Who We Were
I am the last left of the five of us. Bill, Tony, Peter, and Kanella all lived long and left beautiful sons and daughters, grandchildren, great grandchildren. As far as I know my parents did not lose any children, which was rare in those days. My father Thomas Stelianos (1886-1966) married Evangelia Gregorakos (1886-1970), a young lady from Selogouthi, Laconia, in 1911. It was a love match. He fought in World War I and in other conflicts. In Agios Nikolaos, in the mountains above Gytheio, things were not easy. People kept goats among the olive trees and my mother spun silk from the cocoons in the mouria, the mulberry trees. My father journeyed alone to and from New York five times during the 1920s. Finally, he sent word to my mother, “Come now;” and she shepherded Vasilis, Adonis, Panagiotis, Kanella, and me, Stelios, from the xorio to Ellis Island. It was 1930. I was almost five. The photo was probably taken within the next year. Bill (back row, far right) is standing on two telephone books because the oldest should be the tallest.
At Gytheio the sea is so deep that great ocean liners could anchor close to the shore and small boats could be rowed out in no time. We sailed through Piraeus and on to Ellis Island on a ship called the Byron. I can’t recall much about the crossing except that they served a lot of eggs at meals and my mother became so sick of them she never ate another one as long as she lived. I do remember being in the midst of the crowded warmth and excitement of my family -- but that felt just like being at home.
The 1930s -- Work, Home, Church, School
My father had a restaurant “The Coffee Pot” on 1st Avenue and 74th Street, near the Cathedral. Sometimes, he told us, men would come in and order a cup of hot water for a nickel and then load it up with ketchup and salt and pepper to make “tomato soup” -- and then ask for a free refill. And no tip. But that’s how it was then. My brothers all worked after school. When I was old enough I became the delivery boy for the Greek florist on the block. One day I took a huge bouquet of many different kinds of flowers to a Mr. Dimitri Mitropoulos, Great Northern Hotel, West 57th Street. He answered the door, and from a great height I heard, “Hello, my boy!” Oh! Tip!
Our apartment was on 1st Avenue and 79th, so work and church were all close to home. Evening after evening there with the whole family, I watched my brother Peter draw pictures -- airplanes, figures of boxers, anything. It fascinated me how he controlled the pencil! I was drawn in completely. He helped me to learn. Really the whole family was extremely kind to me: one day a new cap, another time roller skates. My brother Tony bought me a bicycle! I loved zooming around the streets. But drawing with a pencil, that was my inner world.
Our life was completely regular, hours for meals, for school, for work. During the week we saw our Greek neighbors and on weekends we visited with uncles, aunts, and cousins. The whole family went together to the Cathedral every Sunday. I was an altar boy. One Sunday morning -- maybe it was Easter -- I happened to stand close to the Archbishop’s chair during the service. It was a chair whose seat folded up and down as he stood or sat. One time when he sat back down, it was on my left hand and I screamed and screamed. He turned to my mother and told her to make me be quiet. Calmly she spoke, “If your reverence would please stand up and get off his hand, he will stop.” He did, bowing to my mother. She rushed me home, boiled a big onion, and stuck it (YOW) onto the fourth finger of my left hand, which itself by then had swollen to the size of an onion!
I hated school. I couldn’t get into the subjects. Somehow, all the way through there were very intelligent teachers who understood I could do something else; and so I would draw the murals for the holidays, the dances, etc. I loved dancing. I had such good times with my friends, all Greek of course. I was not so tall or macho, but I made it with the in-group because I could draw any picture for them that they wanted . . .
The toughest boy was named Romeo. Once, we all went to an empty lot and roasted potatoes together in an empty lot. It was like going to the moon. Also, I really was into playing center on the local football team. By this point we had moved to 61st Street in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, and I was taking the bus every day to Fort Hamilton High School. I will always remember the art teacher there, Miss Anna Dick.
She took a serious interest in what I drew and painted, and she was the first one to suggest I could have a great career as a commercial artist. Although this was a completely radical -- even mysterious -- possibility, my parents were supportive. My father was extremely strict with us all, but in this case -- maybe because I was the youngest -- he was open. He was not demonstrative, but I knew he was behind me with a kind of silent encouragement.
The 1940s
The army drafted me right out of high school just before graduation and sent me to the Philippines on a Liberty Ship. Talk about seasick! On the base when we got there, an older soldier told me, “Don’t volunteer for anything!” So when the sergeant was assigning jobs, I kept quiet, and was the last one left. “Well, Antonakos! That’s a Greek, name, right? So you can be a cook!” So I was: bacon for 50, eggs for 50 --
Ugh! Frozen chickens (so modern) that took days to defrost in the tropical sun!
