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It’s common for artists to think outside the box, but for

It&rsquo;s common for artists to think outside the box, but for self-taught creator Paul Venditti, he also thinks outside the canvas.
Born in East Brunswick, NJ, and now living in the Forest City area, the 23-year-old may not have a formal educational background in art, but his &ldquo;unstoppable curiosity&rdquo; led him to experiment with different art forms his entire life, culminating in a more &ldquo;pronounced&rdquo; focus over the last three to four years that has been turning heads throughout Northeast Pennsylvania.
&ldquo;I try to use an organic style, I would say. It&rsquo;s organic or abstract. It&rsquo;s always changing; it&rsquo;s never one thing&hellip;It&rsquo;s what came naturally. Over years of trying different things, I&rsquo;ve always veered towards drawing plant life and nature or geometrics and math. It&rsquo;s like visual math to me. A lot of it I work out on graph paper and I just see geometric shapes,&rdquo; Venditti described.
&ldquo;It was just developed through side effects of experiments, like, &lsquo;What happens if I use this type of paint with this push or this pull?&rsquo; You fudge factors and you come out with something you never even thought of. With most of my work, I don&rsquo;t even know where I&rsquo;m going to end up when I start. I have an idea of the color palette or shapes or size, but at the last moment, it can change.&rdquo;
Venditti has played with clay, plaster, acrylics, watercolors, aerosols, airbrushing, and whatever else he&rsquo;s found will &ldquo;get the job done&rdquo; but if he had to choose only one medium, &ldquo;it&rsquo;d be aerosol, without hesitation.&rdquo;
This may be because his street art, which can be found on walls and buildings in cities like Carbondale, Forest City, and Scranton, may be among his most striking work. Lately, his focus has been on the &ldquo;universally appealing theme&rdquo; of nature, incorporating parts of buildings into the vines and flowers he paints.
&ldquo;There&rsquo;s a simplicity in it that&rsquo;s easily overlooked. You look at the cities and everybody&rsquo;s moving around like an army of ants. We didn&rsquo;t have all that not too long ago. We were all in the woods,&rdquo; he explained.
&ldquo;With plant life and nature, most of the time, people aren&rsquo;t upset with it after it&rsquo;s done, even if you don&rsquo;t ask to do it. It&rsquo;s not like I&rsquo;m doing a giant tag on the wall. I use part of the building and incorporate it into the drawing and out pops a flower. It makes people smile on their way home from work.&rdquo;
While some would call that graffiti, Venditti found it &ldquo;depressing&rdquo; driving through Forest City and seeing plywood nailed across &ldquo;two-thirds of the buildings on Main Street,&rdquo; so he simply started painting the boards to reflect the world he saw.
&ldquo;If it&rsquo;s under construction, it&rsquo;s temporary anyway,&rdquo; he mused.
&ldquo;I choose to paint outdoors because I want to settle the score with the advertising companies&hellip;You have these companies taking up space on walls, and I figured that it&rsquo;s a fair fight to put something natural back on the wall. Most companies don&rsquo;t give back to communities; they just shout at you all the time with their advertisements and you have no choice but to look at it. I&rsquo;m trying to give it back to the people because it&rsquo;s our city.&rdquo;
The debate over whether or not this is art is one that Venditti enjoys having.
&ldquo;There&rsquo;s really no wrong way to use something. I think that&rsquo;s the beauty of art. I&rsquo;ve never used a canvas traditionally. Most of my stuff doesn&rsquo;t stay on the canvas. If it&rsquo;s going to hang somewhere, half of it is off the canvas and onto the wall. A lot of my work is not content, it&rsquo;s context,&rdquo; he emphasized.
&ldquo;You can take it off of the wall, but it&rsquo;s not going to be that same experience if you saw it in its own natural state, like an animal, I guess. You can put it in a zoo, and it&rsquo;s still a tiger, but when you see it in the jungle pouncing on something, it&rsquo;s completely different than seeing it in its cage.&rdquo;
Avoiding the white walls and neat frames of typical galleries, Venditti held his first solo art installation in an abandoned sewing factory he renovated in Forest City during the town&rsquo;s annual &ldquo;Old Home Week&rdquo; festival. Utilizing wood fragments and found items to create pieces, he also scrapped 2,400 of pounds of dumped steel and used the money to buy paint. The &ldquo;art-themed haunted house&rdquo; piqued the curiosity of many of the local youth who toured the facility, he said, and he hopes that it inspired them as well.
