A Raw Look into the Life of an Artist Side A
by Tammy Peacy
From Kenosha to San Francisco to Boston to San Francisco to Honolulu to San Diego and back again, Franco Tarsitano opens his life in art to interviewer Tammy Peacy.
I recently met with photographer, painter, infectious laugh producer, gallery manager, dry martini drinker Franco Tarsitano at Pazzo’s where he sealed his fate as my B.F.F. (and ever) by saving me from a hideous insect and telling me I look twenty-three.
His life has been multifarious to say the least. He’s performed cabaret, run a modeling agency, been a lifeguard, a photographer and the personnel assistant for National Onion Singing Telegrams. Now after thirty years away, Franco has returned to Kenosha and found a new place to call home in the Lemon Street Gallery.
Tammy: So, what brought you back to Kenosha?
Franco: My dad passed away and, not that I felt any kind of guilt obligation, but I also felt like, “You know what, of the family, I’m the one that did get away. I’ve had thirty years of fun and ups and downs. It’s my turn.”
I was actually born in Connecticut, my parents came from Italy and my mother was pregnant and that’s as far as she got (laughs). I have uncles and aunts there. My parents moved from there two or three months after I was born and came here. My dad had a lot of relatives in the area and back then you were sponsored into the country. That meant that whoever that was took some kind financial responsibility for you and that’s how you got into the country. So my relatives lived here and helped my parents a lot in terms of getting started. For me I may as well have been born in Kenosha. It’s all I remember. It’s my hometown.
I was actually born in Connecticut, my parents came from Italy and my mother was pregnant and that’s as far as she got (laughs). I have uncles and aunts there. My parents moved from there two or three months after I was born and came here. My dad had a lot of relatives in the area and back then you were sponsored into the country. That meant that whoever that was took some kind financial responsibility for you and that’s how you got into the country. So my relatives lived here and helped my parents a lot in terms of getting started. For me I may as well have been born in Kenosha. It’s all I remember. It’s my hometown.
T: You’ve lived in a lot of different places. How did your locale affect your art?
F: I think it was my learning that affected it. When I got to Boston most of my background was administrative. I’ve got a degree from UWM, a BS in Community Development and I also did recreational work. Which back then meant more of recreational therapy in an institution and places like that, but I always had my personal interests in the arts and tried to stay with that. Back then I was doing a lot of little local theater. In Madison I did some cabaret, where you have your own little act. I sucked (laughs).
T: What was your act?
F: I had this great piano player. She was from New York and she was an incredible musician. She was basically my director. I had the kind of voice that was very much a Broadway belt. I sound pretty quiet right now, but I was like, “Swanney!” (laughs) I always look at pictures and I was really skinny then, I was about one-hundred-twenty-five pounds and it was like watching Gomer Pyle. This voice does not fit the body. I would do things like that because I was stupid, but I wanted to do it. And it was really fun. I was a waiter at a dinner theater. It didn’t matter what I was doing, I had to have a foot in there somewhere just to remind me that I really was in the arts.
Your parents do not want you in the arts. It still exists today. They say, “You went to college, you have a degree.” Most of them don’t know, even back then, yeah, I’m the recreation director at an institution where the patients are nineteen to eight-two, I have a staff of two, and I’m making $3.59 an hour. But don’t be an artist.
Your parents do not want you in the arts. It still exists today. They say, “You went to college, you have a degree.” Most of them don’t know, even back then, yeah, I’m the recreation director at an institution where the patients are nineteen to eight-two, I have a staff of two, and I’m making $3.59 an hour. But don’t be an artist.
T: Yeah, I worked at a group home for awhile. They pay you nothing.
F: Mine was kindly called an Intermediate Care Facility, where the patients are picking up the couch and throwing it out the second floor window.
T: Or at you.
F: Exactly. It was a wonderful experience. I wouldn’t change it for anything, because it has an impact. But it terms of a job, it’s like, c’mon. At that point I hadn’t found my niche.
T: When did you begin to focus on photography?
