RIP Maestro Marshall Arisman

I’ve told this story before, but one thing Marshall Arisman taught me is that a good story deserves to be retold. In 1984, I was a bartender at the 8th Street Tavern in Hoboken and doing occasional illustrations for The New York Times and The Village Voice. I learned from an ad in the Times that The School of Visual Arts was launching a new MFA program. The chair was Marshall Arisman and the program was then called “Illustration as Visual Journalism.” I applied and met Marshall in his office at SVA on 23rd St. He was wearing a tan cashmere sweater. I did most of the talking. He laughed a bit.

My application included the requisite 20 slides, some Voice cartoons and not very good travel sketches I’d done in Viet Nam during the war. I didn’t have a Bachelor’s degree when I applied. I convinced Marshall to let me enroll by promising to finish that undergrad degree while also getting my MFA at night in his program.

Marshall seldom used paint brushes. He would apply the paint on paper or canvas with a palette knife, a q-tip swab, or the pop top from a soda can. He smoked unfiltered Gauloises cigarettes even while he was painting in oils.

Marshall died in 2022. I wept when I heard it as if I lost family. SVA had an exhibition of his work in their Gramercy Gallery this winter. It closed last week. I am so glad I got to see it. His artwork is powerful and plentiful. The personal memorabilia was also fascinating. I had to laugh seeing his rejections slips, including one from J. Carter Brown of the National Gallery of Art. There were touching anniversary cards drawn for his wife, Dee Ito.

I was not sure I was cut out to be a teacher. I wanted that vanishing (even, then, in 1985) job as a freelance illustrator. Marshall learned of a job as sabbatical replacement for an illustration prof at East Carolina University. He persuaded me to take the job. I taught there for a few years, then 30 years at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania.

I would always tell students what Marshall told us. Think of yourself not as an illustrator, but as the author of your own projects. Make something personal and then find a place for it. Of course, the work does not always find a place, but, at least, it gets done. I think about Marshall often and try to get back to work.