Abridged Bio

Studio Junk is Kurt Altschul's (American, born 1984) alter-ego homegrown studio of drawing, painting, photography, animation, and all other forms of visual art.

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At the forefront, my greatest inspiration and driving force is life in this vast and varied city I call home – New York City. My goals have evolved over the years, but an unwavering force keeping this artistic locomotive traveling full steam ahead is the desire to capture the unseen, the fleeting, the transitory, the evasive moments within New York City - natural, built, or otherwise.

Whether through pencil, ink, pastel, paint, or photograph, I seek to document for my contemporaries and our future descendants life in New York City as it was at the beginning of the third millennium of the Common Era. Beauty is all around us, at all hours at all scales, and in the most unusual of places. While the boundless energetic forces of this great metropolis capture my attention, it is the quietness that lies beneath – the hidden synapses that are the city’s anti-nodes, that are truly deserving of merit.

While throngs of fresh recycled tourists flock to the city’s main attractions, I am more often found with my camera wandering a quiet alleyway in an industrial neighborhood of the outer boroughs, marveling at the beauty of the ordinary that is the foundation of this city.

Meanwhile in the late spring of 2016, I embarked on a nocturnal adventure that has been ongoing ever since. I began focusing my art on the documentation of life within NYC bars, with an instinctive bend towards jazz musicians and live performances. It’s fair to say each night spent “on the clock” has lead to chance encounters with a rich cast of characters, both in and out of the spotlight, and this urban excursion shows no signs of slowing down.

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I am confident that my unique outlook on art, philosophy, rationality, and the world at large will prove to be a favorable position for my creations in a wide range of artistic media. I acknowledge that much of my adaptability and distinctive flare stem from my ocular impairments and my steadfast determination to overcome those difficulties.

With an intense interest in the human ability to replicate complex form with simple line, I treat the uncovering of detail afforded to me by a camera as a luxury seen for the first time. My fascination with built forms—especially those unoccupied or in ruin, have led to bold, raw, stripped creations untainted by the distraction of what I often consider the purposeful conjuring of human emotion and opinions sometimes forced upon the viewer by the artist. I prefer to let scenes of beautiful built and natural forms speak to the viewers in a more mysterious way than the often predictable emotions of human form.

That said, however, artists like John Singer Sargent have been known to completely alter my perception of portraiture.

Coupled with the fact that I have lost no less than five completed pieces of artwork to the bowels of the New York City transit system, I am confident that my artwork will one day find itself among the artifacts of New York—one way or another.

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Exhibitions:

• Arts Gowanus: “Brooklyn Blooms: Celebrating our Beautiful Brooklyn” June 2022, Brooklyn, NY

• Arts Gowanus: “We’re Still Here…” May - June 2021, Brooklyn, NY

• “Immersions Underground” April 2018, Le Boudoir BK

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Awards & Accolades

• 22nd and 26th Annual Colored Pencil Society of America (CPSA) International Exhibitions Selection, 2014 and 2018

• Finalist, Architectural Record Napkin Sketch Contest, 2016

• Finalist, Ken Roberts Memorial Delineation Competition, 2006

• Hugh Ferriss Drawing Award, Washington University in St. Louis, 2006

• Congressional Art Award, 2nd Congressional District, New York, 2001

• Long Island Language Poster Contest 2000

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Education:

• 2006 - 2008: Master of Architecture, Pratt Institute

• 2002 - 2006: Bachelor of Arts with a Major in Architecture, Washington University in St. Louis