F: Photography was sort of an accident. After college I went to San Francisco for one year and I was totally naïve, I’d never been west of Wisconsin. My family did not travel. I went out alone to San Francisco and I got a job for National Onion Singing Telegrams. It was the first company to re-establish singing telegrams after Western Union discontinued them. They were in ten different cities, head quartered in San Francisco. In the morning I would go to work, and it was this huge warehouse with this horseshoe of tables and they had phones all around. I was the personnel assistant. It was hilarious because I would be doing my typing or whatever and then you’d hear, “Happy Birthday! Happy Birthday!” It was a riot.
I had met someone and he was from Boston, so I decided I’d go out there. It didn’t work out and I certainly couldn’t afford to go back and forth. Boston I call my seven black years. It was so hard. New Englanders are tough. If they like you once they get to know you they are incredibly loyal, incredibly loving people, but they make you work for it.
So I was doing the same thing, dabbling in theater, but my administrative skills were really, really strong and one day I picked up the Yellow Pages and thought, “I’m gonna look at anything that has to do with theater, art, whatever. I’m just gonna make the call and see if they need a person.” I found modeling agencies and called and all she said was, “How fast can you type?” Back when that mattered. And I told her it was about 90 words per minute. She said come right in and she hired me on the spot.
After about two years I was basically running the whole thing. There was only her and me. She made me vice president and then she tried putting me under a very strict contract. She said, “I really don’t want you to tell your parents about this, don’t talk to an attorney or any of the models. I want you to do this on your own.” So I’m reading the contract and thinking, “I’m not signing this.” I did go to an attorney and he said, “There’s no way. Do not sign this.” There were non-compete clauses that said if I left I couldn’t work at any kind of agency for two years. She made me feel like such an asshole for asking that. It was really uncomfortable after that and I remember thinking, “I can’t take this.” So what I did was type everything up and leave notes for her and I left.
Then I’m thinking, “Well, I’m unemployed.” I got told by a lot of the models, “Start your own agency.” And that’s fine, but who’s going to give me money? I had about $900 left to my name. I found a landlord and told him what I was doing. Basically, I was given sixty days to swing it. I opened my doors and within the first month I had forty-five models. That’s a lot to handle on your own. We ended up moving three times because I didn’t have enough space.
Eventually I had about one hundred models and I was only twenty-eight and it was getting way beyond my experience. I tried finding investors and it just wasn’t enough. I actually became sick from the stress and they came in one day and found me on the floor. I’m not sure if I fainted or just went to sleep.
So what came out of that experience is that my eye was trained. I had to look at all those contact sheets, you know? I had to be able to sit down with a model and say, “This shot, not that one” and be able to explain it. I had to talk to the client and say, “Tell me what you want.” And I was picking who the models are that are going to go for whatever it is. [I was] working with the photographers, telling them what they need to do in terms of what model is going to look right. I got to go to photo shoots and watch the make up people put the make up on. I got this education that I would have never gotten in a school. I was there. I learned a lot through osmosis. A couple of my roommates happened to be photographers, so I would watch them, assist them, whatever.
I moved back to San Francisco and started taking pictures and my mom goes, “You’ve totally forgotten haven’t you? Oh, my God, we could never get that camera off your neck. People would come to us for prints because you took such a nice picture at the weddings.” I didn’t remember that at all. And she said, “That’s because when you got to be twelve or thirteen you thought it was too nerdy and you never touched it again.” So there I was twenty years later and it had come full circle. I ended up having a few studios and shot for pretty much fifteen years.
Then I developed what are called essential tremors. If you’ve ever seen Katharine Hepburn and how everything would shake. Well, that’s what happened to my hands.
Back then we used film cameras. We didn’t have stabilizing lenses, didn’t have Photoshop, and it just got to be too much for me. I didn’t want to take a whole roll of blurred film. It got really, really depressing.
So, I started working for the Y and took lifeguard lessons and became a lifeguard with them. They told me there was a Y in Hawaii that might need a lifeguard. But Hawaiians don’t like haole (how-lee). It’s a very derogatory word. They get upset when haole come and take their jobs. But I was like, I’m forty years old and I’m gonna do this. So there I was at that age and I was a lifeguard in Honolulu (laughs). It was two years of a lot of fun. I did some shooting there, stuff of my own. Then the problems with my dad came up. I came back to Wisconsin and then went back to San Diego.
I got a job working with the phone company, which paid really, really, really well and I was just so miserable.
I started to do a little of my artwork.
