Alumni in the Spotlight: Andy Friedman

An Artist: a person who creates art (such as painting, sculpture, music, or writing) using conscious skill and creative imagination. –Webster Dictionary

LIHSA alum Andy Friedman is an artist from head to toe. “I was always an artist,” Andy shared. “There was never a time I chose to be one. There was only a time when I chose to embark on a journey to get an education for it. I chose BOCES Cultural Arts Center.”

Growing up in East Meadow, Andy was encouraged by his teachers to draw. And his drawings reflected the styles by artists he was drawn to, including Mad Magazine’s caricatures. He loved Norman Rockwell, Mort Drucker, and Bruce Stark. In high school, he learned he could create his own caricatures, copy them at Kinkos, and sell them at a hundred percent profit. He was hired to create caricatures for a MetLife corporate event and at weddings for $100/hour while still a student in high school.

Despite his mastery of this art form, he was intimidated to attend LIHSA (then called BOCES Cultural Arts). His high school teachers encouraged him to go, saying he would benefit from studying the old masters and learning different styles of art. Andy got excited to go when he saw how hard his teachers had to fight for East Meadow School District to allow him to go and that he’d get to draw nude models instead of taking chemistry or trigonometry.

He studied under Eileen Drobbin at LIHSA who taught him that if he could learn the secret to the old masters, he can do anything. He became well versed in many techniques, yet he continued to hold Norman Rockwell close to his heart, admiring the way he reached American mainstream through visual arts.

Upon graduating from LIHSA in 1993, Andy experienced two heartbreaks that influenced his next years. One was a sad break-up from a LIHSA crush. Devastated by his rejection from The Cooper Union, who thought his work was too illustrative, Andy headed to Pratt Institute, where he was permitted to skip Freshman year and take a grad school level anatomical drawing class to study the laws of figure drawing established by the old masters – a class he loved. But he dropped out after a semester when he found out that he’d be required to make up the missing freshman credits down the line.

Andy’s experiences pointed him to a path where he wanted to make accessible art that would heal heartbroken people. He turned to listening to music with lyrics that showed other artists confronting the same issues of sadness and loneliness and wanted to make art that was of equal comfort. He started writing poetry as he headed to Rhode Island School of Design (RISD).

At RISD, where he was enrolled for the next 3-years as a transfer student from Pratt, he began studying the Venetian method of oil painting. Andy’s process was methodical and slow, taking three years to complete a single painting. One of his professors gave him advice, “You either need a lot of wealthy patrons, or you’ll need to get a job.” The professor was Richard Merkin, a celebrated artist and one of the collaged figures on the cover of the Beatles’ Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album. He offered to send some of Andy’s caricatures to The New Yorker, where he was a contributor, and where a former student had become the art director. At the time, Andy didn’t read The New Yorker, and didn’t see contributing to the magazine as his future career. But he drew some samples to give to his professor and then graduated and moved on.

Moving on for Andy meant renting a studio space in Mineola above an auto body garage. One painting took him nine months to create. In need of income, he took a job at the Union Square Farmers Market and moved to Williamsburg, Brooklyn. He made enough for rent and food, but he realized this wouldn’t be sustainable. That’s when The New Yorker came up again – a friend and fellow RISD student worked there and said there was a job opening as a messenger. It was an indoor job with free coffee…Andy applied and got the job!

While working at The New Yorker, the art director remembered the drawings by Andy that Merkin had previously submitted. He was offered the chance to draw the country musician Hank Williams III for the magazine but turned it down because at the time he still wanted to pursue being a painter. “I was afraid that getting paid to draw would affect my integrity as an artist,” Andy shared. But when an associate art director asked how much Andy got paid as a messenger and reminded him that painting supplies cost money, Andy reconsidered. One drawing would pay him as much as a week’s salary as a messenger. Andy realized he could support himself through illustration. After his first caricature was published, he got calls to draw from many other publications, including The New York Times, Esquire, and New York.

Shortly after his first drawing was published in the magazine, he was promoted to a new job at The New Yorker, where he became the Assistant to the Cartoon Editor. Before long, he started including some of his own cartoons under the pseudonym Larry Hat in the batch of work they reviewed each week, and they started to sell! After work, he’d go home and work on his paintings.

