LIFESTYLE

Artist Steve Carpenter is a man for all seasons

Donna De Palma
ROC

Steve Carpenter once met Walt Disney, was on the preferred guest list of Princess Grace of Monaco and is friends with Ringo Starr. He chose to move to Rochester about 15 years ago as part of his spiritual journey and has shared his talents and mentored dozens of artists here since.

He's also shared his art. His latest piece is a 27-foot-long mural at Village Gate Square called Four Seasons, which will be unveiled this week during a First Friday reception.

Carpenter's rags to riches story — one in which he has not been afraid to risk seemingly everything to start a new chapter — has taken him across the United States and Europe.

Born in Portland, Ore., Carpenter spent his early years moving from foster home to foster home and, for a time, living in an orphanage. His father left when he was a year old, and his mother led a troubled life.

"My one dream in life was to be a painter in Paris," says Carpenter, now 70. "I became an artist because no one told me I couldn't."

That, and a fierce determination.

Carpenter began his artistic pursuits by entering drawing contests, winning several of them. A full scholarship to Chicago Academy of Fine Arts allowed him to study by day while working on the Chicago docks at night. The Chicago Academy wasn't the school for Carpenter, so his next stop was the Art Center School of Design in Los Angeles, a more serious art school, he says, where he studied painting and illustration until his watercolor teacher encouraged him to apply for a job at Disney.

"I'd just seen the film Ben-Hur and fell in love with the imagery. I said to myself, 'I'm going to learn how to draw horses.' "

Two hundred or so drawings later, he did.

"I brought the drawings to Disney and was offered a job," Carpenter says. Disney hired him as a visualizer in the early 1960s for movies and the theme park, working on Tomorrowland and Pirates of the Caribbean for the park and such films as Mary Poppins. "If there was a scene in need of development, the role of the visualizer was to determine what that scene would look like. For instance, in Pirates of the Caribbean,the characters were supposed to emerge from the hull of the ship and look out on a lagoon. We would conceptualize the scene."

Carpenter described a day at Disney: "I was sitting at my desk and someone came in swearing profusely. I said, 'Wow! Is that foul language necessary?' then swung around to see who it was, and there was Walt Disney. He was actually an amazing guy — aware of what was going on every moment with every project."

Even with his success, Carpenter still dreamed of painting in Paris. So after a year at Disney, on a sunny day in Burbank, Calif., in 1963, his girlfriend picked him up outside of Disney Studios and dropped him off near Route 66.

"I hitchhiked from Los Angeles to New York to catch a plane to Paris," he says. "A smallpox vaccination given just before I left made me very sick. A guy driving a 1949 Plymouth picked me up and nursed me back to health. I made it to Paris."

The world opened up to Carpenter as an expatriate in Europe in the early '60s.

"I was living my dream, painting and finding odd jobs to survive," he says. "I had my own studio in Paris, though it didn't have any heat."

In Paris, Carpenter discovered the American Center, a popular hangout for expats, and took classes at Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris but was again disappointed with the art instruction there. "I discovered the French, since Picasso, no longer teach students how to draw and paint."

Carpenter hitchhiked throughout southern Europe, painting all the while — mostly street scenes and models. He'd return to France after each expedition.

"France was a great place to be poor then," he says. "One franc would buy a meal or a shower. I did it all for painting — always — but there was no one to call if the money ran out, and one day I realized it was time to settle down."

Carpenter met his first wife, a French woman, at a dance at the American Center in 1963.

"I met her family and for the first time, I had a family. It was wonderful," he says.

Carpenter shaved, bought a new shirt, pulled out his dossier from Disney and got a steady job. He once again worked as a visualizer, this time for the biggest television and motion picture agency in Paris, Havas Publicité.

"They gave me a good salary, my own studio and the opportunity to travel all over Europe, this time on the company's dime," he says.

"The only problem with France was the cost of real estate. If you weren't rich or poor, you couldn't afford to buy anything," he says.

In 1968, Carpenter responded to an ad for a teacher at The American School in Monte Carlo.

"The Côte D'Azur isn't the worst place to live, so I went for an interview and got the job," he says. "I noticed Monte Carlo didn't have any tourism posters, so I designed one the first week I was there and sold it for $300. Princess Grace saw the poster and asked to meet me."

Carpenter, who had purchased an art gallery the second week he moved to Monte Carlo, noticed a woman in a scarf and dark sunglasses enter his gallery.

"She looked familiar and when she slid off her glasses and scarf, there stood Grace Kelly," Carpenter says. "It was amazing — I fell madly in love, instantly, with her. I later designed a poster for the International American Red Cross," which she headed at the time.

Carpenter got to know the princess and her husband, Prince Rainier, and, with his wife, became regulars at their parties and private affairs.

Carpenter's career in Monaco spanned 30 years. In 1996, he was commissioned to create postage stamps for the municipality. He ran his gallery and offered private studio art lessons in Monte Carlo.

"Most of the people in Monte Carlo were looking for normal people to spend time with," he says. "I have been spiritually oriented my whole life and had been coming to the Rochester Zen Center on retreat for many years. One day, I decided that life in Monte Carlo was no longer for me. I felt depleted."

Carpenter, who was divorcing, decided to return to the United States in the late '90s and chose Rochester because of the Zen Center and because he knew he could afford to paint here.

He has been in his current art studio at 176 Anderson Ave., part of Village Gate Square, for 10 years. He creates his own art and is an art instructor. He is also co-founder of the New York Figure Study Guild, a group of artists who draw and paint the human figure, and has created numerous book covers for BOA Editions poetry publishing house in Rochester. He also continues to exhibit internationally. He has remarried, to wife Judy, and has built a personal life in Rochester.

Four Seasons, commissioned by Gary Stern of Stern Properties, owner of the building where Carpenter's 1,400-square-foot studio is housed, is the largest and most ambitious mural Carpenter has completed to date.

"This mural was a challenge simply because of its size. When Gary approached me to commission this work, I said, 'Why not?' " Carpenter says.

The mural portrays more than the change of weather, he says.

"We are all part of the cosmos, all made of the same material as the cosmos. We are constantly being transformed," he says. "The imagery in Four Seasons illustrates this process of moving from one form into another."

Carpenter sees parallels in living a spiritual life and being an artist.

"When you're an artist, you seek fundamental truths and you ask questions. What is art, what is the truth in art? I've investigated philosophy, psychology, religion, most of my life. I guess I really don't like being called a Buddhist. Labels haven't ever mattered much to me. I get in a quiet space, and it's all there."

De Palma is a Rochester-area freelance writer.

If you go

The grand reveal of the Four Seasons mural at Village Gate Square, 274 N. Goodman St., will be at 6 p.m. Friday. The First Friday reception will be from 5 to 9 p.m. in the first-floor atrium. For more on the Steve Carpenter Gallery and Art Center, go to stevecarpenterartcenter.com. To see the Four Seasons mural as it was being painted, search "Steve Carpenter and mural" at YouTube.com.