“Knowledge is Power,” Alberto Rey

“Knowledge is Power”

That is the philosophy of 62-year-old Cuban-American artist Alberto Rey concerning navigating the art world and his life.

Born in Cuba in 1960, Rey and his family received political asylum from Mexico in 1963, moved to Florida in 1965, and finally to rural Pennsylvania in 1967. As an immigrant, compared to people living in the United States for generations, Rey feels he sees the country with a “fresh set of eyes” regarding culture in the United States. Linked to this mindset, Rey has felt that he has never fully assimilated into the culture of the United States, even though he has lived here for over 55 years. While living in this country, a key revelation was, “Your home is your sense of history, how it connects to your family’s past generations, not just who you are now.” In recent years, he has concluded that neither the United States nor Cuba will ever be his home. Here, in the United States, he has no generational history to reflect on, and in Cuba, there’s history there, but he has been away for so long that it is impossible to feel that genuine connection.

Rey attended the Indiana University of Pennsylvania, where he received his B.F.A. degree in 1982. At this point, his work focused on learning techniques and new skills. He didn’t feel he was saying anything meaningful with this work, and this continued until he attended graduate school. During his time in his undergraduate program, however, Rey knew he had to get his work seen by as many people as he could. He researched gallery directors and curators in the region to secure exhibitions. Since this was the time before the internet, he had roughly six sets of slides with 20 slides of his artwork in each set. He would send a set to an art curator or gallery director, and once he received a set of slides back with a rejection letter, he would immediately send it out again to another gallery. Sending it out immediately was a way to diminish the disappointment and hope for better news with the next shipment.

After graduating with his B.F.A., Rey was tired of attending classes. He moved between Miami, Florida, Boston, Massachusett,  Barnesboro, Pennsylvania, and Rochester, New York, working in different jobs for roughly three years. He found no available art jobs that would satisfy him or provide him with a fulfilling career. Over time, there was a hunger to return to school and get his M.F.A., so he enrolled in the Drawing and Painting program at the University of Buffalo. During this time, he worked 12 hours a day, seven days a week, doing his art. 

After receiving his M.F.A. from the University of Buffalo, he moved to Boston. While teaching at Lincoln-Sudbury High School, The Art Institute of Boston, New England School of Art and Design, and the Museum of Fine Arts, he enrolled in courses at Harvard University. One of the benefits of teaching at Lincoln-Sudbury High School was that their faculty were provided opportunities to enroll in courses at Harvard University. To fill gaps in his education, Rey attended Contemporary Art History and Environmental Studies classes. Through these courses, he wanted to more fully understand the connections between society, environmentalism, and art history. 

Labrador Duck, Alberto Rey

Juggling attending classes and teaching at different institutions, Rey still found time to create artwork. Lincoln-Sudbury High School had also provided him with a studio that he used to produce his largest painting (8x16 feet) to date, “Transitions,” which is in the permanent collection of the Castellani Museum at Niagara University. When he could not work in the studio, Rey was always drawing in his sketchbook. He constantly worked, trying to “keep the dream of being a successful artist alive.” Rey recognized that while trying to make a living, losing his connection with his goal was effortless because the world does not tend to lend a hand to budding artists. It was a battle to make sure that his dream became a reality. Since this was still the age before the internet, Rey also spent a lot of time in libraries researching artists and cultures as a way to keep his creative mind nourished. 

Rey's artistic career moved steadily forward while he lived in Boston. He was represented by Stavaridis Gallery on Newbury Street, and the gallery director, Pat, became his mentor. He had his first solo museum exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Hispanic Art (MoCHA) in New York City during this time. He was 27 years old. While a Massachusetts resident, he applied for a state arts fellowship. Although he did not receive the fellowship, one of the review panelists liked his work and invited him to another solo exhibition in NYC at INTAR Gallery. Shortly afterward, he accepted a teaching position in western New York, where he had worked for the past 33 years and has recently retired.

Rey felt it important to note that his professional experiences as an undergrad helped lead to opportunities like this. Pittsburgh was the closest city to Rey when he attended his undergraduate program at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania. He would set up appointments, take a large portfolio of his drawings and small paintings to Pittsburgh galleries, and talk with the curators about his work. Although he did not find gallery representation in Pittsburgh, this was a very educational process and gave him a lot of confidence. His mindset with this process was, “The worst they could say is no.” Soon after graduation, Rey would find representation in Miami, Florida, and Rochester, New York. Being professionally proactive early in your career is very important because waiting for the right time makes it more challenging to start the process in the future.

