In less than two weeks, Lisa Gindi will be adding a touch of glamor to a yearly Bayside art show.
On Sunday, Jan. 13, the self-taught artist will join 47 artists at The Castle at Fort Totten to debut her newest works at the opening of 18th Annual Winter Art Show organized by the Bayside Historical Society. She first began participating in the show back in 2012.
Each artist will show two works each, including sculptures, watercolor paintings and photographs. Gindi’s paintings are from her “Gindi Glitz” art collection which she began working on in 2008. One is a take on a Life magazine cover from 1962 featuring Marilyn Monroe while the other is a surprise for the guests who attend the event.
Gindi’s love of art began long before she decided to pursue it as a full-time career. In 1985 she won an award for best student artist at Edward R. Murrow High School after she decorated the school’s display cases with her hand-drawn fashion designs. Her hobby turned lucrative when she decided to design tie-dye beach cover-ups to pay her way through college.
“My mother didn’t have money for college so I had to pay for my own tuition. So I was making T-shirts for these women on the beach and they [the stores] didn’t have all the different kinds of sizes,” Gindi said.
She recalled how she would go to the store to buy Hanes T-shirts in extra large sizes and make attractive cover-ups that the stores did not provide back in the 1980s. Gindi said that women were “fighting over” her designs when she went to sell them at a private beach in Brooklyn.
Gindi added that when the tie-dye designs got messed up, she would paint over them by hand and charge extra for the added labor.
The artist went to the Fashion Institute of Technology where she majored in fashion marketing and sales and pursued that straight after college in the 1990s. She then transitioned to teaching and earned her master’s of science in education from Adelphi University.
But art was always something she practiced even as a teacher, so she left her job as a tenured high school math teacher and decided to pursue art as a career.
The Winter Art Show will feature two selections from her “Gindi Glitz” collection which is based on a collage-style that incorporates images from high-fashion brands like Gucci, Louis Vuitton and Coach. Her collection includes paintings and mixed-media giclee prints that portray pop culture figures, recreations of fashion ads or her own original designs.
“Say I’m not doing glitter or stones anymore and it’s plain. I have to have some kind of aspect that still gives you the concept of glitz, of the good life and things we dream about but we really can’t afford,” Gindi said.
Gindi’s works often include glitter, magazine clippings and rhinestones and jewels that she’s collected from old clothing items over the years.
Her work is available for purchase on lisagindiart.com. She donates parts of the proceeds from her works to one charity a year.
The two-week art show will take place at 208 Totten Ave. on from Jan 13 to 27 and hours for the opening day of the exhibit are from 2 to 4 p.m. Following that, the exhibit will be on view during the BHS open hours on Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays from noon to 4 p.m. On Jan. 27, the art will be on view from 12 to 3 p.m.
Admission is $5 at the door. For more information visit baysidehistorical.org or call 718-352-1548.
Update: This article was corrected on Friday, Jan. 4 at 12:02 p.m. A previous version of this story said that there were 35 art exhibitors, but there are 47 individuals showing their pieces this year. The article was also corrected to reflect the correct dates and times of the two-week exhibit.
