Stan Street
Stan
Artist
and Bluesman
Stan
Street
Cajun chefs, bluesmen and red-haired
women populate the art of Stan Street.
On his canvas, New Orleans's Delta and Florida's Big Cypress Swamp
blend into a stew of red
hot licks and blazing
Blues. But Stan Street didn't meet "The Blues" in art school. It was only after
years as a recognized blues
musician in Florida
that he took up brush and paint. Street's earliest art celebrated the blues pioneers in wide slashes of brilliant
color on slabs of discarded wood, rescued from anonymity with
portraits of the likes of Muddy Waters, Elmore James, Robert Johnson.
After some time in New Orleans, the juke joints and blues festivals of the deep South started to
breathe on
his
canvas. As he experimented with different styles,
drawing on the Impressionists and Expressionists, Street "took
what
he needed to know
and went from there." Bold strokes and colors played
out the sounds he heard and played as a musical artist. "Being self-taught
is an advantage, in that doors are always open for new development.
My art will always have a primitive feel to it and I try to give
it movement and life."
The biggest influence on Street's art is the perspective given by
being a blues musician. Growing up in New York
he was influenced by his father and uncle - classical percussionists
- who encouraged his
creativity. He took up: sax, harmonica, percussion
and singing, accumulating credits in award winning blues groups. He
tours the Canadian blues
festival circuit as
well as blues
festivals and honkytonks
of Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi and Georgia. Although
Street calls Florida "home,"
he shares common ground in the earthy
and primordial blues
rooted in New Orleans,
Big Cypress, and Mississippi Delta.
Putting the music in his head and the vision of his travels onto canvas are as natural
as blowin' a slow, low, blue note
through his well-worked sax. Street readily acknowledges one art
form supports the other and that his
art work and his
music are works in
progress. Leaving open the question, "Does the music support the
art or does the art support the music?" Perhaps both. But to Stan Steet's many fans, that is a question
that does not need answering.
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by:
Linda-Lou Nelson
Founder
South Florida Blues Society
contact
RaZoO
GaLLeRy
(954)
663-3888
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