“Bye Bye Billy One” by Edward Jankowski WEST LONG BRANCH — Monmouth University Professor Edward Jankowski’s hands-on approach to creating and teaching shines in his current show, “Art and Influences.”
His first one-person show, by choice, since 1990 exhibits a selection of work from a span of about 30 years, he said.
“It’s definitely not a retrospective,” he said, “simply a selection of pieces from a period.”
After several hundred shows at major museums throughout the world, Jankowski said that he stopped exhibiting around 1990.
“I just got tired of exhibiting. I felt like I was on a treadmill,” he said.
Though he did not do solo shows, Jankowski said that he would participate in a show at least once a year on campus for his students’ sake.
“I felt that if you’re teaching students, students have a right to see what you’re doing,” he said.
Jankowski said that his influences come from a multitude of cultures, including American advertising.
“[Advertising] is probably the best way of depicting American culture because we are a consumer society and we almost pride ourselves on that,” he said.
“In fact, we consume our own culture, we devour it; that is, we digest it and distribute it out to the rest of the world.”
Ultimately, Jankowski said he maintains complete autonomy in his work.
“I go where I allow myself to go, and that’s one thing about my work — it’s the only thing within my life that I have complete and total control over,” he said.
“What I say goes, and no one else enters into the picture.”
Like his influences, Jankowski’s work takes many forms, from brush and canvas paintings to screen prints and sculpture.
“I am not confined by not being able to do things technically,” he said.
“In a way I can do anything I want technically; I can carve, I can cast, I can build, I can paint.”
This creative freedom comes from all the technical skills Jankowski has learned through many years of handson experience with a variety of professions and trades, he said.
“It’s all over a matter of time things that I’ve been taught and skills that I’ve managed to accumulate, so I might as well use them,” he said.
In addition to earning his undergraduate degree in painting and attending graduate school for sculpture, Jankowski said that he worked in his uncles’ silkscreen factories as a child and apprenticed with a cabinetmaker in high school.
“As I needed to learn something for my work, I’d go out and get a job in that field,” he said.
“You really can learn only by definite practical experience where it’s applied immediately to a goal. If you learn something in school, it’s still something you haven’t practiced.”
Jankowski said that he has applied this same philosophy of experience to teaching art history courses at Monmouth University for the past 40 years.
“I always felt, in the same way as I do with my work, that I can’t teach you what I haven’t seen and what I don’t know, so part of teaching art history was going to all the major museums and photographing,” he said.
“I probably took 35,000 slides in a 10- year period.”
The university asked Jankowski to teach art history after he initiated a contemporary art class, something the institution lacked at the time.
“You can’t make art unless you know about art [just as] you can’t be an accountant unless you know mathematics,” he said.
“I always thought of art history as being very critical, particularly to artists who wish to practice in the field.”
Jankowski’s success in teaching stems from this dedication to primary experience, he said.
“When I went into the classroom, I was talking from my observing the work, understanding it, knowing what it was like technically and then conveying that.
“For me, teaching wasn’t just reading a lot of books; it was experiencing things and talking about them firsthand.”
Jankowski said that he appreciated the inherent benevolent nature of the material he teaches.
“No one taking a class from me can go out and use the information to damage someone else,” he said.
“Like a doctor can go out and make a mistake in the operating room because of what he learned in the classroom.
“I was teaching people how to see and enjoy what their eyes are capable of giving them, in terms of beauty and images that can move you,” he said.
For Jankowski, one of the most fulfilling aspects of the show was reuniting with former students.
“To see students that you had in the 1970s who drove 600 miles to come to the opening tells you how much they appreciated what you gave them 30 years ago. That was really touching,” he said.
“Just to know that in all those years of teaching you touched people and you left a lasting memory and you, in a way, transferred something that you loved to them.”
Jankowski’s exhibit represents more than 40 years of passion and dedication.
“I don’t know what I’d do if art wasn’t a part of my life,” Jankowski said.
“It’s the one thing that probably keeps me from doing anything foolish in terms of my longevity.
“I simply see it as that important.”
“Edward E. Jankowski: Art and Influences” is on display at Monmouth University’s 800 Gallery until March 11. For more information, visit www.monmouth.edu/arts.