Alan Van Every: New York Artist in Bangkok

Alan Van Every is a Bangkok-based artist and art teacher who has been living in Thailand since early 2008. Alan grew up in the north eastern US city of Buffalo, New York where he lived and worked the first 33 years of his life. He went to school at the State University Collage at Buffalo for his undergraduate degree in Painting which he received in 1984. Alan has always done art which has involved painting and sculpture and has also had a long and varied international career as a curator and gallerist.

After receiving his degree and not finding a job that suited his skills, Alan, while being an artist and having a studio downtown, also worked mostly as a car mechanic. For the next seven years, he also did work as a sign painter / pin stripper / building mechanic / tow truck driver in a collision shop owned by his relatives. At this job, Alan was able to learn about and use many more skills and tools which he was to use, later on, as an artist. After working at the garage, Alan worked as an art teacher at a catholic school for the next two years and also as an exercise machine fabricator.

When Alan was approaching 50, he realized that he needed to find some different answers for himself as an artist. He began applying for artist residencies and planning on moving from his loft space. Finally, in 2006, that is exactly what happened: he went to Seoul, South Korea, to experience a different life style and culture for three months. After the three months were over, he decided to stay on in Seoul and teach English at a hogwan. He liked teaching again: “It was refreshing to have knowledge to pass on and I really liked the kids and felt that I was fairly decent at it,” says Alan in reminiscence of the time he spent in South Korea.

While he was abroad, his work, which already had an eastern quality it, continued to change. He was working on things he called abstract Mandalas which had an Asian feeling and he started using glitter and gold or silver leaf on his sculpture and paintings. After a year in Seoul he was a bit undecided about what to do next. His contract with his school was up and he was beginning to feel that the Korean Peninsula was a bit too cold and the people were not all that in favor of having Americans or, for that fact, many foreigners amongst them.

When his contract ended he came on vacation in Thailand for two weeks. He loved it: the weather was hot and the people were nice (some of them could even speak English!). “It was an altogether more relaxed atmosphere than the one I got used to in South Korea,” confessed Alan. Of course, he also understood that his views were influenced by the fact that he was on vacation, but “it was really the best I felt about things in a few years.”

On the way back to Seoul he thought to himself, “Well, why am I going back to South Korea?” At that point he was already decided: he would look for his next job in Thailand. He came back to Bangkok in February of 2008 and he’s been here ever since.  He likes Thai culture and enjoys traveling around to all kinds of parts of the country. He bought a scooter, which he loves to ride and modify. He rents a house (first house he has lived in since he moved out of his parents’ house in 1985) where he has arranged a small studio for his work.

For the last few years his art has had a kind of Thai feel to it, Alan being an admirer and researcher of Thai traditional art. The fact that there is a new museum in Bangkok for contemporary works only motivates him to continue producing quality art. He is really, really happy to know that he is also contributing to shaping the Thai artists of tomorrow by teaching art at Keera-Pat International School, Bangkok, where he presently works. “I’m sure some of these youngsters will be artists,” said Alan referring to the students he teaches.

His philosophy on teaching art has changed quite a bit since he was an art teacher in the catholic school some 20 odd years ago or when he taught at the university when he was pursuing his masters in the USA. He has less preconceptions about what children can and will do. Speaking about his style in the classroom, Alan likes “to teach by giving kids kind of a loose ingredient list, if you will, of what a project should have. I won’t show examples because I believe that examples make the children copy the idea and since they don’t need to, they won’t think creatively for solutions to the visual problems that are presented.”

His teaching philosophy is best summarized, in Alan’s own words, this way: “an effective art teacher must provide students with the opportunity to acquire, practice, and receive reinforcement of fundamental knowledge and skills; a good teacher encourages students to think, not to accept information passively, but to question, analyze and test via applications of newly acquired knowledge.” Alan believes that, as a teacher, he is going to learn more from his students about teaching than any other source. “I have some more definite ideas about the development of the right part of the brain and how to activate the creative drive and intelligence which frankly is easy to practice but a bit hard to put into words. In some ways, visual thinking is a different kind of intelligence which needs to be taught and practiced by the practitioner of the expression and I feel the teacher’s role is to facilitate it while developing confidence and being honest with the student.”

He really likes to get away from things that might be pretty and to things that say something in a strong visual way. Alan Van Every is a talented artist who, during his free time, continues to work on his own projects in his Bangkok studio. We’re looking forward to his first solo exhibition in the Land of Smiles.

(Read about Alan’s life in New York!)
(Initially published in ‘Bangkok Trader’ – Vol. 4, No. 9, August 2010)