Greg Geffner - Biography |
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Artist – Manufacturer, Greg Geffner. Born in NY into the Long Island, land of dysfunctionality, where in high school first started making paintings, stop action animations and life size figurative plaster sculpture, played semi pro ice hockey, scrimmaged with the NY Islanders for two summers and ran away from home before senior year of high school, hitchhiking around Canada and ultimately graduating from the University Of Buffalo with an undergraduate degree in painting and sculpture. Won two snow sculpture contests at the Albright Knox Museum and then moved to Philadelphia to a studio next to the Rodin Museum, made paintings, drove a checker cab and coached the University of Pennsylvania women’s ice hockey team where was also able to draw from cadavers at their medical school. Refused an assistantship offer from Rodin’s assistant Boris Blai and made his collaborative drawing with Andy Warhol, titled: John the Baptist Preaching Campbell’s Soup. Finally moving to the Brooklyn NY waterfront, building a live work loft in an old industrial dye factory and bottlecap stamping company, affording amazing views of the Manhattan skyline's buildings and bridges, where documenting a 15 year lightning strike photo series of the NYC skyline. The show of photogrphy traveling to major science museums all over the world allowing to side step the traditional art scene. During the East Village art boom, completed an art residency at the Empire State Studio Program where Jeff Koons said his painting reminded him of circumcision but just a little piece. Adopting a practice of making art from everyday common materials, Ballpoint Pen, Velcro Fabric and 3-D Stereoscopic Photography using plastic Nimslo cameras while growing a successful business designing and building Velcro Displays for ad agencies, adapted the commercial presentation boards into a Velcro Morphic Sculpture series. The piece titled, Velcro, Ad Rheinhardt,Variations, upsetting Mrs. Rheinhardt who claimed that this was plagerizing her husband's painting that's in the Whitney Museum Of American Art and also perturbing Velcro USA Corporation claiming that their trademark was being dissolved. |
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