For the first time I was in an environment that was not wholly Greek, but it was still extremely regimented. One of the few things that were not regular and repetitive was a kind of mischievous little monkey that one of my comrades had “tamed.” I myself had found and trained a very bright green -- and very loud -- parrot. I’ll never know why, but one day the monkey pulled out three of the parrot’s long tail feathers and the parrot bit the monkey’s tail off. So now we had a little internal war in our company. The night missions were very frightening. I am forever grateful I never saw active combat. Finally I came home, and so did Tony from Italy and Peter from India. You never forget the experience of the army
The 1950s, New York
After that things happened fast: in and out of Brooklyn Community College, moving to Manhattan, my first studio on West 29th Street, my first marriage, and the birth of my sweet son, Stephen Basil, now a guitarist and singer. It was great fun being a commercial artist. I could draw, I could embroider canvases, I could come up with ideas -- it was an age of advertising. Andy Warhol was doing it too. I worked for some big agencies and finally at Columbia Records, where I designed the album cover for the big Broadway show about the ILGWU, “Pins and Needles.” It was a box with a grid of compartments, all filled with colorful found objects: pin cushions, spools of thread, a tailor’s tape measure, things like that.
During lunch hours I was at the Museum of Modern Art. For me it was better than a university. I saw the development of the whole century: sculpture, painting, Paris, Picasso, everybody. I saw that gradually images and objects from daily life were entering into the themes and actually into the physical artworks themselves. On Sunday mornings I took coffee in the museum cafe and read the Times and then I’d spend hours with the art. It was another home for me. It was never crowded. Of course I loved also the galleries, the few that were open then. Down on 8th Street, the Whitney showed very exciting contemporary art too. It is impossible to tell how much the experience of being so close to so much good work day after day meant to me as a young artist. I felt so liberated by Luciano Fontana’s slashed canvases and Alberto Burri’s salvaged burlap. I too wanted to use real things and to make real things -- not “pictures” or representations of things. My whole background had been totally regular, but somehow in art I felt that I could be free, that I could go beyond what I knew and try new things and new ways. I think I was the only one in the family who did want to step out beyond the old ways.
Evenings and
weekends I worked in my studio in the fur district. There wasn’t much money for art supplies, but anyway I liked picking up things in the streets -- and there you could find just about anything you wanted: chairs, bushels of buttons, bolts of fabric, lumber, umbrellas, all kinds of boxes, pillows . . .
I gravitated to such stuff because it was real, much more real to me than paint. So I began with both the 3-D constructions and the (sewn fabric) “Sewlages.” And I still work with both three-and two-dimensional work. There is always an underlying order, despite the catch-as-catch-can materials. Maybe this has to do also with growing up and becoming myself in a city with its grid of streets, its work schedules, and transportation schedules, its modular architecture . . .
1960 -- The Present
By the end of the decade I had begun to show in galleries here and there; and by 1960, after some geometric experiments, I knew that neon would be the center of my work, for its unbelievable color and intensity, yes -- but also because I could control its form, and use it indoors and outside. “A controlled paradise” I called it then. I felt that it could work spatially and that it had an inherent potential for gentleness.
After giving up the commercial work I took on artist-in-residencies around the country -- Yale, University of Wisconsin, Fresno State in California, and so on; and then at last my art began to earn me a living. In 1963 I took a bigger studio on Greene Street in Soho; and in 1967 I moved to my current studio on West Broadway. It seemed big -- at the time. Anyway its proportions are still excellent for me.
Well, the work developed through the decades with my neon installations here and in galleries and museums around the country and then in Europe; then came my Rooms, the neon Canvases and Panels, the works dedicated to certain saints; the Chapels and Meditation Spaces, the Packages, Artist’s Books, Reliefs, collages, the architecturally scaled Public Work, and -- always, from the beginning to today -- the drawings. The work has remained formal: I still want all the parts to relate to each other and to their surroundings. What is amazing is that if you just keep going, so many new things come to you, the ideas just come . . .
This is not the place to make a chronology of the work or to thank everyone who has helped me and supported me through all these years here, in Greece, and everywhere. There are so many, and I thank them so much . . .
I do want to say I am glad my wife Naomi is with me, and that in the 1970s our daughter Evangelia Mary was born, a mathematician and a great joy.
Looking at the past this way takes a lot of energy. It can be very tender -- once in a great while. Actually I prefer today. I am interested in what I am working on now.
I want to draw and think and keep going forward. I want to stay open. It is the present I really care about -- the present and the future!
