James Esber

James Esber : I was born in 1961 in Cleveland, Ohio and had a working class childhood. My father was a fireman and bricklayer. My mother was a homemaker. We lived in a mundane ranch house in the suburbs, in a neighborhood where every house looked alike except for the trim color. Our neighborhood was fairly ethnic; there were a lot of Italians, Poli... sh and Czechoslovakians living there at the time. In the 1970's my contact with the world was mainly through television, books and movies and I felt that everything interesting happened in other places. So, once I finished college I couldn't wait to settle some place else and I immediately moved to New York. Art Interview: Cleveland has a nice museum and a decent art school, but coming from a middle class family in the mid-west I would think that you were fairly limited to the arts. How were you introduced to the art world? James Esber : There was no reason that I should have become an artist other than the fact that I began to see myself as an artist when I was young. I was always very good at making art even at a very young age. My parents weren't particularly geared towards pushing me in any academic direction. If I had been given more direction or had been more mature I probably would have studied something other than art. But, I found my own way and when I finished high school I was offered a full scholarship at the Cleveland Institute of Art. But when I was young I had a very limited connection to the professional art scene because Cleveland is geographically removed from its center. I did however make a few trips to New York City when I went through my junior and senior years of college. Art Interview: Was the Cleveland Institute of Art able to prepare you for a career in the arts? James Esber : Unfortunately we weren't given much preparation for an art career there. However the education at the Cleveland Institute of Art was great. Within the first two years it provided me with a complete foundation in drawing, design and color theory. That knowledge was, ...Read More