Cereal Box Artist Uses Pop Art to Connect With Eastchester Youth

Cereal boxes, scissors, and glue was all it took to enthrall a roomful of 'tweens Wednesday night at the Eastchester Public Library.  They were there for a workshop called "Cerealism" led by artist Michael Albert.

Since 1996, the White Plains-based artist and entrepreneur has been constructing collages from the familiar logos and fonts of popular American breakfast foods. Albert has re-configured mass-produced logos from the boxes of Frosted Flakes, Cheerios and PopTarts.  

He also deconstructs the images into pieces that recreate other cultural signposts like "The Pledge of Allegiance," the lyrics to the song "America The Beautiful,"  and the Fourteenth Amendment.

"Anything I know and you know connects us," explained Michael Albert, author of An Artists' America. The simplicity of that idea and the accessibility of collages are at the heart of all his work.

Albert's collages are made of pieces of product packaging like cereal boxes. It can take hundreds of hours to construct the works and even longer to gather the material.

"It took three years to save enough boxes to make this piece," he said of his rendition of the mathematical value of Pi. "There aren't that many numbers on the boxes, so it took a long time to get enough."

"Anyone who can cut and paste can understand what it's all about," he said.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Albert likes having workshops at libraries because they are accessible to everyone of any age or walk of life.

"Bookstores and galleries are about selling," he explained. "Libraries don't discriminate. Anyone can come."

Since the beginning of the summer, Albert has travelled around the country and held 45 art workshops at schools and libraries to share his work and inspire young people to create their own art. Older children especially, he says, quickly take up his example and get started making their own pieces.

Library volunteer Georgeann Dellivenneri was impressed with the workshop.  "Look how they share and work together," she said with a note of marvel.

Though the children hardly knew each other, after Albert's brief introduction of his own work and instructions on how to get started on their own collages, the group had settled in sharing supplies and ideas with each other.

Rowena Delcastillo and her 11-year-old daughter Mercedes were so impressed with artist Michael Albert at a previous workshop, they had made sure to attend the Eastchester event and bring two more young friends.

"It was really cool," said Rowena Delcastillo. "We saw him at Cosi (in Larchmont, NY) back in May."

"Everyone here gets a poster," said Albert. As each child showed him their completed collage, artist Albert signed prints of his work for them to take home.

Albert spends half as time as an artist and the rest running his own business. In 1993, he created Sir Real- a line of organic fruit juices including apple, orange and lemonade- complete with its own iconic logo.

A graduate of NYU School of Business, he has also consulted for local supermarket chains such as Fairway, Gristedes and D'Agostino in addition to running his own natural foods distributorships. Sir Real headquarters have been based in White Plains, NY since 2002.