A&E

It was a quiet night in Bay City, Michigan, but for second grader Randal Huiskens, it was also a night of triumph. After years of making errant scribbles, he assembled his first portfolio, a series of sketches and drawings equal parts imitation and imagination.

The next day, Huiskens brought the book to school eager to show off his talents. To his surprise, his sales pitch was met with enthusiasm. His classmates loved his artwork, so much that they offered to buy copies. So, Huiskens went home, diligently recreated the drawings and traded them the next day for two or three cents.

Now an adult, the Evanston-based pop artist submits his work to smaller competitions to create publicity. Last Friday, Huiskens won two American Art Awards, making this the third consecutive year he’s received an award in the online competition, which received submissions from 35 countries.

Although he did not receive a monetary prize, Huiskens said these events are important because they allow him to showcase his work to people who buy and sell art.

“I’m still relatively unknown as an artist,” Huiskens said. “I’m always looking for places where I think my art will work well.”

Huiskens grew up in Bay City, a small town located at the edge of Lake Huron, where his father owned a local auto body shop. He sold small pictures like those in the book during most of his childhood, updating his work regularly to include the latest images from the Sunday comics, Reader’s Digest and Mad Magazine.

Huiskens said his father encouraged him to pursue art as a way to get out of Bay City.

“In high school, I decided that I really wanted to take a French class instead of an art class, but my parents closed that down and said, ‘No you’re taking art,’” he said.

He later studied art at Michigan State University, graduating with a bachelor’s degree in fine arts focused on painting.

Shortly after graduating, though, Huiskens made a choice he said he still regrets. Rather than establishing his own studio, he joined a punk band and toured the country for five years, playing in college bars and releasing small records.

“I didn’t know how to make a living in art,” Huiskens said. “I didn’t see how I could make that jump.”

Pete Downes toured with Huiskens and was later his roommate. Downes said that Huiskens painted often while the band was on tour. Downes admired his friend’s work so much that he commissioned him to paint a wall mural.

“He’s done some great pop art,” Downes said. “The contrast jumps out and makes it almost three-dimensional … It’s perfectly accurate but also part impressionist.”

Even after the tour ended, Huiskens painted mostly on the side. At this time, his work was influenced by the post-impressionist artists he studied in school like Paul Cezanne and Henri Matisse.

However, as time progressed, his work began to take on a more pop-art feel, a style which was pioneered by Andy Warhol in the 1960s and depicts common household objects, media and consumer products with a visual twist.

“I never really thought of myself as a pop artist,” Huiskens said. “Until one day I woke up looking at the work that I had been doing and I realized: ‘Well, that’s pop art.’”

Outside of the art awards, Huiskens’ work was recently featured at The Brothers K Coffeehouse in Evanston.

Emma Stieber, a barista at Brothers K, helps to choose art to hang in the coffee shop. She said Huiskens was one of the most popular artists the shop has featured.

“I especially loved his grumpy cat,” Steiber said. “If I had money, I would have totally bought it.”

Since embracing pop art, Huiskens’ work has been featured in a few smaller venues, as well as an annual art exhibition in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

More than anything, he says he is grateful to be doing the work that he loves full-time.

“I’m doing the art that I love to do and I’m doing it in a way that I want to do it,” he said.

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Twitter: @DanielAaron1007