&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think you really need portfolios and the classic things people think they need for success. You just need some good ideas and an internet connection and you can kind of leapfrog to wherever you want to be. Whatever you want to do is out there; you just have to figure out how to take it.&rdquo;
Some of his pieces, he admits, are also subversive, but they serve as a thought-provoking reaction or rebuttal to the state of the world around him.
&ldquo;It has a chance to act faster than politics, I feel. To me, art should be used to stop a war or start a revolution or change things that the public wants but nobody&rsquo;s listening to or to promote awareness of something. Someone could see an image on the street, and that day, they&rsquo;re bringing out the recyclables. If they have to pass a law, how long does that take? Then it&rsquo;s not until it&rsquo;s enforced that most people do anything. We need to take the initiative and stop being lazy. That&rsquo;s why I try to use art as a delivery method. Otherwise, it would just hang on the living room wall,&rdquo; Venditti said
&ldquo;Rather than getting all angry and flipping cars in the streets and protesting like in the U.K., I&rsquo;ll just hit up a wall with a can of paint. Worst case scenario, you just roll over it in the morning and it&rsquo;s erased. I like the temporariness of it because news is temporary. You have these big stories, and then two days later, it&rsquo;s gone.&rdquo;
Despite his penchant for impermanent expression, he has produced some pieces that will likely last decades. In June, he was asked to paint a mural during the Carbondale Art Walk and painted a sunflower on the side of Martini Grill, 414 Spruce St., in Scranton during First Friday.
Like much of his work, the &ldquo;proper channels&rdquo; were thrown out the proverbial window and his proposal to the owners of Martini Grill was spur of the moment, showing them a sketch the day before and asking them if they&rsquo;d like him to do it. By the next morning, they had given him the go ahead, which gave patrons and passers-by a unique experience as they watched him work throughout the night.
&ldquo;I could see how the art could get lost for people, so I wanted to do something completely different. Everybody&rsquo;s putting it on canvas, so I&rsquo;ll go out in the street and put something up on a wall. Everybody&rsquo;s trying to go through the same door, so I&rsquo;ll just go around the back way,&rdquo; he said with a laugh.
&ldquo;I thought it would be a great idea. A lot of people have come in and asked about it. They come by and peek in and say, &lsquo;Hey, who did that? It&rsquo;s so lifelike! I have this garage by my house and I&rsquo;d really love to put something like that on my house.&rsquo; That&rsquo;s great,&rdquo; Kristen Baigis, house manager of Martini Grill, added.
Alex Molfetas, owner of 119 Penn Ave. just down the street, stumbled across the artist in the act when he smelled the fresh spray-paint, approaching Venditti with the promise of an even more &ldquo;giant canvas&rdquo; &ndash; the exterior wall at the rear of his building that sits in the 200 block of Center Street.
&ldquo;We made the conscious decision to make the alley look better,&rdquo; Molfetas said.
The mural, in progress for the last several weeks and delayed by rain from Hurricane Irene and Tropical Storm Lee, is a collaborative design that features the logo for Molfetas&rsquo; production company, 119 Productions, designed by Bryan Filarsky. An electric train originally designed by 119&rsquo;s Head Designer Kurt Effertz plays off of the city&rsquo;s history as geometric shapes scatter around it.
The focus, Molfetas feels, isn&rsquo;t necessarily to attract traffic inside 119 Penn Ave., which houses The Vintage Theater, as much as it is to &ldquo;get people into the alleyways,&rdquo; where even he has discovered unique pieces of public art.
&ldquo;There are a lot of different alleyways in town that people need to look into,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s some random pieces of art around town, but what we&rsquo;re doing is just going big and bold. We&rsquo;re changing the game.&rdquo;
Neighbors have been wowed by the piece, which he hopes will motivate others to join in his vision of a downtown &ldquo;design district,&rdquo; embracing new media and art to bolster the city&rsquo;s future.
&ldquo;Art can be anywhere.&rdquo;
That&rsquo;s one notion that Venditti, who believes in passion over profit, can definitely get behind, but while there had to be at least a bit of preparation on Molfetas&rsquo; part, the plan just keeps on changing for the muralist.
&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a big piece and it&rsquo;s complex,&rdquo; Venditti said. &ldquo;Who knows how it&rsquo;s going to ultimately turn out?&rdquo;