BY LAURA LANE
He told Sena that his work would be on view temporarily. That all changed owing to the many positive comments the owner received from his customers.
"Joe asked me if he could keep my art indefinitely," said Sena. "My business cards that I left at the restaurant were gone in a week. Joe said he'd never gotten that much buzz on any artwork in his restaurant since it opened nearly two years ago."
Sena, 31, was born in New Jersey and moved to Merrick when he was three years old. A graduate of Calhoun High School, he never left Merrick. Married with a three and a half year old daughter, Skylar Elizabeth, Sena decided to remain in his hometown, which he described as a great neighborhood.
"I had a great experience in the Merrick schools and wanted my daughter to have the same," said Sena. "It was by the 11th grade that I knew that some kind of art career was what I wanted to pursue. And I think that's in large part due to my art teacher at Calhoun, Dan Christoffel, who was a big influence on me, a mentor and good friend too."
Sena uses multiple materials and techniques as forms of communication and expression in his artwork. He'll print on different surfaces like newspapers and will even use power tools for his abstracts.
"I like the combination of delicate fine art with hardhat mentality," said Sena, referring to his abstracts. "It's really combining the paint with the power tools. It's about the exchange of the materials, the paint and power tools from one to the other, how the paint reacts to being sanded or scraped away."
Sena has also created an impressive number of large acrylic paintings including those of jazz musicians. Creating them culminated from a process that began by experimenting on the computer with images. Sena decided to challenge himself by using different materials first by starting with nine by twelve inch paper cuts which evolved into large thirty-six by forty-eight inch oil paintings.
"The "Jazz Cut-Out Series" portraits are an expression of forms as color and shape conveying puzzle-like appearances of famous musicians including Miles Davis, Dexter Gordon and Billy Holiday.
Equally interesting are mixed mediums with some, like the "Smashed Paint Series," coming about purely by accident.
"I was interested in seeing how colors settled on their own," said Sena. "I used water based latex paint which I put in 99 cent ketchup bottles and poured them onto Plexiglas surfaces sandwiching them together. Then I bolted them closed."
The next day Sena discovered that when the paint dried it settled and mixed together differently than when it was initially smashed together and sealed, it created an interesting piece of artwork.
His pen and ink "Icon Series," where Sena uses thousands of alternating diagonal black lines made with ink combine techniques to communicate an image in a more photographic way, while still maintaining a hand created look. They include images of Frank Sinatra, Marilyn Monroe and James Dean.
Always experimenting and learning, Sena is a teacher too. Following the footsteps of his father Thomas Sr., an assistant principal at JFK High School in Plainview and his mother, Jacqueline, a teacher's aid at Fayette elementary, he's been a high school art teacher in Lynbrook for the past 10 years.
"I'm lucky I teach a subject I'm passionate about, and can come home and do," said Sena. "I'm always pursuing my own stuff which is what I like about teaching. The juniors and seniors are constantly coming up with fresh ideas and I even solicit opinions from my stars on my work. They have some very different insights."
Sena is also the curator of Lynbrook district's Bern Seiderman Gallery. The gallery highlights a rotating array of student work and outside professional artists. Sena also has a few of his own pieces in the gallery and every two years presents a one-man show.
"The gallery has been around for around twenty years but it was my idea to bring in the professional artwork so the kids could learn from it, and critique the work," explained Sena. "I wanted the students to make a connection with art."
In the future, Sena would like to be acquired by a gallery as a steady exhibitor and his all-time wish is to have one of his pieces in a museum. For now, he's content to enjoy his family, teaching, and constantly evolving as an artist.
"I don't make art for other people," said Sena. "I make it because it’s who I am. I'd like to make a comfortable living selling my artwork without selling out."
To contact Tom Sena, call (516) 379-6563 or the Web sites: tomsenaart.blogspot.com/ or www.art-exchange.com.
Comments about this story? LLane@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 236.