I had met someone and he was from Boston, so I decided I’d go out there. It didn’t work out and I certainly couldn’t afford to go back and forth. Boston I call my seven black years. It was so hard. New Englanders are tough. If they like you once they get to know you they are incredibly loyal, incredibly loving people, but they make you work for it.
So I was doing the same thing, dabbling in theater, but my administrative skills were really, really strong and one day I picked up the Yellow Pages and thought, “I’m gonna look at anything that has to do with theater, art, whatever. I’m just gonna make the call and see if they need a person.” I found modeling agencies and called and all she said was, “How fast can you type?” Back when that mattered. And I told her it was about 90 words per minute. She said come right in and she hired me on the spot.
After about two years I was basically running the whole thing. There was only her and me. She made me vice president and then she tried putting me under a very strict contract. She said, “I really don’t want you to tell your parents about this, don’t talk to an attorney or any of the models. I want you to do this on your own.” So I’m reading the contract and thinking, “I’m not signing this.” I did go to an attorney and he said, “There’s no way. Do not sign this.” There were non-compete clauses that said if I left I couldn’t work at any kind of agency for two years. She made me feel like such an asshole for asking that. It was really uncomfortable after that and I remember thinking, “I can’t take this.” So what I did was type everything up and leave notes for her and I left.
Then I’m thinking, “Well, I’m unemployed.” I got told by a lot of the models, “Start your own agency.” And that’s fine, but who’s going to give me money? I had about $900 left to my name. I found a landlord and told him what I was doing. Basically, I was given sixty days to swing it. I opened my doors and within the first month I had forty-five models. That’s a lot to handle on your own. We ended up moving three times because I didn’t have enough space.
Eventually I had about one hundred models and I was only twenty-eight and it was getting way beyond my experience. I tried finding investors and it just wasn’t enough. I actually became sick from the stress and they came in one day and found me on the floor. I’m not sure if I fainted or just went to sleep.
So what came out of that experience is that my eye was trained. I had to look at all those contact sheets, you know? I had to be able to sit down with a model and say, “This shot, not that one” and be able to explain it. I had to talk to the client and say, “Tell me what you want.” And I was picking who the models are that are going to go for whatever it is. [I was] working with the photographers, telling them what they need to do in terms of what model is going to look right. I got to go to photo shoots and watch the make up people put the make up on. I got this education that I would have never gotten in a school. I was there. I learned a lot through osmosis. A couple of my roommates happened to be photographers, so I would watch them, assist them, whatever.
I moved back to San Francisco and started taking pictures and my mom goes, “You’ve totally forgotten haven’t you? Oh, my God, we could never get that camera off your neck. People would come to us for prints because you took such a nice picture at the weddings.” I didn’t remember that at all. And she said, “That’s because when you got to be twelve or thirteen you thought it was too nerdy and you never touched it again.” So there I was twenty years later and it had come full circle. I ended up having a few studios and shot for pretty much fifteen years.
Then I developed what are called essential tremors. If you’ve ever seen Katharine Hepburn and how everything would shake. Well, that’s what happened to my hands.
Back then we used film cameras. We didn’t have stabilizing lenses, didn’t have Photoshop, and it just got to be too much for me. I didn’t want to take a whole roll of blurred film. It got really, really depressing.
So, I started working for the Y and took lifeguard lessons and became a lifeguard with them. They told me there was a Y in Hawaii that might need a lifeguard. But Hawaiians don’t like haole (how-lee). It’s a very derogatory word. They get upset when haole come and take their jobs. But I was like, I’m forty years old and I’m gonna do this. So there I was at that age and I was a lifeguard in Honolulu (laughs). It was two years of a lot of fun. I did some shooting there, stuff of my own. Then the problems with my dad came up. I came back to Wisconsin and then went back to San Diego.
I got a job working with the phone company, which paid really, really, really well and I was just so miserable.
I started to do a little of my artwork.
T: Painting?
F: Mostly photography, still mostly photography. I was really having a hard time finding the art community in San Diego. It was still really small, but what’s there is expensive and they’re getting things from L.A. Or it was stuff I didn’t want to get involved in. I was starting to take classes with a woman who’d only take twelve students for pottery wheel classes. And then the thing happened with my dad. I came home thinking, “I’m not going to find anything. It’s going to be even worse,” you know?
