Tom Bartek
Tom Bartek has been making art for sixty years. Born in 1932, the Omaha native studied art at Cooper Union in New York City, and then moved back to Omaha, where he was exhibitions manager at Joslyn Art Museum. He taught painting, sculpture, and film making at Creighton University. Then in 1975, he established a studio and began selling serigraphs and paintings.
Serigraphy, or silk screen printing, is a method of making fine art original prints. The artist makes a separate stencil for each color used in the picture. In multi-color work, extremely close and consistent registration is crucial. Bartek intends his serigraphs to have a wide, popular audience, much like the Japanese woodcut pirnts created by Hokusai and Hiroshige in the late 1700's to early 1800's.
His serigraphs have been distributed nationally by Ferinand Roten Galleries, MacMillan Publishers, and Brentano's. It is estimated that approximately 10,000 induviduals have Bartek's artworks in their homes and offices.
In the 1990's, Bartek shifted focus back to other media, including photography, painting, and assemblages. He has shown throughout the Midwest, on the East and West coasts, and overseas. His work has been displayed in museums and institutions and galleries, including the Peter H. Davidson & Co. in New York, the Sylivia White Gallery in Santa Monica, the Sheldon Art Gallery in Lincoln, the National Geographic Society in Washington, D.C., the Roten-Bretano Galleries in New York/Washington DC/Chevy Chase, the Ueno- Juko Education Foundation in Tokyo, and the Institute for Mexican-North American Cultural Relations in Mexico City. His art appears in the corporate collections of ConAgra, Century Link, Scoular, and the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank.
In 1998, he retired from the active art scene to take care of his wife, Gloria, while she dealt with the cancer that ultimately took her life. Gloria and their four sons are often featured in his serigraphs and paintings. The 2012 Retrospective in three galleries marks his eightieth birthday, as well as his first exhibit in many years.
