Stephen Talasnik was born in Southwest Philadelphia. He grew up in a working class neighborhood surrounded by oil refineries, shipyards, an airport, and a cemetery. As a child, he built roller coasters out of toothpicks, futuristic model cities out of discarded radio and television parts, and skyscrapers out of household product containers. One of his favorite childhood memories was watching the Goodyear blimp make an emergency landing in the local cemetery a block from his house. Talasnik is a graduate of Central High School in Philadelphia, Rhode Island School of Design (B.F.A.), and the Tyler School of Art (M.F.A.). As a student at RISD, he came in contact with two instructors who would have a profound influence on his ongoing studio investigation of drawing. Photographers Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind lectured on the aesthetics of black and white and introduced Talasnik to the graphic works of Seurat and Giocometti. His first major installation was a commission from the Japan Society in NYC, invited as the lone non-Asian participant in a survey of contemporary Bamboo Art. His first large scale, outdoor commission was from the Storm King Art Center in Mountainville, NY when he designed and built "Stream," a temporary site-specific bamboo structure covering three acres that survived an earthquake, hurricane, and one of the biggest snowfalls in recorded history in the Hudson Valley. In recent years, his work has been added to the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY; National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.; the Centre Pompidou, Paris; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY, to name a few. He continues to build and draw in New York.
Portrait by Liam Talasnik
