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These artists focus their creativity on pets.
By Kerri Danskin
If you spend some time talking with artists who focus their creativity on pets, you might hear a theme developing: Pick a topic you love, and make your art without fear.
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"Dirty Boxer" - Marc Tetro
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Stephen Huneck, an artist based in St. Johnsbury, Vt., became an artist somewhat by accident.
“I started my career off as an antique picker. I would go to farms, knock on doors, and say ‘Do you have any furniture?’ Inevitably I would be buying broken furniture,” he says.
Huneck fixed antique pieces and sold them at auction. But eventually creativity took over.
“I was a very successful art forger. They knew at the auctions, but it sold anyway,” he says. Developing his skills by repairing valuable antique furniture had allowed him to learn how to create copies.
“I just did it on my own. I would really start pushing the limits with the antiques,” he says. “Everybody told me, ‘You’re being foolish doing this; you should be an artist.’”
“One of my carvings ended up in the hands of a Madison Avenue [New York City] art dealer, and he literally wouldn’t leave me alone. This was a great gallery. New York was such an alien place; the people were alien, I was an alien. But I decided to give it a shot, and I decided that I wouldn’t do anything with antiques, so everything was riding on my art. Within two weeks, I sold a $10,000 carving.”
Huneck continues to make wood carvings, paintings and drawings and sculptures in various media, and recently formed a partnership with Sherpa Pet Group LLC designing toys. All of his art is focused on dogs.
“I said well look, I’m not stupid. If I’m going to do this, I’m going to pick a subject matter that makes me happy. I’m going to make things that I want. I don’t know what other people want; I’m not even going to try to guess,” he says.
“You’ve got to be a space ranger to really be a great artist. You have to be willing to go places where no one else is willing to go. I never feared failure. I don’t look at it in those terms. I’m totally preoccupied with doing what I want to do and doing it as well as I can. When I carve a dog, I carve the hairs on the dog, and say I carve a life size dog—every hair on that dog is carved. Each hair is the whole universe to me. I’m not going to do it unless it’s done absolutely right,” he says.
Marc Tetro, a Canadian-born artist currently living in Atlanta, fell into pet-themed art in a way that was similarly accidental.
“Basically my artistic career started in Canada. I started by putting images on T-shirts. They were pretty much geared to travelers coming to Canada. So I wanted Canadian-themed imagery—huskies, bears. From there we went to different products, and I was approached by a publisher. Eventually there were different galleries selling my original art. Then I did this one piece for the TV show ‘Friends’ and they put it in Central Perk [a fictional coffeehouse in New York City on the show]. I started getting all kinds of feedback and inquiries and started working with more galleries, selling the originals on canvas and on paper. A couple years ago I bought a giclée printer and started producing and selling giclée [a high-quality digital printing process] prints myself,” he says.
Now, Tetro’s work focuses almost exclusively on dogs. When he thinks back to his days designing graphics for T-shirts, Tetro says he knew right away that art was for him.
“It was magic, and I knew that it was what I was going to be doing for a long time.”
Tetro’s style is unique, but he says he doesn’t really have a choice in the matter.
“The way I draw is really the only way I can draw,” he says. “The way you draw is very unique to you and no one else is really like that. If you really listen to what’s inside and draw the way it comes out, it becomes very special.”
Anna Dibble of Dibbledog says her decision to paint animals was very natural.
“I don’t work on any other subject matter besides animals. About two years ago I started painting a lot of dogs because I got a dog. I really enjoy it. It’s just sort of an endless topic,” she says.
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"Finn & Noel" - Anna Dibble
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Her art studies the current popular movement toward making pets part of the family.
“What I started painting and what does interest me about it is this whole new dog culture...and the human connection with dogs and how in a lot of ways we anthropomorphize them and make them into humans. In some ways that’s a good thing and in some ways that can be a bad thing, but that is what it is. My focus is that connection between humans and dogs.”
Not all of Huneck’s art is for sale to the public. After suffering a life-threatening injury and resulting illness 15 years ago, he was inspired to create a dog chapel on his large piece of property in Vermont.
“I built what looks like an 1820s New England church on my farm with stained-glass windows,” he says. “They’re classic stained glass. I took out the religious stuff and put in dogs.”
The chapel has become more than just a very creative and very ambitious project. Huneck now uses it to help people heal.
“I meet so many people [that say] to me in one way or another that they weren’t enjoying their dog like they could because they kept worrying about the dog dying,” he says. “You can’t allow yourself to live like that. You have to live like a dog—in the moment. The problem is, for many people dogs are closer than your family. I wanted to help people. If you have a relative die, you can go to a mass, and they’re designed to clean you out, get rid of the guilt, get rid of the angst. I said we’ve got to do that for dog people too. People send me a picture and write a paragraph about the dog and we’ll put it on the chapel wall.”
Eventually a book was written about the chapel, which made more people aware of it.
“Anywhere I go, people say, ‘Aren’t you Steve Huneck? Your dog chapel changed my life.’”
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Artist Stephen Huneck's Dog Chapel
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Tetro has also been able to use his art to help others, specifically pets.
“Twice a year I’ll ask people to donate the images that are no longer available. They basically will donate them to their local animal group. They use them for fundraisers and gifts and all kinds of things,” he says.
“I did a small painting for Atlanta Pet Rescue at their last event. They auctioned it off for $5,000. Any group that asks I will send a piece,” he says.
For these artists, following the lead of the dogs that inspired them has helped them to create interesting careers. Choosing to create pet-themed art allows them to form beautiful partnerships, both with their local organizations and pet boutiques and gift shops. |