Vito Sisti, Art Curator and Mechanic

Ask anyone. Vito Sisti is an art lover. He is not an artist. He is not an art historian. He is the self-appointed curator/impressario who has organized and presented the weeklong group show of painting and sculpture at Ashawagh Hall following the Labor Day weekend for the last six years.

The artists who work with him swear by him and, from time to time, at him. The fact that he works as a car mechanic in real life, having started at age 12 in his father's service station, means that one day, when he starts the little art gallery he's been dreaming about, there will be a small service station in the back.

He'll call the whole place "the Vito Gallery of Fine Arts & Car Parts."

Preparatory Chaos

The night before the sixth annual opening of "Vito Sisti Presents," during the installation madness at the historic hall, with the artists hammering the walls, climbing stepladders, measuring floors, I stop in to talk with The Man himself.

There is David Slater hanging his major new painting "Self Portrait at Hubert's Flea Circus," with its conglomeration of images, collaged elements of labels, stamps, cigar rings, nudes and panels of scenes, people, and action, including the one of Hubert and his fleas in the miniature circus amphitheatre. It's a scene actually seen by the artist in Times Square, where Hubert was a fixture and a feature for tourists to New York City some 20 years ago.

No Mercy

"Look at Napoleon," says Mr. Slater, one in the group of seven selected by Mr. Sisti this year, and we observe Mr. Sisti standing in front of the kitchen entrance, his arms folded in front of him, glowering at everybody.

A small, intense fistful of a man, he bends his head forward as if he were getting ready to charge the space Superman style, fly around, and get it done already. There is a mean glare on his gaunt, bony face, prominent broken nose, and steady steel eyes, with no mercy in them now, that at other times have a way of lighting with laughter.

Tonight, he has the look of a man ready for a fight. "Hey, Vito," I say, trying for a note of cheer in what appears to be doleful chaos the night before the big opening. "Looks like it's all coming together."

"Coming together, coming together," he rasps, his Brooklyn voice as if etched by the car fumes at Dennis Kromer's service station in the Springs, where he works.

"Coming apart is more like it," he says. "There's always someone to aggravate you, someone who's not going to show up on time and who keeps you on the edge. Somehow you never know how it's going to look until it's all up. Why do I need this aggravation? I got a good job and I make a living. Don't answer, don't tell me," he sputters, looking as if he were about to explode.

Opening Night . . .

Twenty-four hours later, Saturday night, Mr. Sisti is beaming. All painting and sculpture are in their places. Not only is the show installed, but some 700 people have attended the opening since 4 o'clock that afternoon. Mr. Sisti is a happy man, all five feet, one inch, 110 pounds of him, about to be 35 years of age.

He offers the statistics with no self-consciousness, laughing at what he considers laughable, without defensiveness or apology. Rather, he enjoys his unique stature, appreciating the absurdities of the human condition, especially his own.

Tim Tibus already has sold a landscape, a narrow scenic horizon, while Elaine Grove has sold one of her welded sculptures of machine and tool parts, some of them functioning as chairs, benches, and tables.

. . . Success!

David Gochenour's alabaster carving has a hold on it and someone has been back to see Dennis Lawrence's major oil on canvas three times. Even if it sells to the same person after the show, the proceeds of 20 percent of the sale price go to help Mr. Sisti's costs. This year, for a change, he will get $700 by the time the show comes down, so he will break even.

Not that it would have stopped him had he, as usual, lost money. "It's fun. I love the laughs, the friendships, the learning. When it stops being fun and, hopefully it never will, I'll stop. It's not the money, making it, losing it, although I'd rather make it."

There's a lot of excitement, and Nick Tarr, whose boxes contain mirrored worlds of optic mysteries, offers that he has been invited to participate in a New York show, while the sculptor Steve Loschen's painted cutout steel sheets and balls have elicited the interest of an architect with a possible commission.

