Rico Telofski of Plainsboro is finally doing what he’s wanted to do since college. He brings his unique pop-art style to the Voorhees Art & Framing Gallery, 325 Highway 35 North, Red Bank, in a solo exhibit opening on Sunday, March 21 with a meet-the-artist reception from 1 to 5 p.m.
The exhibit continues through April 2. A previous exhibit at Hills Gallery in Princeton featured humorous photographs from his “Conehenge” series, in which he used images of ice cream cones in a parody of the well-known monument.
Born in Atlantic City, Telofski grew up in Roselle Park. His father worked as a chemical plant laborer in his native northern New Jersey. His mother was a clerical worker.
Telofski’s photography skills began with a 1940s Brownie camera that his father gave him when he was 10. His first “shoot” was a family trip to Niagara Falls. By age 12, he was shooting black and white and developing contact sheets in a darkroom in the cellar of his house. “I became the big shot high school photographer and the yearbook photography editor.”
In college at Rutgers, he served as the photography editor for the Douglass College yearbook for two years. He was also responsible for Douglass’ becoming the first women’s college to have a male centerfold in its yearbook. (Think back to 1973 — Burt Reynolds and Cosmopolitan magazine). “The staff wanted to do something wild — it created so much controversy.”
After graduating from Rutgers with a communications degree, his parents quashed his desire to become a professional photographer. After a stint as a professional racquetball player, he became a railroad salesperson in Bristol, Pennsylvania, in 1982, moving to Hunter’s Glen in Plainsboro that same year. He enrolled at Rider University’s graduate program part-time and five years later had an MBA in marketing.
He has taught business marketing and finance at both Georgian Court College and Monmouth University, worked for the government, and in the early 1990s began his own business, a competitive intelligence consulting company. By the decade’s ending years, “the web explosion crippled the business. We closed the doors and looked for other opportunities.”
His wife, Lorena, works in research and development with Johnson & Johnson Consumer Products Company.
Telofsky, who now does commercial work, began experimenting with pop art last summer. “It is a style with an artistic vein based on a commercial photography style,” he says. “I do funny things with the props.”
Working with a medium-format camera, he scans the images into his computer. Medium-format film allows him to blow up the photo without the grainy look that 35 mm film might produce. Using Photoshop, he maximizes the colors and eliminates the hangers, string, and nails used to hold the props in position.
“Good ads are good art,” he says. “Commercial photography invokes emotions about products. Pop art includes whimsical things that float around in people’s minds.
Rico Telofski, Voorhees Art & Framing Gallery, 325 Highway 35 North, Red Bank, 732-530-0616. Show continues through Friday, April 2.