T: How long ago was that?
F: All together?
T: No, when you first came back and thought, “I’m never going to find anything.”
F: It’s been not quite two years. I think, maybe about a year and a half ago. So I go here and let’s see, it’s been a little over a year at the end of May.
I grew up on 45th street and Sheridan. Lemon Street Gallery was a liquor store when I lived there. I’m driving through the old neighborhood past my house, around the corner and end up at that intersection. I’m going, “What the fuck is that? That’s a gallery?” I walked in and looked around and was like, “This is sort of cool.” I talked to Melanie [Hovey] and got the lowdown in terms of jurying. I went home and got all my stuff and dropped it off. In the process they lost my number and I’m waiting and I’m waiting and I’m going nuts. “Oh, my God, I can’t even make it in Kenosha!” (laughs). I think Melanie eventually wrote a letter saying, “We can’t find your phone number. You’re in.”
I got really into it. I started with volunteer work, gallery sitting. I felt like I had just spent thirty years around this stuff and I could see the potential there. Melanie and I hit it off. We had a lot of the same visions and goals. Not just visions for the gallery, but our independence, goals and visions as artists, how we could impact artists. You know I had a model/talent agency and the whole thing was to get these people moving on. Boston was very much the farm city for the New York agencies. If she was a good model you don’t keep her in Boston very long. There was some prestige to have started with Franco in Boston and now they’re with Elite or whoever.
I really got into the mission [of Lemon Street]. I think they have a really strong mission in terms of not just giving lip service to diversity. The one thing you can ask any artist there, why they’re at Lemon Street, and the biggest reason for joining is they feel a comfort. They feel safe there; it’s a harbor, it’s a home. It doesn’t matter how wacky, if you are, as an artist, they can just be themselves there. I really decided this is where I want to be, you know?
So I got more involved and got onto the board. My first proposal was that I should get hired (laughs). They had never hired anybody. Melanie, that place wouldn’t exist without Melanie, for seven years she had done it without pay, that is her building, and she never charged rent for four years. She really put her money where her mouth is. So anyway, I get paid. It’s less than modest. I figured it out and it comes to less than a dollar thirty-two cents per hour (laughs). That’s before taxes.
It was important to me they started running like a business. With the current board, my first full board, they had to go through a lot, a lot of changes. They’ve really stepped up to the plate. What was great was that they weren’t afraid of debating with me. It got to the point where, how many people actually say, I can’t wait until the next board meeting? That’s what we were doing. It was no holds barred and we got a lot done.
When I came in part of my goal was, for example, there were twenty-six members when I joined. I set the goal to be at fifty by the end of this year.
I grew up on 45th street and Sheridan. Lemon Street Gallery was a liquor store when I lived there. I’m driving through the old neighborhood past my house, around the corner and end up at that intersection. I’m going, “What the fuck is that? That’s a gallery?” I walked in and looked around and was like, “This is sort of cool.” I talked to Melanie [Hovey] and got the lowdown in terms of jurying. I went home and got all my stuff and dropped it off. In the process they lost my number and I’m waiting and I’m waiting and I’m going nuts. “Oh, my God, I can’t even make it in Kenosha!” (laughs). I think Melanie eventually wrote a letter saying, “We can’t find your phone number. You’re in.”
I got really into it. I started with volunteer work, gallery sitting. I felt like I had just spent thirty years around this stuff and I could see the potential there. Melanie and I hit it off. We had a lot of the same visions and goals. Not just visions for the gallery, but our independence, goals and visions as artists, how we could impact artists. You know I had a model/talent agency and the whole thing was to get these people moving on. Boston was very much the farm city for the New York agencies. If she was a good model you don’t keep her in Boston very long. There was some prestige to have started with Franco in Boston and now they’re with Elite or whoever.
I really got into the mission [of Lemon Street]. I think they have a really strong mission in terms of not just giving lip service to diversity. The one thing you can ask any artist there, why they’re at Lemon Street, and the biggest reason for joining is they feel a comfort. They feel safe there; it’s a harbor, it’s a home. It doesn’t matter how wacky, if you are, as an artist, they can just be themselves there. I really decided this is where I want to be, you know?
