Wednesday, June 11, 2003
A local artist's work will be on display at U.S. military bases worldwide.
THE VINDICATOR
By CYNTHIA VINARSKY
VINDICATOR BUSINESS WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- Some people might call Ray Simon a name-dropper.
The local artist is on a first-name basis with sports greats such as Ohio State football coach Jim Tressel, football Hall-of-Famer Jim Kelly, hockey champ Mario Lemieux and former Browns quarterback Bernie Kosar.
Art prints he created featuring those star athletes and many others deck the walls of Ray Simon Arts, his studio in the Wick Building downtown, and he no longer has to seek their business -- they come to him.
Lately Simon, 40, has added some top military brass to his list of business contacts, as well.
Defense Department approval
Ray Simon Art is newly licensed by the U.S. Department of Defense to market his prints honoring American soldiers on military bases around the world.
The military prints also landed Simon a contract with Wilbert, a large Chicago-based maker of burial vaults, which comes with a national advertising campaign. Wilbert will offer lithographic prints of Simon's military tribute collages for sale as part of a marketing campaign promoting its pre-need funeral services.
Not bad for a Youngstown native who jokes that he "didn't have two nickels to rub together" when he started his commercial art business in the early 1990s.
Soaring sales
These days, Simon acknowledges, business is looking up. The studio's sales topped $100,000 in 2002, but he's expecting the defense department deal alone to bring in six figures this year. Conservatively, the artist said his sales could quadruple this year.
A 1980 Ursuline High School graduate, Simon grew up on Youngstown's North Side, leaving town to study visual communications at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh. After earning an associate degree, he snatched what looked like a dream job, working in the computer graphics department for General Electric in Newport Beach, Calif.
But Simon wasn't happy in the Golden State. "I couldn't wait to get back home," he recalled. "I love Youngstown."
He spent several years with GE, then with Westinghouse, before deciding to "regress," putting aside computerized art and graphics to resume painting by hand. In 1989 at the age of 26, he resigned his corporate position and set up shop as a free-lance advertising representative and artist.
His first big art sale was in 1994 when he designed a collage of Youngstown State University's football team. "It's embarrassing to look at it now. I was just developing my style," he said with a half-grin as he gazed at a print of his early work.
In 1999 he made his biggest single sale to date when Wal-Mart paid him $360,000 for prints of his tribute collage featuring Ohio State University's football team and its legendary coach Woody Hayes.
Then and now
When the business was new he would create a painting first, then approach the subject with his finished work. These days, most of his paintings are done on commission -- he recently received a request for information from the estate of Frank Sinatra, and he's working on projects for this year's Bob Hope Chrysler Classic and for the Canton Pro Football Hall of Fame.
To start, Simon collects photographs of his subject. For a tribute to a person, he might include childhood photos and shots of the subject at various stages of his life and career, and he searches the defense department's photo archives to illustrate his military projects.
Simon's trademark style usually includes a collage of airbrush-painted images, modeled after the photographs.
He prefers the airbrush over other painting methods, he said, because it works for lines "as fine as an eyelash" and for making subtle, lifelike shadings.
Important quotes
For him, the quote he adds at the bottom of each piece is at least as important as the art itself. Statements by Winston Churchill, Woody Hayes and Franklin D. Roosevelt are among his favorites.
"The beautiful quote is what makes it. It evokes a feeling. I always try to find just the perfect quote," he said.
Simon came up with the idea for a World War II tribute in 1998, painting a collage of photos from the war, then added a cutout where the buyers could insert a photograph of their own WWII veteran -- a father, uncle, husband or brother.
Since then he's painted similar war-tribute collages to honor veterans of the Korean War and of the modern conflicts, including Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Desert Storm. A Vietnam War project will be next.
Dee Ann Painter Cunningham, Simon's marketing liaison with the military helped him line up the licensing agreement with the Department of Defense. He also credits her with getting his Korean War painting featured in ceremonies commemorating the 50th anniversary of the end of the Korean War in Washington D.C. on July 27.
Since signing a licensing agreement with the Defense Department earlier this year, Simon's studio has shipped 2,000 military prints, half to the Pacific and half to the European bases, and is making plans to send out another batch to bases all over the United States.
Simon has two financial partners, Jeff Forman and Rich LaCivita, and two full-time associates, Steve Criado and Jason Cuddy.
Criado, 27, handles the technical side of the business as creative director, and Cuddy, 27, is sales and marketing director.
Printing, packaging
City Printing, also a downtown Youngstown business, produces the lithographic prints for the studio, and MASCO Inc. of Youngstown does the packaging.
His sports star business is continuing to grow. Simon's calendar for the coming year includes meetings with agents for Corey Stringer, the Minnesota Vikings' offensive lineman from Warren who died of heatstroke two summers ago, and for LeBron James, the Akron high school basketball standout drafted recently by the Cleveland Cavaliers.
vinarsky@vindy.com