Through the eyes of a child
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BIRD’S EYE VIEW: The wall of artist Stephen
Sumrall-Orsak's studio is covered with
drawings he created both there and during
classes at the Glassell School of Art. |
LESLIE CONTRERAS
24.FEB.05
Six-year old artist Stephen Sumrall-Orsak stands in
his art studio and looks at his father, Mike Orsak,
with a face of bewilderment. A black haired,
clear-eyed boy with a mischievous smile, the last
thing this young Glassell School of Art student
wants to do on a sunny Friday afternoon is answer a
visitor’s questions about his art.
Covering one wall of the small studio, his work was
created during his “studio time” every Tuesday after
art class. Paintings and drawings made from
charcoal, pastels and chalk show faces with
well-defined features and bold lines, animals drawn
with a child’s imagination, and abstract images
expressed through color and simple form.
Works include charcoal pieces showing a man named
“Cowboy” with over-sized ears and nostrils and a
floating cowboy hat, and a long-haired woman called
“Columbus” with slanted eyes and disconnected
features.
Each Tuesday Stephen attends a junior drawing class
at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston’s Glassell
school, where he learns to use a different medium in
each class. “Everyday is something that I don’t
know,” he says.
In his own words, Stephen creates art, quite simply,
“because it’s fun.”
However, Stephen is not like most 6-year-olds, whose
artwork is usually displayed on refrigerators or
office walls. A solo exhibition of his work, “Six,”
will be shown at the Houston Foundry, a warehouse of
art studios in Houston’s warehouse district, at 1712
Burnett St. on March 5 from 3 to 5 p.m. Stephen will
present new charcoal pieces in the main gallery as
well as his work of various mediums in Studio G.
The Houston Foundry houses Stephen’s personal
studio, where he goes to work on his art following
his class at Glassell, as well as 35 other artists’
studios.
Stephen’s art is also currently shown at the Debra
Goldstein Fine Art gallery in Johnson City, Texas,
just west of Austin in the Hill Country.
Stephen, who was born in China as Sun Dong Qiang,
has two fathers, Paul Sumrall and Mike Orsak,
partners who adopted him in the summer of 1999. The
two are also business partners who own a 50,000
square-foot warehouse and the adjacent company,
Blumenthal Sheet Metal in the warehouse district.
Sumrall and Orsak also own the Rice Construction
company.
The young artist began working in his own studio a
year ago, when Sumrall, controller of Blumenthal
Sheet Metal and manager of the Foundry’s tenants,
decided to designate a place for him and his son to
get away and to be able to work on their art without
creating a mess at home. Sumrall is not an artist
but enjoys creating art with his son.
Since then, after Stephen’s Tuesday art class, the
Sumrall-Orsak family spends the evening at the
Foundry — Orsak works late in the Blumenthal office
while Stephen and Sumrall create art.
It is Stephen’s favorite part of the week. The
family eats take-out and Stephen gets comfortable in
his pajamas after a hard evening’s work of serious
art. He is so tired by the time they leave at 8 p.m.
that he quickly falls asleep on the ride home, Orsak
says.
The young artist says that at Glassell he and his
classmates learn to do things like “blend colors”
and that “it’s not too hard.”
When asked about one of his most recent abstract
pieces, he is quite direct about how he created it
in class.
“They don’t tell me what to do,” he says about the
teachers. “I do free drawing. I just found something
and then did it.”
Stephen’s eyes light up when he displays his many
new pieces of art, pulling out pages folded in
corners of the room and showing off each one
proudly.
He likes to draw birds, mainly parrots, and faces,
he says, and pulls out a recent sketch of an owl. “I
messed up here but you can’t see it that well,” he
says.
He hopes that when people see his work at his
exhibition, “they will like it.”
He leads a busy schedule: He attends Montessori
Country Day school, and at home he enjoys playing
with Legos and having slumber parties.
On weekends he visits his fathers’ land in Johnson
City to swim and fish.
His art, which includes people with bobbing facial
features, a smiling catfish, and a giraffe with an
extended tongue, shows the sense of humor and
curiosity of child.
“I can’t imagine what it is,” Stephen says when
asked about the subject of an abstract piece.
Orsak says that Stephen wants something to do with
airplanes when he grows up, but Stephen quickly
corrects him. “I don’t want to do that anymore,” he
says. He wants to be an artist, he says.
For now, Stephen looks forward to his next
sleep-over with friends when he can use his tent and
is working with his fathers on learning how to read.
“He’s always leading the pack at the playground,”
says Orsak.
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