The opening party is, as Ms. Sisti says, "a blast." The crowd, largely friends and co-workers of the artists who mostly support themselves by doing construction, carpentry, landscaping, or bartending, are themselves blue-collar workers, a contrast to the chic mavens of the gallery scene in East Hampton and in New York.

Anti-Celebrity

Mr. Sisti and his artists insist on the community aspect of the show, claiming that it is a Springs event and a tribute to the continuity of the Springs art tradition- Jackson Pollock, Lee Krasner, Willem de Kooning, John Little, Wilfred Zogbaum, Ibram Lassaw, James Brooks, and others.

"Let's face it," says Mr. Slater, "the town has sold out to money and celebrity. Its metaphor is its new Parthenon with columns and everything, a jewelry store with all its gold and diamonds, right in the middle of town, all lit up day and night, with people constantly milling around the steps that lead up into it."

"Our Ashawagh Hall Springs group show is about art and community. Vito Sisti is our leader -anti-celebrity, anti the Julian Schnabel fame script."

At the end of the opening party at midnight, Mr. Sisti gets into his rusted, white, two-door 1968 Nova. The interior of the car is cracked and torn, as it is on the outside. But under the hood, that's another story, another metaphor, as he says. While the Nova doesn't have much style, Mr. Sisti points out, it is all class rather than the other way - all style and no class.

Lots Of Books

On Sunday, the last day of the eight-day show, at his house off Springs-Fireplace Road, he notes that so far $2,800 worth of art has been sold, and it's all paid for. Mr. Sisti can relax.

The house is jammed with books and bookshelves, with paintings and objects of every description - bookends, small figurines, African carvings, dice, coins, plants, many rocks.

"I've read all these books," Mr. Sisti wants me to know first thing. There must be about 500 books. "Except one book. I still haven't read 'Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.' Go figure." The cat meows as if to emphasize and confirm his comments. The telephone rings constantly and we talk disjointedly between interruptions.

Early Influences

"We read a lot. I read at least two books a week. I'm in the middle of Winston Churchill's history of World War II. I just finished his first book, 'The Gathering Storm.' It's fascinating. I've had those books for about 10 years and I kept looking at them. I couldn't get started. Then I started the first book and I couldn't put it down. That's an eight-volume set. I'm into World War II and the history of the Holocaust."

"I read Karl Marx. Did you know he was anti-Semitic? And I've read Hitler's 'Mein Kampf.' He said exactly what he was going to do and he did it."

"My father was my first influence. I did not want to be like him - alcoholic and angry at his life and his family. He taught me everything about cars, but I was not going to be like him. My mother, on the other hand, became a success when my brother and I got old enough for her to leave him. She became an athletic referee in a high school, a tennis instructor, and a black belt karate champ."

East Houston . . .

"I used to hang out with my friend the painter Chris Riccardi, and a lot of artists, on East Houston Street in New York in the late '70s and early '80s. We put on lots of shows all over the neighborhood and that's how I first learned about the business of putting on a show and the fun of it."

"I love it, no matter how mad I get, and I love working with the artists," Mr. Sisti said.

"The way I wound up here was when I joined the Coast Guard and got transferred to Montauk. One night I found myself in the Springs at Wolfie's bar and I met Nick Tarr, Dennis Lawrence, and Dane Dixon, who had the Art Store right nearby. And that was it. Dane, by the way, was a friend of Bill de Kooning."

. . . To East Hampton

"Then I saw Ashawagh Hall and I called my friend Chris. He came out from New York and he said, 'Wow, let's do it.' We opened the same day as Hurricane Bob in September 1990, so it was a total washout in more ways than one. The electricity went and everyone started bringing food and beer and wine and it turned into a big party."

"So the next year people asked me if I was going to do it again. In 1991, Nick Tarr, Dennis Lawrence, and Steve Loschen joined us. It just kept growing."

