brother and I grew up together in the apartment we lived in. I went to high school in Manhattan, was that thanks to my eighth grade art teacher, and also guidance counselor, although the guidance counselors didn't exist it at that time, that's ancient history. I put a portfolio together and applied to the School of Industrial art, which isn't how the High School of Art and Design in New York City. I got in. There were also two other students from the same school that I did elementary school that I attended. Gary Slater and Dale Drummond were their names. And we were all very successful in high school. The most unusual thing about the high school, and that high school experience: it was like a mini college experience. In that we were taught to think for ourselves. We were taught to develop different techniques. We were taught to see, we were told to go to museums, we were exposed to art all the time. Even though it was a basic commercial type art program. As a high school. freshman and sophomore, students live and went to a school or a school building in downtown… well, one considered downtown Manhattan, which is a 51st Street off of Lexington and the funny thing is right around the corner, from the School is where the Marilyn Monroe train scene with the skirt blowing up in the air took place. I couldn't be there because it took place at, I think three, four o'clock in the morning. But it was quite an experience for the school. We were taught basics in the lower school and in the Upper School where we had chosen our majors in which I chose advertising art was up town on 77th Street and Third Avenue, off of Third Avenue and we get some wonderful egg creams across the street from the schools to that's where we intense had intense study in an art choice. Be it illustration, cartooning fashion illustration, fashion design, industrial design, advertising design. I went into advertising art I worked a part time job and Display Designers, Inc. designing sugar packets and sugar cube late labels. Our studio was right across the aisle was Irving Penn's studio. So, we get to peek in occasionally to see what he was working on. I also worked at BBD&O, which was an advertising agency and did an internship there in New York, called the first color TV program in their offices, which was quite an experience. But all of these experiences were developing me as an individual to explore and see and develop myself as an individual to see as things differently than anyone else could see. I had two individuals in high school Mrs. Schwartz and Bert and Arnold Burgess, my advertising art teacher and she was my English teacher that motivated me to go to Buffalo State. And when I got to Buffalo State, of course, I was faced with something…not a shock, but something that I was familiar with. And that's basically what I experienced in high school. Only I was experienced the same things at the college level, in a more intellectual way, in a more spiritual way, in a more demanding way, artistically. Want to get to State Teachers College as it was called, what not Buffalo State now, it's now called. And some people joked and call it State Creatures College. We had a bus driver on Elmwood avenue that would announce the stops all the time, and when he got to the front of the college, that's what he announced “State Creatures College.” But it was a small campus 4000 students, basically every, everyone knew everyone else. And even some of their personal business. It was a school that once again taught the whole person. It was the curriculum, I should say. And it taught the whole person, total learning experience. It was teaching life looking at things and becoming one with them. Now, that's a very interesting approach to a college program.

HG: What years were you at the State Teachers College?

VS: I was there from 1957 to 1961. and came back and did my studies for my master's degree in the late 60s and early 70s and finished in I think 72.

HG: State Teachers College was established when, do you recall?

