Lou Zale is broker of dreams, of sorts. With his camera and other artistic equipment, he captures the bent reality, the surrealism of dreamlike images of his own creation.
After five years as a commercial photographer, the 49-year-old Deerfield artist now deals exclusively with special effects and multiple image printing. “My work is about the connection between objects that may or may not belong together,” Zale said.
By combining photographs, drawings, movie stills and miniature objects, he has created works with humorous and whimsical surrealism. They reflect his own experiences as well as those of his children and friends.
“Rachael’s First Portrait,” for example, combines a black-and-white print of his daughter (now 13) at 6 months of age with a drawing of a cow jumping over the man in the moon. The result is a baby looking out the window at this curious sight. His son, Jacob, now 8, appears in the foreground of “The Andromeda Galaxy.” Zale used multiple exposures to create the illusion of his then-9-month-old son looking at the galaxy while a television in the room is showing “Star Trek.”
In another Zale creation, his friend Jan Schwartz, a Chicago ballroom dancer, dances next to a kitchen window while looking out at a movie still of Fred Astaire. In the background is the image of a sunrise with mist.
Many of the images seen in his art are collected in the studio of the Deerfield home he shares with his wife, Pat Rued, and their two children.
On shelves are boxes of tiny items including animals, vegetables and even a miniature Oscar Mayer Wienermobile, which he incorporates into his work. “Rather than dealing with photography as the record of a single image at a particular point in time,” he explained, “I began to explore the possibilities of combining several images from different media.
“Rules are made up as the piece progresses,” he explained. “It’s basically a collage process with an edition print as the end result. Some pieces are combinations of my photographs and drawings. Others are tinted or toned, while some are black-and-white and color together. The processes vary with the piece of work, but I do not use any digital imaging or computers in my work. I make all my prints by hand.”
Although it might appear that Zale uses computers to create the special effects, he prefers to make all his images with his own hands. “Everyone young who looks at my work is shocked that I don’t use computers,” Zale said. “I like the hands-on feel of the materials. My concern is that by using computers, as an artist, you lose touch with materials.”
Although Zale used to display and sell his work through galleries, now he exhibits directly at art shows. “I stopped selling through galleries because they take 50 percent,” he said. His work is reasonably priced, ranging from $50 to $250. During the 1980s, his work was on exhibit at the Art Institute of Chicago. Now his collages are in a permanent collection at the Prairie Art Center in Schaumburg.
Some of Zale’s work was exhibited in a Barrington barn for Good Shepard Hospital’s Art in the Barn fundraiser in September. Carolyn Husemoller, a Barrington fine arts consultant who helped establish the art-centered fundraiser in 1974, said Zale has been chosen by the show’s jury of art school professors or gallery owners. “Lou is a very talented individual who does something that many artists don’t do,” she said. “He puts together images that appeal to children and adults. He is very imaginative and gets lots of sales. He always thinks of a new theme each year.”
Zale also was among about 200 artists who exhibited at the North Shore Art League’s Old Orchard Art Festival in Skokie in September. Helen Roberson, executive director of the league, lauded Zale’s work. “He’s very innovative and creative with his multiple negatives and printing,” she said. “He makes photo illusions with his art.”
His creations have won national awards, including a $1,000 Best Photography award last summer at the Festival of the Masters, sponsored by an arts group in Fairview Heights, Ill., a suburb of St. Louis.
Locally, he won Awards of Excellence at the North Shore Art League’s shows in 1993 and ’94. Of 118 exhibitors at the Glenview Art League’s show in July, Zale was among 10 winners of Awards of Excellence. In the late 1980s, he won a $1,000 award for being among the 10 best artists at the Milwaukee Art Museum’s Lakefront Festival of the Arts, which draws more than 50,000 people each year.
“Lou’s work stood out from among the 190 artists,” said Beth Hoffman, director of volunteer services for the Milwaukee Art Museum. “His work is certainly very creative. There’s always a cluster of people gathered around his booth. He combines the familiar and unfamiliar in a dreamlike quality.”
