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RESUME´ GARY VAN DER STEUR The babyboom offspring of a first generation Dutch immigrant music teacher and an Arizona cowgirl speech teacher, Gary van der Steur naturally studied violin as a child and had a speech impediment. His father taught him fifth position and imparted a left brain Dutch work ethic; his mother taught him how to say his Rs, think with his right brain, and understand that (grammatically, at least) how one says something is more important than what one says. Van der Steur sought refuge in art. After art school (Chouinard, Los Angeles) van der Steur worked for a few carefree years, creating editorial illustrations for local periodicals including New West, California, Psychology Today, a smattering of airline magazines, and a few well-paying clients who generally asked him to imitate other artists like René Magritte or Grant Wood, who were not only priced out of reach but were also dead. For this work he got into the CA Art Annual and won a Belding Award or two. As the world changed in the 1980s, so did van der Steur. With his new wife's profound encouragement, he moved away from illustration toward fine art. He created a body of kinetic sculpture during this period, including a raven automaton, a gila monster pull-toy, a music-generating obelisk, a 9' electric crucifix, and a jumping cactus. This period of artistic creativity culminated with the birth of his daughter (a kinetic being in her own right). As his interest in illustration waned, he built skills as a graphic artist, learned how to spec and set type, make stats, build camera-ready mechanicals using blades, waxers, tapes, and spit. Concurrent with his explorations into kinetic art, (oh irony of ironies) he himself became an ad producing machine. Toward the end of the 80s decade, van der Steur received a Macintosh SE30 with a 9" monochrome screen (a gift from the devil), and has never looked back, except in longing... for the good old days when design and production were easier and faster. Well, at least faster. (He hasn't had time to look back lately, he's usually too busy troubleshooting dueling operating systems and wondering why his fonts won't work.) In the 90s, van der Steur became proficient in the unholy three: Illustrator, Photoshop and QuarkXpress; entered the buggy, crashy world of Macromedia Flash; began composing music using midi sequencing programs, even though he had no keyboard or midi interface (... still doesn't ... notes are entered the way Beethoven did it, with a mouse, using a truly lovable program: Midigraphy); and combined Flash movement with original music to create a series of oddball animations. On the reality front, he became Design Director at Radio & Records, Inc., a weekly trade newspaper, and turned what had been a 2-person art department into a pretty snazzy 7-person design department adept at visualizing many aspects of commercial radio. While quality zoomed (relatively speaking), no Pulitzers were forthcoming; yet life was sweet (except for the deadlines). And even as his mortgage responsibilities grew, van der Steur gained insight into the curious perils of the middle manager. Present day: Downsized halfway out of the corporate loop, van der Steur is currently enjoying a self-imposed semi-sabbatical, (how's THAT for a self-serving euphemism?) and is building skills once again, mortgage be damned. Devoting too much time to creating an extended musical work based on the imagined lives of his great-grandparents (and writing biographies of himself in the third person) he is also involved in the greatest commercial art project of his life: helping visualize and market a fledgling museum online and in print. And so he invents copy, praying that it's grammatical; shoots and doctors quirky photos; conjures style and cops attitude by ripping off the Eames's; and employs as many diverse skills as he can muster... for the Los Angeles Toy, Doll & Amusements Museum and its founder, Maria Kwong. (The wife mentioned earlier.) Recently aware that he is living, at long last, a lifelong goal... to do many different things... van der Steur's left brain only occasionally wonders if his right brain is doing them well enough. -30-
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