So I got more involved and got onto the board. My first proposal was that I should get hired (laughs). They had never hired anybody. Melanie, that place wouldn’t exist without Melanie, for seven years she had done it without pay, that is her building, and she never charged rent for four years. She really put her money where her mouth is. So anyway, I get paid. It’s less than modest. I figured it out and it comes to less than a dollar thirty-two cents per hour (laughs). That’s before taxes.
It was important to me they started running like a business. With the current board, my first full board, they had to go through a lot, a lot of changes. They’ve really stepped up to the plate. What was great was that they weren’t afraid of debating with me. It got to the point where, how many people actually say, I can’t wait until the next board meeting? That’s what we were doing. It was no holds barred and we got a lot done.
When I came in part of my goal was, for example, there were twenty-six members when I joined. I set the goal to be at fifty by the end of this year.
T: Aren’t they at fifty now?
F: Forty-three. Yeah. They never really capitalized on donations. Little things. I really had to fight some of them; some of them don’t like it. But go into the Kenosha Public Museum. What’s the first thing you see?
T: An octogenarian? Kidding. A money box?
F: Yeah, so we had like a little fish bowl. Then I found sponsors to do our printing. Some have donated our Internet services. Some may just bring us coffee and cakes for our meetings. I tried to cover a lot of things they would have normally paid for. We have about eight sponsors now and donations are up about six hundred fifty-seven percent. We had a garage sale. We made one thousand dollars.
T: In one weekend?
F: Yeah.
T: That’s a pretty sweet garage sale.
F: It was amazing. What do you have to lose? We had a win a trip thing, which didn’t make as much as we would have liked to, but we were able to give the winner two thousand dollars. It turned out he was on vacation, but his son is going to college, so that was a neat thing to do. And we still made a thousand dollars there. A few small grants here and there. It all starts to add up.
…
Read next week as we flip the microcassette to Side B and Franco continues chatting about the art scene in Kenosha and saves a terrified Tammy from an unwanted winged visitor.
Tammy Peacy finds time to write between loads of laundry in the basement of the home she shares with her husband, Steve, and their three children. Her writing has been published in AntiMuse, Chick Flicks Ezine, The Write Side Up, and Wanderings Magazine, and ExposeKenosha.com
9 comments ↓
Good interview, Tammy. Franco is a very interesting (intelligent, hard-working, patient, silly) man, and a very dear friend. I learned a few new things about you, too! Can’t wait to read the second installment!
WOW !!
Franco and Tammy, take a joint bow.
That is a jewel of a story, artfully told about a great guy.
Thank you,
Joe
Tammys’ interview with Franco is investigative, interesting with a large amount of humor intelectually instilled. She brings out the best in everyone. After reading the interview I think everyone would benefit by having a Franco type person in their lives. No dull evenings would be spent with him. He probably has stories way beyond the imagination of many of us. I may not have a Franco, but I do have Tammy in my life, for that I’m forever grateful.
Great interview, Tammy. You ask open questions that leaves the sbject an opportunity to go where he wants, but you folow up with nudges that move things along. Unlike so many interviewers, you make it about the subject and not yourself. Watch out. You might end up on CBS.
wow tammy, i didn’t realize you got that much out of me…lol…sign of a great interviewer…thank you so much it was a pleasure, franco
Great story Franco I wish you the best at LSG, it is the best place, Lots of fun. SWEDE
That a way nephew. We’re lucky to have you back. You add charm, color and depth of culture to Kenosha. You are here at the right time. Ray
Franco is a sweetheart and a talented artist. He made me feel so welcome at LSG and calmed my nerves when I went through the jury process to join. I love Franco and I can’t say enough good things about him. I am glad I got to learn more about you and your travels! Tammy you did a fantastic job on this interview and I can’t wait to read part”B”.
Love it!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Here I am trying to track down my “Moonrise” piece and I run into an interview with the man that single-handedly renewed my ambition for art. When first juried into LSG, like so many others before me, Franco was there with his passion for his craft and visual arts in general. He convinced me to immerse myself in the art world and see how far it could take me. I’m not world renown and if someone were to buy one of my paintings, they don’t have to fear for their mortgage as of yet, but I do still have the drive and vision I gained in Kenosha, so we’ll see if the New York art scene is where my career takes off. And even if it doesn’t, I still owe Franco a lot for what I’ve learned from him. Can’t wait to see part 2!
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