Gronk (artist)

Gronk (artist) (born 1954) is the pseudonym of Chicano painter, printmaker, and performance artist Glugio Nicandro.

Quotes

 * I believe—when somebody gave me a pencil and a sheet of paper—was to create a world for myself, basically. It sort of made everything fall to the wayside. The environment where I was growing up, the poverty—all of that just sort of fell to the wayside, and I was able to create these worlds and enter into it. And I think that sort of isolated me a lot from other kids in the neighborhood, even isolated me while I was going to school. And my earliest recollections of entering school was the times when it was art time, and they had easels and they had paint and they had brushes…
 * On when he discovered his love for art in “Oral history interview with Gronk, 1997 Jan. 20-23” (Smithsonian Archives of American Art)


 * It was explaining early on, I think, the process. And I can see that those were like the early stages of what I eventually went into when I was doing the large-scale on-site installation pieces when I paint directly onto the walls. Because I’m actually painting but I’m also engaging the viewer and talking during the course of the time that I’m actually doing the work. So I think the early performance pieces actually influenced me in the direction that I would later take in the larger on-site pieces when I started doing those pieces.
 * On explaining the artistic process to spectators in “Oral history interview with Gronk, 1997 Jan. 20-23” (Smithsonian Archives of American Art)


 * People like to hold onto life in many ways, but everything is transitory. This is it, right now. Youth doesn’t last forever, beauty doesn’t last forever, so appreciate it for the moment.
 * On the loss of site-specific artwork in “Gronk by Marisela Norte” in BOMB Magazine (2007 Jan 1)


 * The hardest thing these days is to make something that’s beautiful; it’s easy to make ugly art. I think it takes a lot more talent to make something beautiful. Beauty to me is when you show something to someone that they’ve never seen before. That’s what a great work of art does; it shows you something that you didn’t know existed.
 * On making beautiful artwork in “Gronk by Marisela Norte” in BOMB Magazine (2007 Jan 1)