In an artist's career, it is common to feel as though your work is not appreciated and question whether you have made the right career choice by going into the arts. Rey wondered about this most of the time when he was younger. Before grad school, Rey worked in an art store and tried to get his work seen. He was seriously struggling with no safety net and was beginning to feel like he had made a mistake. When he was 24 years old, Rey realized that he wanted to feel more financially secure and be able to support himself and a possible family in the future. Growing up in his small coal-mining town, Barnesboro (now called Northern Cambria), Rey did not envision being an artist as a wise career move and decided to study Biology in college. In time, however, he saw the possibility of being an illustrator as a path toward surviving as an artist. Although Rey currently writes and illustrates his own articles for magazines, he wanted more artistic freedom than an illustrator provided and looked at teaching as another way to move forward with his career. He had always had an internal will to keep fighting for what he wanted and felt his work paid off when he was offered a long-term teaching position in Boston and could keep working on his art.

Now, as an artist, art professor, and writer, it is important to maintain a network of professionals to share his art with. Rey utilizes email lists of collectors and curators that have supported him in the past and keeps them in the loop for new projects and exhibitions. He also regularly posts on social media (alberto.rey.353 on Facebook and @albertoreyartist on Instagram) to keep people abreast of what he is currently working on. Rey suggests to emerging artists that may not have an extensive contact list that they should reach out to local galleries in their immediate area and get to know them. Keeping up with their events and making yourself known as their supporter can help to broaden your network. Rey has kept up with art world news, especially regarding curators who may be moving up the ladder. In the past, he has sent emails about his work to the curators and especially assistant curators. He does this because those assistant curators will eventually make curatorial decisions down the road and might remember his work. The business side of art takes as much time, if not more, than creating. You won’t be found just because your art is good. 

At the beginning of his career, Rey would show everywhere and anywhere. This helped him to get his work seen by a large group of people and later let him be more selective about what shows he would participate in. At this point in his career, after having been exhibited in over 200 exhibitions, Rey concentrates on mainly large projects that take a year or longer to create and requires an honorarium from museums to help support the time and supplies needed to create the work. Even with a great deal of networking effort, he makes it clear that your career will not move forward without good artwork. There are no shortcuts to doing a lot of work. Rey recognizes that being an artist is a selfish endeavor; if you want to be recognized, you need to do the amount of work it takes. Rey even says that after this early morning interview, he would spend 6-7 hours in the studio working, just as he did the day before and the day before that. At 62 years old, this is what is important to him, to stay challenged and intellectually engaged.

Rey realized that much of his education had not provided the breadth of knowledge he needed to succeed. This lack of knowledge inspired him to teach his new generation of artists what he thought they needed to learn. Teaching was also a viable career path for him and would allow him to investigate artistic directions without being concerned about whether the artwork was sellable or not. His long-term goal was to teach at a university, and leading up to that, Rey interviewed for many positions and worked as an art teacher at the preschool, middle, and high school levels. There were also stints where he had three adjunct positions at multiple institutions in Boston while teaching full-time at a high school. All of these positions provided the experience he felt he needed to move forward with his teaching career. These opportunities led to Rey getting offered a university-level tenure teaching position at the State University of New York in  Fredonia in 1989. His initial salary was less pay than the high school teaching job, but he felt it was an appropriate short-term sacrifice. 

At this point in Rey's career, he is constantly trying to make each exhibition more significant and tries to do things he has never done before. He is always challenging himself to the point that he is striving to be a better artist and person. His mindset is that stopping would leave him as lost as a shark who could not survive without constantly swimming. 

Biological Regionalism: Aniak River Tributary, Alaska, Alberto Rey

One of the important things that he requires of his students is to read. As a young artist, Rey felt unprepared for a life as an artist and was unaware of what was happening in contemporary art. That is one of the reasons he went into teaching in the first place, to instill the knowledge he had to learn after he finished his formal education. His students read about contemporary art, art history, and artists' roles in society and the business of being an artist. He wanted them to understand what it means to be an artist in contemporary society. He wanted them to understand just how important it is to continue doing work, despite the difficulty and plethora of possible excuses for not doing so. 

Lastly, I touched on Alberto Rey’s internal philosophy for navigating the art world and being an artist. He reads constantly and takes in new information to better understand what's happening in the art world and its reflection on society, culture, and economics. To Rey, “Knowledge is Power.” Another note Rey makes is that you can be a successful artist without being a top-tier artist. As long as you are regularly and consistently putting out work and are looking diversify ways of making an income, you have the potential to be a successful, self-sufficient artist. 

I asked Rey if he thought he was a generous artist because I consider him a generous person considering the youth fishing groups he runs and the art he does to raise environmental awareness. However, Rey thinks doing art is a selfish endeavor since he chooses what to investigate, and he enjoys what he does. He even says that his environmental artwork is self-serving because he is genuinely interested in it and receives a great deal of joy from it. He says that it is easy to be generous if you enjoy doing it. Being generous, in his eyes, is giving when it is difficult to do so. But, I think we will have to agree to disagree because the art he does instills an appreciation of the natural beauty of our world, and everyone can benefit from that.

To see more of Alberto Rey’s artwork and stay up to date on projects he is currently doing, visit his website: albertorey.com