Public portraits drawn on the spot
By Isaac Mell
On a Friday night at the Literary Café, you’ll find the Pretentious Tremont Artists sketching and painting portraits in the backroom of the bar. The group was founded seven years ago by Tim Herron and Brian Pierce as an elegant solution to a perpetual problem for artists: how to arrange for steady practice in a cost-efficient manner.
Traditionally, one pays professional models to sit for portraits. Herron and Pierce, however, realized that the Literary Café, where they were regulars, presented an abundance of potential sitters. They approached bar patrons with a trade: in exchange for three hours of their time, they would be privy to works of art created in front of them, of them, and for them.
“We would invite people to sit for us, and I’d give them my drawings,” Herron says. “The models love it now, though, because they don’t get just my portrait, they walk home with seven or eight drawings by very talented artists.”
The group meets in the Literary Café (1031 Literary Avenue) from 9PM to 12AM every Friday. Sessions are open to creators and observers alike.
“Nowhere have I found a group like ours,” Herron says, “where no money is ever exchanged, any artist can draw for free and any citizen can sign up to pose for free portraits, while at the same time exposing the public to live drawing on a weekly basis.”
Locals of note like Michael Salinger, Michael Heaton and Mary Doria Russell have posed for the Pretentious Tremont Artists. Beyond providing the setting for the sessions, the Literary Café serves as the point of entry for most of the modeling enlistees.
“On many nights they have poetry, so the poets would go in the backroom to read and on all the walls were all our drawings, so they got excited about the possibility of sitting and the whole discovery of art in front of them,” Herron says.
Over the course of the night, models see sketches transformed into finished portraits.
“They sit for 45 minutes, take a 15 minute break, they get up, they walk around, they look at what’s starting, what’s developing, the embryo of their portrait from that particular artist,” Herron says. “They take another break, and see how that’s going: ‘Oh, it’s getting better; ah, interesting.’ They take another break, and they go, ‘Ah, this is getting good!’ So they actually develop a little bit more interest as the night goes on, and then when you get the portraits, it’s a nice cap-off to the night.”
The circumstances are in stark contrast with the traditional formal setting in which the model and artist never speak.
“Here, you want to talk to them because they don’t even know you, and this is their first time doing it—they’re not professionals,” Herron says. “So we don’t talk throughout the whole thing, but casually you’ll get ’em going, like, ‘Hey, how are you doing, where do you work,’ just general average stuff.”
The looseness of the evening also encourages artists to work at their own pace and in their own style.
Herron says, “One of our guys, Jeff Suntala, will do three drawings. He’ll do a watercolor in a watercolor book and then one or two pencil drawings. And that is one exception where he keeps the watercolors because they’re in a personal book, but he gives the pencil drawings to the model. People like Jia Wang, she’ll come in here and she may draw for an hour and a half, then go. Everybody draws at their own time frame.”
Each Friday offers a fresh subject and a chance to practice the craft.
“If you’re going to be a good artist, you want to have a steady model,” Herron says. “Normally you’d have to pay for that model, and the drawings either pile up or else you sell ’em, which is hard, to sell nudes or things like that, or a portrait of a stranger. So this way we get steady practice. It doesn’t matter who sits; we just love to draw. We’d just rather see a new face each day.”
Herron uploads pictures of the evening’s pieces to his Facebook page, along with a photo of the evening’s model, as a reference for the artists (people like Howard Collier, Jack Flotte, Joe Nagy and Juan Quirarte). If the model is a Facebook friend of Herron’s, the portraits automatically appear on the model’s profile.
Herron says, “Our models generally can’t afford art, but this way they get a nice exposure to it and it really opens their eyes.”
People interested in modeling sign up on a calendar in the backroom of the Literary Café. Herron manages the schedule, calling a week before to make sure that the model is still available and balancing any cancellations with back-ups. The list fills up quickly: The next slot is in the spring.
Despite the habitual Tremont Art Walk, some Literary Café patrons are still surprised to discover a life drawing session tucked away in the bar.
“It becomes a form of entertainment for people that come in that are taken aback,” Herron says. “Let’s expose you to art you don’t normally see. You know, it’s not entertainment like Cirque du Soleil—but I mean, where can you go and just watch art being done? It’s just a positive, positive thing for the city.”
And so, seven years on, the Pretentious Tremont Artists continue to showcase for the public the imperfections and improvisations of art in action.
“It’s entertaining,” Herron says. “We’re human, and we have little errors, or ways we drift or wander, and that’s the excitement of it, to walk around and see what Jennifer Newyear’s done, and go ‘Wow, that’s cool, but it doesn’t look like it’s the same person that maybe Jim Gerber’s drawing or I’m drawing or Larry [Zuzik]’s drawing, but it’s the same person from that angle.’ It’s just an interesting night, to see this originate, to see this happen, to see the birth of this piece of art.”
For more on the Pretentious Tremont Artists, visit Tim Herron’s Facebook profile.
Isaac Mell grew up in South Euclid, OH and attended American Jewish University in Los Angeles. He welcomes conversations with potential employers, collaborators and friends.
One Response to “Pretentious Tremont Artists”
bob demonia
very interesting article. I would like to attend one evening if that is ok. thanks Bob