Atlantic City Weekly

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As the product of innovative parents, and with an early fascination for things like 3-D movies and pop-out storybooks, Charles Fazzino seemed sort of predestined to follow some type of artistic path in life.
It is doubtful Fazzino could have envisioned the kind of success he’s enjoyed as a professional artist, however, as today, more than 30 years after graduating from the School of Visual Arts in New York City, he is hailed as the most popular 3-D pop artist in the world. His detailed, colorful and vibrant pieces are exhibited in more than 600 galleries and 20 nations worldwide, and he’s an official licensed artist for Major League Baseball, the NFL and the U.S. Olympics. He’s been commissioned to create the artwork for such high-profile events as the Grammy Awards, the Presidential Fitness Awards, the Daytona 500, Indy 500, the Super Bowl, the NHL and MLB All-Star games and others.

On Saturday and Sunday, July 2-3, Fazzino will appear at the Oh My Godard Gallery in The Pier Shops at Caesars. He and gallery owner Michael Godard, an internationally known pop artist in his own right, have collaborated on projects including a original piece called “Toast of the Town” that will be available for sale in limited-edition prints, and Godard invited Fazzino to be a guest at his A.C. gallery. Fazzino will be at the Oh My Godard Gallery from 5-9pm Saturday, July 2, and noon-4pm Sunday, July 3.

Atlantic City Weekly recently spoke with Fazzino by phone from his New York City studio.

Can you tell us what artwork you’ll be bringing to Atlantic City, and have you been in town before?

I did some Atlantic City paintings and quite a few of Philadelphia. I’ll have some hand-painted sports memorabilia like hand-painted baseballs of the Phillies, a lot of New York things — pieces that I feel will appeal to people from the tri-state area of New Jersey, New York and Philadelphia.
I come to [Atlantic City] to play once in a while. I go to the Borgata a lot. The restaurants are really nice. But until the Godard gallery invited me to come I hadn’t been there for a show I think in about two or three years. Michael and I have been doing some shows around the country together. His work is usually on view, but it was really nice of him to ask me to do a show in his gallery at a prime time [July 4th weekend].

This will be my first time with him at his studio. I’ve been doing some road shows with him, and the two of us have been doing a lot of media together. He’s out in Las Vegas and I’m here in New York, and we did shows in Houston, Boston and Jacksonville, Florida so far, and what we also did was we collaborated as artists. We did a piece together where I did a huge New York apple and he did a tequila worm. He did a worm to my apple, and we’ve been showing that piece at every show and selling a few of them.

"Toast of the Town" (right) is a 3-D collaboration between Charles Fazzino (pictured) and fellow pop artist Michael Godard, whose A.C. gallery Fazzino will visit July 2-3.

So far the partnership of doing shows together has been quite successful. I think, even thought my work is three dimensional and his paintings are flat, we find that as we talk together we have many of the same collectors. He’s told me that often times, when he’s invited to people’s homes to see their collections, we have many of the same collectors. A lot of the people who find his humor fun and exciting are a lot of the same people who collect my work because they’re bright — even though we’re sort of polar opposites in a way — mine are super dimensional his are super simple — but we’re both very colorful.

Much of the work you’ve created is of sports stars and celebrities, including a collage of The Honeymooners (a hit sit-com in the 1950s that starred Jackie Gleason, Audrey Meadows, Art Carney and Joyce Randolph). Can you tell me a little about your inspiration behind that one?

The funny thing about The Honeymooners is that one of the girls in my studio is a real Honeymooners fan, and can recite lines from different episodes. I did a Lucy [Lucille Ball] piece in the past because I love doing popular culture, and she said ‘Why don’t you do a Honeymooners piece?’ I asked if anyone still remembers The Honeymooners and she said it’s still on certain TV channels late at night, so I did it.

Well, my mother [Irene], who is from Finland, was very good friends with Trixie, played by Joyce Randolph, who is actually a Finnish-American. She’s the last surviving cast member, and when I did the piece I had the idea to call my mom and have her talk to Joyce to see if she’s interested in collaborating with me and having her sign part of the edition. She was overjoyed to do it.

She's 85 years old, she lives in Central Park South and has done very well for herself. She’s doing appearances with me called ‘Tea with Trixie’ and I’m also launching a worldwide series of my artwork on high-end luggage, for Heys luggage. So in September she’s going to make an appearance with me at Macy’s Herald Square [in NYC] and helping me launch that. It’s going to be very cool. And people, when she’s there, really flock to see her. People really want to meet her because she’s got such great stories. 

What steered you toward becoming a specialist in three-dimensional art?

I had just finished at the School of Visual Arts in New York in the late 1970s, and I remember one of my instructors always saying to me ‘You know, you really have to do something different if you want to get noticed. There are so many good artists out there.’ At that time, the late ’70s, I was an illustration-and-printing major. I got out of school and was like, ‘There’s no jobs,’ so as a kid my mom [an accomplished artist who still produces work; Fazzino’s Italian-born father, Salvadore, was a shoe designer for Saks Fifth Avenue], would always buy me those pop-out children’s books and I loved them.

I was doing illustrations and took some of my old prints and cut them up, started layering them and trying to make them look like a pop-out book as an experiment. In early 1981, I brought them to a show and people saw them and started to get excited about these 3-D things. So over the years I kept doing my paintings but also these three-dimensional pieces. In New York I did a show where they had this big outdoor arts festival at the time, and the three-dimensional pieces were being bought up faster than my flat paintings. I thought, hmmm, maybe I’m onto something, and here over 30 years later it’s become a worldwide thing. We have galleries in 24 countries showing my work. It’s sort of an amazing thing that happened.

Are they much more labor intensive to produce than flat paintings?

They are. In the beginning when I started doing it, my wife and sister would help me cut out all the pieces and I’d glue them up [on a sketched-out board]. Today, in my studios here in New York, I employ 50 artists who help with the cutting because there’s endless hours involved with that. One piece sometimes takes a week to create. I need a lot of hands to help me.

I saw a video clip online where you produced a piece for auction to help Indianapolis Colts wide receiver Pierre Garcon (a Haitian-American who lost family and friends in the 2010 Haiti earthquake) — do you do a lot of that sort of charitable work?

I usually pick about three or four charities per year to do special work with [he’s is a national vice president for the Muscular Dystrophy Association and has donated work to Special Olympics International, Project CHILDD, the Make-A-Wish Foundation and others]. We put up work for auction and I find it very gratifying and beneficial — not only because it helps so many people, but it’s also helps open up a new audiences to those who might not be familiar with your work.