Q and Accent: Brush with greatness

Kirk Baird

Saturday, Sept. 16, 2000 | 6:22 a.m.

Sporting a bandanna and wild clothes, Steve Kaufman, a tall, thickly built New Yorker with a heavy accent, looks more biker than artist. In reality, he's both, but certainly he's known more for his art than bike-riding abilities.

At 18, Kaufman worked with Andy Warhol for a year and a half, running errands and cutting the film for canvas screening at Warhol's studio. Now 40, Kaufman has continued in Warhol's "pop art" vein, crafting prints of Hollywood and sports icons as well as instantly recognizable household objects and historical figures.

Despite his growing prestige in the art world, Kaufman is determined not to forget his roots, when he grew up fatherless and in constant trouble with the law. So the artist has a program at his studio in Los Angeles where he almost exclusively hires convicts, putting them to work making frames for his prints and preparing them for shipment as well as any other odd job he can think of.

It's a program that's been so successful, Kaufman said he hopes to duplicate it in Las Vegas.

In town recently to promote an exhibit of his art work, which is running through Oct. 31 at Centaur Galleries in the Fashion Show mall, Kaufman talked with the Sun about his life as an artist and community activist.

Las Vegas Sun: What was it like working with Andy Warhol?

Steve Kaufman: For the first six months I didn't know who he was. My uncle had to tell me. I was a gofer for him, kind of like what I do with my kids now. I thought we were just making posters.

Sun: Do you feel like you're carrying on his legacy?

SK: In a sense I do. He did pop and I do pop. It's like the legacy is continuing, and that's a compliment. But to a certain eye, I handle the subject differently than the did. Still, it's in the same family.

Sun: Much of your art work features people who've made a difference in the world -- both past and present. Yet, they're always instantly recognizable figures, such as Lincoln or Beethoven. Is that because you prefer painting pop-culture pieces?

SK: People ask me if I'm a pop artist. I don't see it like that. I've done Picasso's portrait for the Picasso estate, I've done Van Gough,I've done Napoleon, I've done Beethoven, I cross over from realism to pop. I bring it around. I do products like Campbell's soup, Cuban cigars, to Marilyn Monroe to popular culture to Sinatra's police mug shot that I just finished. It's having fun.

Sun: How did your program in L.A. get started?

SK: I used to hire homeless people in New York City. When I moved to L.A., I hired kids from prison. It's funny. I was watching TV, a "Jenny Jones Show," about "Troubled Youth." And I looked at the kids on the show and I go, 'Oh, my kids are worse.' These kids I have, I'm just straightening them up; I don't take no crap from them.

On holidays, like Martin Luther King Day, they ask, 'Don't we get the day off?' I'm the only white guy in the company, I said 'You know what? Martin Luther King wants you out of trouble, he wants you here. You screwed up and that's why you're here. You can't get a job at Wendy's, Burger King or whatever because the first thing they ever ask you is, 'Have you ever been arrested?' In my case, 'Oh, you've been arrested? Is it a felony? Yes? You're hired.' It's the only company I know of in the world that does that.

Sun: What's your success rate?

SK: Pretty much 85 to 87 percent. Former employees three rookie police officers, we have a guy who works over at MGM, he's an assistant chef, we have a guy who works at Spago in L.A., he's an assistant chef ... I bought a building in a gang neighborhood in L.A. Now these days I have to fight for a parking spot because we made the neighborhood so safe.

Sun: And now you want to do this in Las Vegas?

SK: We plan to take over an airplane hanger here in Vegas and deal with the gang kids here like we do in L.A., have a warehouse where we can put kids to work. Trust me, I've seen plenty of kids here. They don't hang out on the Strip, but you see the elements of them everywhere. I imagine with what I did in L.A., I could easily clean up Las Vegas in five years.

Sun: Do you know of other artists who do this?

SK: You know, I don't even know artists who work on the projects I do, let alone what I do with people. Keith Haring (the late New York artist), when he was alive, used to donate to charities, true. But now it seems like artists who donate to charities want to know what is in it for them. And that's the wrong attitude.

Sun: Why do you do this then?

SK: You give back and you get and give and get and give. I watch a lot of people who are very fortunate and there's no giving back and I just don't get it. ... Teenagers idolize a lot of these big rappers. Where's the youth parks? I don't see Puff Daddy Youth Park anywhere.

They're used to today's heros, not the past. I try to show them that who you idolize is not who you should idolize. You should idolize Martin Luther King, for example, or idolize Malcolm X, because Malcolm X made a remark saying, "I don't judge a man by his colors, but by his deeds."