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Words by Neil Gladstone
Most people thumb through a supermarket circular to weed out the occasional bargain from a field of product shots and prices. Marc Brodzik studies them to find inspiration for his artwork. Those pages of overblown color and fat black text might not be intrinsically beautiful, but they're mesmerizing to Brodzik. Even more mesmerizing are Brodzik's larger-than-life paintings which utilize elements of mass-market advertising and logo design to celebrate the culture of working-class America. It's only fitting that he resides in Hellertown, PA - a former mill town with a landscape dominated by strip malls and Dunkin' Donuts signs. And where better for a pop culture junkie to hang his hat than a withering, 40-room brick mansion that resembles the Bates Motel? His workshop, located in an adjoining space, was originally a general store. Its screen door is still adorned with the catch phrase: "Buy Bond Bread: It's honestly good." A 9-foot image of crucifixion, entitled Will Work For Salvation towers over the sawdust-covered, makeshift studio. Brodzik's friend and co-worker, carpenter Yuri Petrina, is nailed to the cross. Behind Petrina's head is a halo inscribed with the words "Martyr Mystery Oil" nicked from a can of Marvel Mystery Oil. The piece was fashioned from wood with a jigsaw and then painted with acrylics. Marvel Mystery Oil is just one of many logos that have found their way into his work. The list also includes Velveeta cheese, Cap'n Crunch cereal and Wonder Bread - just to name a few. Brodzik, 28, trained to be an advertising artist at the Art Institute of Philadelphia and has cultivated an affection for America's product-driven culture over the past several years. "As mainstream and popular as it is, it's what we're all about; it's the crap I can identify with," he says. Ride is an 8-foot painting featuring Shawn Prendergast - Brodzik's Harley-loving stepfather - posing with a cold brew in front a backdrop that bastardizes the Tide detergent logo. Gold Bond Power, an even larger piece, imagines friend Mike Baker riding a turbo-charged bottle of Gold Bond medicated powder. "That one comes from pure love of the product," notes Brodzik with a laugh. Last summer he ended up using the medicated talc to ward off the pain of prickly heat and grew obsessed with its healing capabilities. The idea for Will Work For Salvation developed while Brodzik was slaving away with Petrina, building kitchen cabinets for a persnickety client. "Sometimes you work and work and work and instead of being rewarded, all this shit gets thrown back in your face," he says. Even though he has an impressive body of work, carpentry jobs still pay the rent. It's no coincidence that Salvation's fiery red hues recall early 20th-century Russian propaganda posters. Brodzik's discourse is peppered with socialist sentiments like: "Everything gets built on the back of a worker and they're never acknowledged." Still, the painter with a "Polish work ethic" says he lives to toil and the various projects in progress around his shop prove it. Salvation's martyr looms over a bedframe made out of various '50s classic cars. The sideboards are pointy fins from a '59 Cadillac El Dorado and the headboard is the grill of a '59 Impala. "It'll look like a brand new car when I'm finished," he assures, beaming. Another new work celebrates the mudflaps usually found on an 18-wheel truck. Brodzik's "tractor pull" chic was nourished by his years at vocational school in Berlin, NJ, studying welding and mechanical drafting. Flannel shirts, leather jackets and muscle cars were a way of life back then. The rugged craftsman, in overalls and a knit cap, could still pass for a shop teacher. Before the car bed is sold (for $5,000) to the client who commissioned it, Brodzik wants to make an entire matching bedroom installation piece including walls painted with racing stripes and a tool box bureau. A poster of Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwaters hanging on the shop wall acknowledges the architect's influence on Brodzik. "I loved the way he designed space. I would love to build my own house, design the furniture and do the paintings," he says. That wouldn't be a big stretch. When the new managers of the Trocadero asked him to make a bar for the upstairs club, The Balcony, he agreed, under the condition that he be allowed to design the entire interior. The result is a postmodern burlesque hall with a hand-painted proscenium arch, rust-tinted walls and a plush mahogany bar detailed with red velvet. Life-sized mural prints of a 1950s stripper line the room, recalling Andy Warhol's use of repeated images. "I never liked Warhol until recently," he notes, "but good art is about doing things distinctively and he definitely did." He concedes that his work incorporates traditional pop-art style, but suggests that surrealist painter Salvador Dali and photographers Diane Arbus and Joel-Peter Witkin had more of an effect on his style. Even though The Balcony was a paying job, it was still a personal statement. Look closely at the proscenium for a subtle homage to Gold Bond. When EarSHOT asked the painter to create a cover for the magazine, he almost immediately decided to have himself pictured naked riding a Big Wheel. "I'm making fun of myself being a big brat kid, which I can be," he jokes, commenting on his inflated ego. "People make themselves out to be characters and I do the same thing. I'm probably one of my biggest art projects."
Brodzik's "products," counterclockwise from the top: "Gold Bond Power," "Whitey," "Special K," "Will Work for Salvation," and "Ride." |
POP GOES THE EASEL 
