If location is everything, then one Princeton artist has it covered by being everywhere in town — and generating a good deal of “did you see that?” buzz about the giant martial arts figure in the back of a Ford pickup.
“People see it, and they light up,” says the artist, Stephen Zorochin, about his self-proclaimed “gallery on wheels.” “It’s art that engages people,” he says.
It also is making a lot of people wanting to know more about this now-you-see-him-now-you-don’t artist, who was happy to share his tale when we caught up with him.
A 1970 graduate of Princeton High School, Zorochin got the art bug when his house-cleaning mom toted home a stack of Art News magazines given to her by one of her clients.
He went to the School of Visual Art in New York City and the Museum School of the Fine Arts in Boston but says he didn’t get anything out of it — too much emphasis on theory and not enough on practice.
So it was no surprise he was soon back in Princeton and working as a truck driver — but with little direction and no art in the flatbed.
Then his dad, a boiler room worker at Princeton University, asked for advice from his basketball-coach pals, including Pete Carril, during a regular get-together at Andy’s Tavern (now Soonja’s). They suggested he talk to Joe Brown, the university’s art teacher, sculptor in residence, and a former boxer now known for his representational sculptures. Brown liked the kid’s spirit and said “send him over.”
“I was trying to fit in someplace,” Zorochin says. “Brown taught me was to work with my hands. It was very important to me to experience the accomplishing of something, whether it worked or failed, because I was able to fix it with my hands. That boasted my self-confidence. And to see a professional sculptor create something and then market it was great for me. And it happened in my own town!”
While Brown’s work memorialized athletes, Zorochin found his muse in firefighters, even joining a volunteer fire department to make the work closer to the truth. And when he says in an article, “Firefighting is a kind of religion to us, (and)I think the best firefighters are the ones who let that old excitement and wonder live on while at the same time accepting the responsibility for their work,” he can also be talking about his art.
Married for 42 years and the father of a 40-year-old daughter who studied art history, Zorochin says he is always a fulltime artist, even if he is physically placing trees and plants as part of his landscaping business. Being physically engaged was something that Brown emphasized, saying that to be a good boxer one had to be willing to get hit.
The approach has been fruitful, and Zorochin’s resume includes a monument to Captain John T. Dempster at the Mercer County Fire Training Center in Lawrenceville, various bronze commemorative plaques and awards, and crosses for Princeton University Chapel.
And while he has exhibited at the New Jersey State Museum and Trenton City Museum, he says he is more interested in discovering opportunities outside the traditional art world.
Take for example, his other Princeton roadside work, “Bruce Springsteen, Soulful Humanitarian,” with the original bronze head located at Fowler’s Gulf Station on Nassau Street and a duplicate at the intersection of Alexander and Faculty roads. The sculpture was born when Zorochin heard about an art show about Asbury Park and “thought what could be better than Springsteen?” The digital world agreed and images of the work went viral, appeared on the front page of a London newspaper, and are now in “Rock Atlas USA: The Musical Landscape of America.”
A former garage band musician and singer for Princeton Pro Musica, Zorochin is continuing his love of music with plans to create a body for the Nassau Street Springsteen as well as finding an unexpected venue for his sculptures, “Other gas stations want my art. I’ll soon have a piece at gas stations all over Princeton.”
But right now his open road exhibit is the thing. Just a few days ago, he says, a couple of parents caught up with him to say how excited their family was about his traveling show. “You don’t hear that with a museum exhibition,” he says.
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