Gronk: Biography

performance, photography, video and installations. He has shown at the Los Angeles County Museum, The Museum of Fine Arts in Houston and the National Hispanic Cultural Center, to name a few. He has done set design for the Los Angeles Opera. GRONK is probably best known for his large scale, on-site mural pieces that he paints in front of an audience. The process of painting the mural therefore becomes a performance where the audience gets to watch the process involved in its creation.
        LIKE Madonna, born Madonna Louise Ciccione, and Prince, formerly known as Prince Rogers Nelson, Gronk is a Gronk, born and bred. ''My name was Glugio Gronk Nicandro,'' says the artist. 'The kids used to call me Gronky, Gronkezoid. I went with the one that had the coolest sound.''
        In The "Tormenta Cantata," the soprano stands with her back to the audience, singing vowel sounds, "very melodic." Kronos faces forward. At one side is Gronk and an 8-by-8-foot wooden panel. He paints. They play. She sings. The piece lasts 25 minutes. When the music is done, so is the painting. His brush is amplified - there's a microphone in it that - while he paints - makes a sound Gronk describes as "tcha tcha tcha." He's painting the woman, Tormenta, "so that the soprano gets to witness her own creation, because she is, in a sense, Tormenta." But he's also doing other images, which the music somehow reflects.
        His paintbrush is a conductor's baton, sort of. "If I don't do certain movements, there will be no music, because the musicians are waiting for certain cues that will initiate the beginning of another piece. It looks, I think, very easy, but it's kind of difficult to do. "I sort of, like, have to rehearse. I have a metronome that keeps me in time, and I'm not used to that, because I'm a painter that paints freely and does a lot of improvisation. But the composer is very much into rehearsal, and he slaps my hand every time I make a mistake." The sounds of the brush are written into the score, says Gronk, and so are his movements. "A square with a line through it means I'm going to dunk my brush for more paint."

"Gronk recently collaboated with the Kronos Quartet in its third performance of a piece for string quartet, soprano and, well, painter. The 25-minute piece, by Joseph Julian Gonzalez, is called ''The Tormenta Cantata,'' after a painting by Gronk. Gonzalez and Gronk decided to work together and chose to base the work on Gronk's painting, "Tormenta '' a painting of a woman seen from behind."