VS: 1928, when that building was built on Elmwood Avenue, were finished, became a full blown college. Going back to, you know, the total experience the total learning is just thinking of my art history class and Professor Wally Green, who the first semester in art history focused on this sculpture, Indian sculpture of Shiva, the creator destroyer and reading the Upanishads and various other literature from the Indian culture. We became, or learned, whether we learned it and felt it or not as a sophomore, one with that sculpture. We became one with Shiva and mind you can say “Why the hell spend the whole summer on one artwork, what would you see? What would you learn? It's a waste of time. You know, you should be learning much more than that.” And yet what we were learning was to open ourselves to become one with the artwork. And that helped us become one with other artworks, and other art experiences. And other professors and other cultures, or art techniques that we were exposed to. I find found out…and I'm looking at Shiva right now across the room. I found in Shiva, the universe, the cosmos, life, death, birth individual, I found a sense or a definition of life in that life is a constant transition from one the next to the next to the next. And what wildly Greene was teaching us was that art is constant transition. A lot of people would disagree with me in that, you know, when an artwork is completed, that is the completed artwork. And I look at it very, very differently. When one completes an artwork, it's not an end, it's the beginning of the next artwork. So that is there is constant change and constant transition going on from one piece to the next piece to the next piece. And that's where that's where the frustration comes in on many artists. They feel that they've reached the point that they can’t go beyond that point. They get stuck! Rothko got stuck. Jackson Pollock got stuck. Arshile Gorky got stuck. And they all committed suicide because they didn't realize that they were moving into a new sense of transition, a new sense of creating art. It's a shame that we lose people like that many artists that reached that point destroy their artwork. And that, too, is a shame in terms of aesthetics and beauty that that an artist does share or can share. What comes to mind is Victor Papanek neck, he was our industrial design teacher. And he approached the whole concept of one with the object from a utilitarian or non-utilitarian way, because of the way things were designed. He was also an apprentice of Frank Lloyd Wright. Now he told us a story. And I don't know if it's true or not. But I know I have used it myself in teaching: where Frank Lloyd Wright, or one of his apprentices would take a new apprentice, put them in a room, give them a match, a wouldn't match with a sulfur tip, and this individual would spend eight hours in the room contemplating that would match. Then the student would come out, Frank Lloyd Wright would sit in front of him, or he would sit in front of Frank Lloyd Wright. And Frank Lloyd Wright was saying, Tell me about the match. Now think about it. What can you say about wouldn't match with the software tip? What does it mean to you? What's the significance of it? You want me to tell you now, the match this wood? Wood comes from a tree grows in the earth, as roots, as leads, branches, reaches to the sky absorbs the heat of the sun, photosynthesis drinks the rain that comes from the clouds. The clouds are made of dust particles surrounded by moisture. And the process continues and goes on and on and on and on because ultimately, you're reaching out toward the sun itself and what it's and it's done as a star. And you go beyond that to other stars, and you end up with the universe. I was drafted out of teaching in 1964. It was in served in the Army from ‘64 to ‘66. I was trained as a ground pounder, a killer with a gun and light weapons, I was sent over to Germany and served at administrative company, the eighth division, the golden shaft, as it's called, it's an eight with a golden arrow going through it. The interesting thing about that particular division is that if there was a war to break out in Europe, or anywhere else, we were shipped out first, the company that I was with paying finance would be shipped to France and the other parts of the company would be shipped into combat. We were the do or die guys, but they never told us. Besides that, the general needed an artist and I was lucky to stay at the admin company and be retrained as a pay and finance clerk and do artwork for The General, the service club, I was fortunate enough to make friends with the guy that was leaving the service club as service club artist and got that job making more money as a service club artist than I was in the military being paid by Uncle Sam. While in the Army, I prepared myself for research and study of my masters and took a 30 day leave through what Germany, Italy, Greece, Turkey, exploring Byzantine art. And what I was doing was designing a series of lectures on Byzantine art for the high school student. It's an area that is totally ignored still today, by many artists historians, and many art teachers. And yet, how can you disregard 1000 years of art history? You know, and what influenced had on many people and I have found in my experiences and the artists that I like Kandinsky, Mark Rothko, Kazmir Malevich, Arshile Gorky, Piet Mondrian. They were all influenced by Byzantine art. And in many cases, the artists that I mentioned, were influenced by Russian iconography by the color, the stylization, the format, the composition, the structure, the design, you can find those elements in the in the artwork that those artists that I mentioned. And I felt that was very important to develop that and use that as my master's project. Kenneth Weinbrenner was my instructor that oversaw the project when I came back to the United States. Coming back to the States, I was hit with the teaching at Southside Junior High's school which is a school we were opening for the first year, it was seven through nine. It was a very interesting school to be involved in because you had nothing to begin with. Very little supplies, very little knowledge about the quality and the background of the kids. So, we did it. The faculty, teachers, there were two of us that were our teachers there too. From that experience, I grew. I grew a lot in the army because the Army built and created a sense of discipline that you wouldn't get if I had just stayed in Buffalo and continue teaching. it prepared me for what was to come and that was Bennett high school. I was transferred to as a high school teacher and taught studio and art, mechanical drawing, architectural drafting, art history and developed the other aspects of intellectual art programs for neighborhood students. It was a tough school, but a great experience. I learned a lot I hopefully the students I taught learned a lot also, because I carry those things that I experienced at State Teachers College and even in my high school into Bennett’s art program, and made it much more significant and sophisticated. It became special, the art program, so special to the point that we got all the display cases in the front hall to exhibit artwork. Fond experiences, and thanks to the Army and State Teachers College and what I learned the earth, I survived. I became another survivor because we had riots in 1968 and then, educationally, a lot of things became very, very, very difficult.

HG: Did the riots happen at the school?