Zale’s work was judged Best of the Category several times at the Laumeir Sculpture Garden’s Contemporary Art Fair in Sunset Hills, Mo., a suburb of St. Louis. “Lou is always trying to push the medium,” said Debbie Lakin, public relations director for Laumeir Sculpture Garden.
Zale grew up on Chicago’s West Side. His mother, Leah Zaluski, now 84, had played violin for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. She taught Lou to play the keyboard, and he learned guitar. Zale’s father, William, a cabinetmaker, played the keyboard. Lou’s older brother, Milton, who has a career in real estate, creates art of another sort by rehabilitating old buildings in Chicago.
At 17 or 18, Lou Zale was playing guitar in small clubs, including the Earl of Old Town. After graduating with a degree in psychology from the University of Illinois at Chicago, Zale went on tour, playing jazz and classical music from 1968 through 1972. “I worked out of New York, opening for bigger acts. Playing on the college circuit, I was an opening act for folk singer Judy Collins at Farleigh Dickenson University in New Jersey,” Zale recalled, adding that he also performed with other musicians on a tour of 20 colleges in the East.
But during those politically turbulent years, Zale also began to develop his other interest, photography, capturing history on film in Chicago in 1968.
“I took pictures for the American Civil Liberties Union at the 1968 Democratic Convention. During the `Days of Rage,’ I wore a helmet and a badge that said `Observer’ as I took pictures of the confrontation of the protesters, police and politicians. My photos were published in `Law and Disorder,’ published by the ACLU.”
It was at that point that he quit music as a profession and concentrated on photography. After marrying Rued, a social worker, in 1973, he focused on commercial photography during the 1970s. “I taught myself photography and talked my way into jobs,” he said. “Then I was doing art shows for 18 or 19 years. Originally I did landscapes, and that evolved into collages.”
Zale said his art was influenced by several photographers. “The late Les Klug, an extremely reclusive man from rural Wisconsin, was an award winner at the Milwaukee Museum and at the Art Institute of Chicago,” he said. “I met him at the Old Town Art Fair in the 1970s and picked his brain. He was a master at what he did. I also learned a lot from Jerry Usellman, an internationally known photographer who does collages and combines images. Another influence was John Hartsfield, a German Jew and graphic designer who had to leave Germany because of his anti-Hitler political propaganda.”
Some of these artists’ techniques are reflected in Zale’s pieces when he works political or social commentary into his creations. In “Classics Look Best in Black and White,” a commentary on race relations, penguins are on the ice at Diversey Harbor while watching Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers dance on TV.
“His work has evolved over the years,” said Rued, who has her own home studio for designing and custom making leather and suede clothing. “It’s interesting to see how our children, as babies, were part of his work.”
The Zales’ daughter, Rachael, said, “He comes up with his own ideas that are part of his work. My friends also think it’s cool to see a product of what he does,” because most parents don’t have tangible results of their work sitting around the house.
James Wilbat, a Deerfield glassblower, gives another perspective on Zale. “His work is technically perfect,” he said. “I’ve known Lou for eight or nine years, and his work reflects his personality. He has a very good sense of humor, and he looks for the quirks in life.”
Although Zale and his family moved to Deerfield just a year ago from Chicago, they feel quite at home in suburbia. “We moved to Deerfield for better schools,” he said.
Meanwhile, he, Wilbat and 10 other artists also are trying to make Deerfield a home for the arts by trying to form a Deerfield artists association to gain support for turning the community’s old fire station into an art center.
While Zale realizes that selling his work is essential to avoid being a “starving artist,” he said he prefers to concentrate on the creative process.
As Buffalo Grove artist Barbara Farrell said, “When I look at Louis’ work, I see such imagination. I wonder what goes on in his mind!”
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Zale can be reached by calling 847-267-1407.
