How a Job 40 Years Ago Became My Favorite Credential
Updated: Oct 3
When I was 14, a good friend started feeding me his leftover after-school jobs. He was a year older, and I was happy to follow in his footsteps.
When he was leaving a position at the biggest paint and wallpaper store in our town—heck, the biggest on Long Island, Aboff’s Paint and Wallpaper—I was happy to step in. The job was a few days after school, plus Friday nights and all day Saturday.
The work wasn’t very complicated. My dad did house-painting jobs for extra cash on the side—he was a butcher full-time—so I already had a little understanding of the trade. My job was to help unload delivery trucks, stock and price items for sale, and mix custom colors for customers.
Once the managers became comfortable with me, I handled the cash register, cut window shades, assisted the wallpaper salespeople, and helped contractors by bringing them five-gallon buckets and other supplies.
A year into the part-time job, I knew my way around ceiling white and wall white, semi gloss and eggshell, latex and oil, and semitransparent and solid-color stain. I helped ambitious homeowners with their weekend projects: deck stains, matching colors and textures, solvents, and cleanup.
I loved being offered tips and spending the windfall next door at the Italian bakery. Soon, I proudly assumed the title of “paintologist.”
I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that what I learned between the ages of 14 and 19 still informs my painting today—four decades later.
Obviously, I wasn’t learning color theory, the history of mid-century abstract pioneers, or the influence of Renaissance masters on contemporary art. But through osmosis—carrying, pouring, mixing, applying, cleaning up, and even wearing the materials I was handling—I absorbed something else.
That exposure to practical materials and real-world challenges still informs me, usually subconsciously, as I uncover and portray emotions on canvas.
One of the most powerful lessons about color came by accident. It was accompanied by teeth-rattling embarrassment—and met with generosity from my employer at Aboff’s.
One of my routine tasks was to refill the pigments in the carousel that dispensed precise amounts of color into the appropriate base. Each color code corresponded to a formula. I would look up the formula, squirt the correct pigments into the paint, and put the can into the shaker.
Because the pigment could clog and need to be cleared, I used an industrial needle to clean it. One day, with my head and hands occupied and my attention elsewhere, one of its legs slipped off the countertop.
The carousel flipped upside down into my lap.
As you might guess, all twelve ( to sixteen?) two-quart cylinders of pigment dumped onto my clothes, my new high-top sneakers—the ones I wore for my high school junior-varsity basketball games—and across the floor I had just swept clean.
A thick rainbow of colors pooled on the floor and slowly began moving toward the stacked cans of base paint. I heaved the carousel back onto the counter, stepped out of my sneakers, wiped my pants with paper towels, and walked to the front of the store to tell Herb, the manager.
I had only three things on my mind: that my parents were going to be furious that I had worn my good sneakers to work; that Herb might find the colors forming in the mess interesting; and that I had just ruined the back room I had worked so hard to clean.
Herb took one look at me (face drained of color, fruit loops everywhere else) and called my dad, and said I should go home. He could see that I was in shock. He got me a pair of painter’s pants we sold and said, “Change before you get in your dad’s truck.”
I will never forget his thoughtfulness —or the color baptism I had received.
Over the years, I got to know many of the contractors. I took on a number of jobs when they were looking for extra hands.
I helped with interior work, exterior power washing, and large deck-staining projects. There were early-morning breakfast specials picked up on the way to a 6 a.m. job, lunch runs for pizza, and the transfer of fresh paint into buckets before application. I learned to use metal screens to saturate paint rollers and to clean the equipment and job sites afterward.
I worked on ladders, preparing weathered trim, scraping off old paint, and cleaning mold-covered gutters. That last task left me without fingerprints for a few months after I used straight bleach and a rag—without gloves, like a dumbass.
Some of these experiences are difficult to connect directly to my work today. Others are obvious, especially when it comes to the viscosity of paint.
While making the series *https://www.fives.studio/seriesViolence of Grace*, I surprised myself with how strongly viscosity and timing could affect the outcome. I wanted to show a clash, a blending, or even a pulling between colors at different volumes and stages of dryness.
Violence of Grace;:
Whatever you might think of the final result, I felt I had an intuitive understanding of how the paint would pour and how the panels would respond when tilted. Each of the four panels was a first attempt, but each was also the result of at least eight separate events—actions I committed to, no redos.
I’m not claiming that the job explains everything about my work. But my comfort with paint did not come from nowhere. It began in that store, through years of carrying, pouring, mixing, applying, cleaning, and occasionally wearing the material.
I don’t have formal training, institutional certifications, or degrees. Beyond watching a handful of Bob Ross videos last year, Aboff’s was my “art school.”
That teenage job gave me a visceral dislike of payroll taxes, taught me customer service, and—without my realizing it—helped prepare me for fives.studio.
I’m grateful for that job, for the people who taught me, and for the hands-on, basic education that spent 40 years waiting to emerge.
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