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| His 'Artstar' is Rising Jamesville-DeWitt grad impresses as focus of reality TV series By William LaRue Staff writer June 1, 2006 One photograph by artist Zackary Drucker shows the faces of two blondes staring haughtily into the camera, both wearing bright red lipstick, mascara and necklaces. Drucker is one of the models. The other is his mother, Penny Sori, of DeWitt, whom he often makes a character in his provocative photos. His other art is also heavy with sensual imagery of men in drag. For several years, Drucker, a 2001 graduate of Jamesville-DeWitt High School now living in Los Angeles, has used his photography as a canvas for social statements about gender and identity while, he says, "kind of navigating through my relationships." The art world has noticed. Drucker, 23, was one of eight fine artists chosen as contestants for the first season of "Artstar," a documentary-reality TV show premiering 9 p.m. today on Gallery HD. The high-definition fine-arts channel is available only on Dish Network's Channel 9472. Each of the seven, one-hour episodes will provide a national TV audience with a rare, behind-the-scenes glimpse into New York City's colorful art world. Cameras follow Drucker and the others, ages 22 to 68, as they collaborate on projects. They also show their individual work to other artists, as well as critics, curators, dealers and collectors. The goal of the series was to find at least one contestant worthy of a solo exhibition with Deitch Projects, a Manhattan gallery whose owner, Jeffrey Deitch, serves as the TV show's head judge. Drucker says he took the project seriously, yet adds that he made his own statement about reality TV by pretending at times to be self-deluded. At one point, he looks into the camera and says, "I'm really upcoming and young and I have everything ahead of me. And so I'm just, you know, putting myself into the universe." The judges eat it up. "I think Zackary was a big hit with all of us," Deitch tells other judges during the selection process seen in the first episode, which features brief moments from auditions that drew about 400 artists. Deitch and others praise Drucker's use of color and imagery in his photos, which include one shot of him tied up in pink ribbons, and another showing Drucker and a close male friend dressed in wigs and women's underwear in a farmer's field. He considers his photos to be sassy challenges to society's established roles for men and women. "My art provides a site to explore the territory of alienation, subversion, discovery. It is a place to construct myself," Drucker says in a statement provided to the series. The show's judges were particularly intrigued by Drucker's incorporation of his mother in his art. In the first episode, they say they hope she will participate in the series. There is, indeed, a brief appearance in a later episode for Sori, who tutors in the English as a Second Language program at Onondaga Community College, and her husband, Alan Drucker, a mechanical engineer at Carrier Corp. One of Sori's strongest memories of the taping last summer was the warm hugs she received from other contestants. Many expressed delight that Zackary, who is gay, gets so much parental support for both his gender-bending art and his personal life. "They said their own parents loved them, but would not come out (to attend the taping). . . . One artist made it clear his parents pretty much reject him," says Sori, a former Syracuse Herald-Journal reporter who kept her maiden name after she married. Drucker, who is "Zack" to those close to him, is now studying for his master's degree at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, Calif. He plans a career as a fine-arts photographer. Already, his mother says, limited-edition prints of his photographs have sold for $1,400. Drucker says his interest in dressing up to create interesting imagery began in his preschool years. He owns a collection of Polaroids of himself as a young child wrapping himself in old clothes and costumes, including dresses and scarves. "When he was little he would come in and watch me put makeup on," Sori says. "He wanted to help me choose my jewelry, and if I was getting dressed to go out, he'd run and choose my shoes." While accepting of Zack's sexual orientation, Sori says, both parents worried that it would make him a target for bullies. She made sure she, Zackary and his brother, Aaron, took karate lessons. All have second-degree black belts, Sori says. In a phone interview from California, Drucker looks back with mixed feelings about growing up in Central New York. He says the suburbs weren't always a nurturing place for a gay teenager who was also an aspiring artist. However, he credits photography classes at Jamesville-DeWitt for giving him strong motivation to stick with high school. "I think it really helped to have a supportive family, and I certainly had a strong group of friends growing up," he says. "So I could have had a much harder time than I did. I'm glad I didn't grow up in Texas or Indiana or some other place like that." Joining "Artstar" has given Drucker a taste of rejection of another sort. Without seeing an episode, writers for several Internet blogs have slammed the concept of a reality TV show devoted to contemporary arts. Some have worried it would manipulate and exploit a group of vulnerable artists. Tamar Hacker, executive producer of "Artstar" and head of Gallery HD, says she and others took pains to avoid making a stereotypical reality show. No one got voted out each week. None of the producers did anything to provoke conflict among the artists, she says. "The process wasn't really to contrive anything, but to do a documentary series about the process artists go through when they are working," Hacker says. One of the contestants, Anney Fresh, makes interactive sculptures, including an inflatable nuclear reactor with lighting and sound effects. Another artist, Virgil Wong, created a multimedia project with a realistic-looking medical pitch for "human male pregnancy." Drucker, who first learned about "Artstar" auditions from a friend's e-mail, says he tried out for the show primarily for the chance to work with Deitch Projects, although he says he also gained much from spending time with art critics and others. "And it was a really neat experience working with other cast members. I think we all learned a lot from each other," he says. "It certainly wasn't the typical reality show where there was competition and tension. It was more of a collaborative effort." The artists early in the show agreed among themselves that competitive reality TV was a "tired formula," Drucker says. So in the show's confessional segments, he says, he and others ignored questions if they thought they were designed only to provoke anger on camera. Other times, Drucker says, they created their own subtle performance art by showing exaggerated excitement about being on TV. "Anybody watching the show with any understanding of the convention of reality TV will understand that, in some ways, we were subverting it. That was what was more interesting to me," he says. "It's kind of inhabiting that structure of reality TV and messing with it." |