"The thing that struck me the most is that artists are so dedicated. The art comes first and everything else is secondary. They take any job they can to earn a living. Nick does landscaping. Dennis tends bar at the Talkhouse. Tim Tibus is a house painter. Dave Slater works as a framer. Dave Gochenour is a carpenter, and so on."

Soaks Up The Energy

Mr. Sisti spends time going to the studios to encourage the artists and give them feedback during the winter and spring when not much is happening.

"I love going to the studios and being directly in touch with the energy. I'd like to see more recognition from the community for the artists. No matter what I do, no matter how much time I spend, you can never really tell what's going to happen."

"The artist himself has to believe in his own work no matter how good you believe it to be. For instance, I won't tell you who this was, but I kept going back to tell him the painting he was working on was great. And one day I come in after all these weeks and he has painted all over it, all white. It's gone." He sighs and shrugs.

"A Blast"

"I love David Slater and Dennis Lawrence. I love the old masters. At the Metropolitan, I spent the whole day looking at Monet. I stare and stare at Van Gogh for hours, every brushstroke. I can't identify the feeling. It's a blast, a blast. I don't know what to call it, the feeling, I don't have the words."

"It's hard to do more than one of these exhibitions a year in the time I have off from my job at Kromer's. For instance, for the poster," he said of the picture used to publicize the show. "Getting seven people together in one spot for the same photo at one time - that in itself is a job. Then getting the stuff to the printers, picking it up, writing press releases, putting ads in the papers, all the stuff you don't see. A lot of work."

"I collect a piece from each of the artists in the show every year. We usually trade. I'm a firm believer in the barter system," Mr. Sisti said.

Enthusiastic Student

"My wife, Colleen, thought I was nuts at first but now she's as enthusiastic as I am. She works as housekeeper for one of the rock stars out here, and she's back at school part time studying geology big time. She's really into geology and she collects rocks. I always got my head down looking for rocks for her. She also studies Japanese because she had to take a language and she picked it up just like that. She's really amazing." Clearly, he is proud of her.

"Colleen brings home ARTnews from her job where they subscribe to it, so I read that, but to tell you the truth, I'm better off reading the art column in The East Hampton Star," he says, with a sidelong look and a laugh.

"Besides, I'm really focused on this community and the art that's made and shown here. And the great history of this area. I look at Jackson Pollock - the painting at the Metropolitan Museum. I never studied art but that painting gets to me with all its lines and the drips."

Interests Aplenty

He knows who he is and that's all he knows, Ms. Sisti says. "I've got a lot of different interests and I aim to do it all. Maybe I don't know where I'm going but I'm on my way. Even though it's a different action, you are the same person - you are the common denominator and what it's all about in terms of you, the process of creating your life. I'm Vito the mechanic and Vito the art curator and maybe a few other things."

He is involved in political philosophy as well as literature and also, as he says, with bugs and bridges, tunnels and highways. He reads constantly.

"The perfect day off for me is to read. I read to get away and I read to be here. I've been working on a novel for the last 15 years. It changes every year, it started out as a murder mystery, and now it's about a punk rocker in New York. You see, secretly, I also want to be a writer, and I went to Wagner College of Staten Island to study creative writing."

The Mechanic's Art

The green 1967 Mustang he has been working on for almost two years, to restore it to its original state, is sitting outside. Is it like making art?

"All Mustangs have a special look," he responds. "I have an obsession with this Mustang. I realize I have to get it done. I have to restore it. Make it like new."

"Cars are a big pain. They're complicated. It's sink or swim. You have to get it right and there's always something new. It's like being a doctor, you have to keep up, sometimes go back to school. You could go nuts working on a car. So, in that way, it's the same as making art."

"I can do it with my eyes closed. Second nature takes over. Still, a lot of times I can't solve it even though all I did was to take it apart and put it back together the same way. Sometimes, you have to feel your way into it and work with the blind side. So, in that way, it's like making art."

"The Mustang when I'm done with it will be an accomplishment. President Clinton has a 1967 Mustang," he concluded.