VS: Outside from UB. And then they broke into the school and they broke into the school and created some problems, breaking classroom doors and windows and so on. It was a scary time, a time of change, change on my part because I became a greater disciplinary and, and again, I thank the Army and the other experiences I had in the junior high school, then came City Honors. Twenty years at City Honors, where I'm dealing with students that were visually blind, or visually illiterate, and I had to change their point of view. And seeing art changed my point of view and teaching art. And I approached many of the things that I did from a verbal standpoint, so that I built verbal understanding in the students and then the students could take that and apply it visually. The program was so successful that I presented it to the New York State art Teachers Association Conference convention, and also to the Humanities Conference, the state held, I don't even know if they're having those conferences now, today. It was very important, and I became much more mysterious in my approaches to teaching or mystical or spiritual. You know, like when I was teaching photography at City Honors I’d have given an assignment, “Photograph the edge of an edge, or I want to photograph of silence.” And I would do this with also the drawing and painting class and sometimes a studio or an art classes, really challenging the students to think differently and to see differently. And the funny thing is, it all relates back to my high school experiences and my college experiences because I was imparting all of that sensitivity, the experiences of beauty, the experiences of an aesthetic experience, as well as the basic elements and principles of art, which I thought were very, very important. But you know, in teaching at Bennett and teaching it at City Honors, I was also teaching in other situations in the community. For five years I taught at the Albright Art School during its winter and summer program, taught at Villa Maria College photography there for five years. I was at Buff State for almost, I think, five years. There was a time when Stan Searles was sick, and I took over his graduate classes, which I was, was very honored. I felt very honored to do that. And I was teaching his class on how a child develops in the art experiences the child has by the time they're five years old, and I don't know if most people know it, but a child should experience the elements and principles of design by the time they're five years old and even earlier. And the wonderful thing about that particular class was, we'd have mothers bring their kids in. And we'd work with the children in class, drawing, talking, you know, we'd even play as children. I would have the students in the class, get down to the level of the child. If the child is crawling, you crawled and look at the world around you, the child standing, how high is the child's eye level, and look at the world that way, and relate that to how they execute art and how they see art and how they see people. It was fun, I had a good relationship with Stan cells and that goes back to what I said earlier. Sharing that knowledge and experience in life with the faculty who became friends, as I said. Before I forget, I just want to make some statement describing my, my artwork. I write some sometimes I write these things in descriptions to be funny, or maybe a little sarcastic. My work has nothing to do with art. It's uncanny accuracy. It's surprisingly real. It's accurate photo realism. It's painting pinhole. It’s light. It’s elements of stylization, detail in both the animate inanimate, richly tactile, opulent, the suppression of time and motion, and basic visual delight, movement and mass, the dynamics of motion. So, think upon that one, folks. Burchfield…we talked about Burchfield in the last interview, why am I at the Burchfield? Why did I come to the Burchfield? One of the things I used to serve or do still serve is to meet the needs of the artists in the community. Be the kind of go-between the artists and the Burchfield center itself to help energize the mind of the artists and the staff of the Burchfield to hopefully open the hearts of the people that that I work with, or have worked with in the past, had people that have moved on to other positions. I love working with Spain Rodriguez and Olmstead and Rogovin and Adele Cohen (24:53), well… not a Adele Cohen but then Corona (24:55), Adele Cohen exhibition, with Guber and Steina [Vasulka] and I became very close with Steina during her installation and exhibition, she called me the Paparazzi because I was always taking pictures ever. And then we got because we were the same age, we really got into talking about life and artistic pursuits and what she had had done previously and Buffalo

HG: Can you talk a little bit about the Spain exhibition that you worked on with Don Metz and Ed Cardoni?

VS: Oh, that was a it was a wonderful experience, but it was hell, too, in terms of getting works, or getting information, or getting statements, and getting the right images and the three of us done and myself a lot of the time just taking the works and laying them out in the boardroom. Sometimes just taking over the whole gallery space if necessary to see the work and plot and plan and I was doing a lot of research on artists that were related to Spain Rodriguez or that period of time that Spain was very popular back in the in the Buffalo, early Buffalo days and also the money moved to San Francisco I think it was. At one point we research I was doing to try to get artists of that period here to Buffalo but that was passed on to somebody else on the staff and that was never developed, which is a shame. Through all the artists that I mentioned in the exhibitions that I curated and c- curated. I always became document and photographed the artists as much as I possibly could. Again, that was meeting the needs of the birds. To Penny Art Center, because nobody else was documenting the 13 years that I've been at the Burchfield, I've been documenting main exhibitions in the gallery space and also small gallery shows, documenting educational experiences dealing with tours, documenting some of those tours because of the important people that we were dealing with since we moved into the new building. One thing I didn't mention comes to mind. I also documented the complete building of that building from when it was a flat piece of ground to the finished building that you see today, in the opening of the building. One of my pet projects that I'm working on and have been working on for a few years is writing about Milton Rogovin because I became very close to Milton Rogovin, and photographing him and working with him, in fact, I was on his last photoshoot for him complete quartet image. And that in itself was an experience and what I'm concerned about when in terms of researching and really researching, because there's not much you can find out about Milton Rogovin’s aesthetic. He never talked about it. He never wrote about it. Nobody else has really become involved in that concept. What is his experience of aesthetics? In his execution of his artwork? Did he ever have a sense of aesthetic, and that's something I want to explore and develop. And a lot of the other experiences I've had at Burchfield, with artists like Wes Olmstead in his major exhibition of the Adele Cohen exhibition. The three exhibitions I've worked on into in relation to Milton Rogovin’s. work, and many other things that I've experienced there. Again, meeting the needs of the gallery meeting the needs of the staff meeting the needs of the artists that I become familiar with and become one with the artist community in Buffalo.