By K. Michelle Moran
Arts & Entertainment Editor
Sometimes, mother knows best.
When Mark Wolak of Fraser was very young — long before he’d ever shown any interest in the arts — his mother already knew what the future would hold for him.
“When I was a little child, [my mother] thought I was going to be an artist,” he said. “She used to take me down to the DIA [Detroit Institute of Arts] and put me in front of van Gogh paintings.”
Initially, it seemed as though his mother was right. Wolak’s main boyhood interest was art. His wife, who he’s known since they were children, remembers that in first-grade, Wolak ignored the teacher in favor of sketching dinosaurs and the like.
“I was always into drawing,” Wolak recalled. “My cousins would baby-sit me, and they knew if they just had a lot of paper and pencils laying around that they wouldn’t have to concern themselves with me.”
But as he got older, Wolak drifted away from art towards other pursuits, including music, hockey and brick masonry. He might have never picked up a pencil or brush again, had he not found himself in prison with long, empty days in need of something to fill them.
While doing a favor for a friend, Wolak found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time by being with someone who was reportedly planning to purchase cocaine. After being convicted as a conspirator for a nonviolent drug offense, Wolak received a life term in prison under a controversial Michigan law. It was during the 11 years he spent behind bars that Wolak said he suddenly got “a serious fever for art” that spurred him to start drawing and painting again. Wolak began studying and creating with intensity, losing track of the days and building up an impressive body of work — more than 450 abstract paintings and sketchbooks that got steadily stronger.
“I think that whether you’re schooled or not, if you push paint around a canvas all day long for enough years, you’re bound to realize something,” Wolak said.
While Wolak may be modest about his pieces, his talents have been recognized by a number of his peers in the Detroit art community. Wolak’s work has been displayed at the Detroit Artists Market, the Edward Hopper Museum and the Rackham Gallery at the University of Michigan. His pieces are currently being exhibited at the Maniscalco Gallery in Grosse Pointe City through Nov. 10.
Wolak is a “tremendously focused” artist who thoroughly explores color combinations and textures, “and yet his paintings come across as being very spontaneous,” said gallery owner Robert Maniscalco.
“There’s a level of sophistication that’s quite evident in his work,” Maniscalco continued.
Usually an abstract painter, Wolak has recently experimented with pieces that combine different styles of art, such as abstract and realism.
In many ways, he has come full circle, from the boy whose favorite playtoys were a charcoal pencil and pad to the man who now throws that same creative zeal into his canvases.
Under circumstances that may have left others bitter, Wolak is surprisingly positive and free, he says, of regrets.
“I became an artist,” Wolak said. “I’m lucky. I’m free. . . I was fortunate, in a sense. I don’t think it would have happened any other way.”
Catch the
exhibit
Mark Wolak’s art will be on display through Nov. 10 at the Maniscalco Gallery, 17728 Mack in Grosse Pointe City. The gallery will host a closing reception with the artist from 2-4 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 10. For more information, call (313) 886-2993 or visit www.maniscalcogallery.com.