During that time, Andy worked on his first book, “Drawings and Other Failures,” a collection of his pencil drawings, Polaroids, and poetry, which he self-published shortly before leaving his job to hit the road with a multi-media stage show based on its contents. He traveled around the country for three years performing his “visual songs” in spaces that ranged from libraries to bowling alleys to barns. He eventually added the musical accompaniment of a band who encouraged him to learn a few guitar chords.

Andy’s show evolved to stop showing images so the audiences – and he – could focus on the music. Nine months after he picked up the guitar for the first time, he recorded his first studio album. And he continued performing music for the next seven years. All the while, his career as celebrity caricaturist exploded, requiring him to meet time-sensitive deadlines for almost every magazine on the newsstands from a makeshift studio he’d set up in hotel rooms while on the road.

This was a good life, but a grueling one, and after 10 years on the road, Andy learned he had carpel tunnel in both his hands and everything paused.

It was a difficult time, but Andy was, is, and always will be an artist, so he learned how to draw again and put music aside. As an artist, he had always been precise in his drawings; now he had to accept the shakiness in his hands and tried to celebrate being vulnerable as he started over. As an exercise, he started doing paintings of baseball cards. He wasn’t interested in drawing the big stars and wasn’t originally planning to show anyone these pictures. They were meant only as practice. But then he wrote a piece for The New Yorker about the work he was doing and Topps Baseball cards caught it. And thus began a successful new venture for Andy: a collaboration with Topps, who has thus far released three complete sets of his watercolor paintings of baseball cards issued as collectible cards.

Learning watercolor techniques was new but as an artist – Andy mastered it. He loves working with Topps and attending card shows, where both the printed baseball card versions of his paintings and the original paintings used to create the cards are sold. He enjoys meeting collectors at card shows and sees his accessibility as an artist as a large part of his artistic statement.

Andy would eventually like to see some of his landscape paintings and cityscapes of old abandoned towns also turned into cards. He’s lately been playing guitar and writing again and is working to complete his first new record in over a decade. Topps has issued some of his old tour posters as cards, too, which has helped generate renewed interest in his music. The medium of watercolor started as a personal exercise for Andy but has helped him be less hidden and inhibited as an artist, which has allowed him to share more of himself as a musician, as well as a painter.

Andy maintains a residence in Brooklyn but also has a place upstate where he’s spending more time. He thinks this will be where he’ll be doing more and more painting and music. And hopes that through painting and music he can continue fulfilling his goal of healing and unifying through the exhibition of art. He notes the great divides that exist now and sees the card collecting community as one that exists without division. He takes seriously his responsibility as an artist to reach people and help bridge the gaps.

One of Andy’s future goals is to exhibit his art in a traditional gallery. But in his latest Topps set, which was released last summer and sold-out in minutes, Andy’s card-sized original paintings were included in packs for collectors to win. Beyond what the paintings express, Andy feels that the work he’s been doing in collaboration with Topps challenges the traditional perception of what an exhibit can be. “The exhibit of my latest paintings happens when a collector wins an original in a pack.”

From polaroids to poems to illustrations to paintings, Andy has created his own path forward to be the artist he is. He shares, “If you’re a creative, you use obstacles to your advantage.”

Growing up on Long Island, Andy admired fellow Long Island artist Billy Joel and always aspired to be the kind of artist like Billy. As someone who never stopped giving back to LIHSA, in 2018, Andy was invited to return to the school to be part of a panel discussion in front of Long Island superintendents on the importance of arts education. Billy Joel was a fellow panelist and Andy loved sharing the stage with him at his own alma mater.

Andy advises younger artists, “There’s no place for competition as an artist. Never compete. And never give up. Giving up is the enemy of creativity. Stay focused and keep blinders on; comparing your own accomplishments to others will just slow you down and distract. Remain genuine at all costs and follow your fascinations.”

Andy Friedman – YOU are fascinating. Thank you for giving your art to the world and for continuing to give back to LIHSA!

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