Art and Life are Best Unscripted

By Amy Rauch Neilson

Tony Roko remembers the moment that changed his life. It was 1992 and he was on break during his shift as an assembly line worker at Ford Motor Co.’s Michigan Wayne Assembly Plant. “I really didn’t know anyone else in the plant that well, and I kind of kept to myself,” he says. “So, I’d sketch on my breaks.”

On this particular day, he was approached by the UAW and Ford management. “My first thought was that they were going to tell me I had to stop sketching,” he recalls. But what they said instead took Roko totally by surprise. “We’re looking for someone to paint murals at Ford Motor Co. What do you think?”

Ford Motor Co. was implementing a Plant Beautification Program. The idea was to boost employee morale by bringing art into the industrial setting. And the talent – Roko --was right in front of their eyes.

“They took me off the line and told me they’d order any art supplies I needed,” Roko says. “But I kept thinking to myself, ‘There’s no paint in a tube that would hold up to life in an assembly plant.’ So, I turned to them and said, “What are they painting these machines with?”

They took him to an old crib, where there were leftover cans, each with an inch or two of paint in the bottom. “I reached in, mixed a couple of the paints with my fingers, looked up at them and said, ‘This’ll work.’ I didn’t realize at the time what I was on to.

“It’s a Cinderella story,” says Roko of the offer that helped him to realize his childhood dream of being an artist. “I was 21 years old and I was given the opportunity of a lifetime.”

Dream Job

Roko remembers driving past the Michigan Wayne Assembly Plant in the late 1980s, when he was a teenager. “It seemed such an elitist, secret society,” he recalls. “So, when a friend’s Dad asked me if wanted him to ‘see about getting me a job at Ford,’ I was starry-eyed.”

He got the job. As he and the group of new hires were led through the plant for orientation, Roko remembers blurting out the question, Are we going to be able to work on the cars?

“The training coordinator stopped the whole group and everyone stood there looking at me in stunned silence,” he recalls. “And the coordinator, he just said, ‘Yes, son. You’ll get to work on the cars.’”
Indeed, he did. Everything moved lightning fast and he often found himself feeling like Lucille Ball from the famous episode of I Love Lucy in which Ball and co-star Vivian Vance go to work on the line in a candy factory.

It took just a single full day on the line – where the then 20-year-old Roko screwed in the right side of a dashboard panel on the car as his partner, a 30-year veteran of assembly line work, screwed in the left – for him to realize that his job at Ford Motor was a grand illusion.

“Working on the assembly line is brutal. I remember leaning into the car, trying to fit my right leg into that tiny space between the steering column and the floor. I’d lean against the metal as I screwed in each panel, and parts of the car would just hit my knee over and over again.

“I realized he’d been on the line three decades longer than me and his job wasn’t any better than the one I had just started that morning,” he says. “And my future flashed before my eyes.”

Breaking the News

That’s when Roko realized he was caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place. “I would lie in bed at night, trying to work up the nerve to tell my Dad that I wanted to quit,” he says.

Just months before he was born, his parents had emigrated from Montenegro to Italy and finally, to the United States. “My job at Ford was seen as a breakthrough for my family,” he says. “My parents were telling everyone that I’d gotten a job at Ford.”

Finally, one morning, he approached his Dad. “Dad,” he started to say, “I know this is your dream…”
But before he could finish, his Dad interrupted him. “I had a dream. You’re going to be an artist at Ford.”
Roko was stunned. “Dad,” he started to explain, “there’s no such thing as an artist on an assembly line.
“I remember feeling so defeated, like there was no way that I was going to convince my Dad that I needed to quit,” Roko recalls. “He’d just played his trump card.”

Three weeks later, to his astonishment, his Dad’s words became reality.

That was 18 years ago.

Inspiration

Roko finds his inspiration in the line workers all around him. As part of the Plant Beautification Program, Ford encouraged employees to submit their ideas. What did they want to see on the walls of their plant? Their responses ran the gamut, from Clint Eastwood to Joe Louis, Muhammad Ali to John Wayne. And Roko responded by painting the likenesses of each – directly onto the sides of the stamping presses. He has painted over 40 murals in his 20 years with the company, including a portrait of Henry Ford for the grand opening of the Dynamometer Laboratory Building in 1996.

Inside the Michigan Assembly Plant, Roko points to a row of frames, all different versions of the Ford Focus. They’ve been discarded for any number of reasons, he explains. Perhaps at some point on the line, the specifications for the left side didn’t precisely match the right.

What other people see are rejected heaps of metal. What Tony sees is art.

The cost? Sweat equity.

That’s because Roko’s work is not only unique in his use of industrial enamels exclusive to the automotive industry, but in his choice of canvasses. Everything Roko takes a brush to is post-industrial material, recycled and repurposed through his artistic eye.

Stalled Out

In 2002, Tony, feeling spent from years of sketching and painting Ford Motor Co. murals in black and white, turned his focus to safety painting at the assembly plants.

Two years later, he met his wife, Mimi. “I talked a lot about painting, but I wasn’t doing it,” he says. “One day, she turned to me and said, ‘Why aren’t you still painting for yourself?”

“I told her I didn’t want to paint in black and white anymore,” he says. “I wanted to paint in vivid color; I wanted to paint with colors that didn’t go together.

“I was dying to create, but somehow, I wasn’t doing it. Then one day, I came home from work and Mimi had set up three canvasses and all the materials. She looked at me and said, ‘Honey, today, you paint.’

“I’m doing this for me,” he says. “I decided to paint the way I wanted to paint, even if no one else in the world liked it. And the moment I decided to be true to myself, it took off.”

Meet Lilly

When the ribbon is cut on the Michigan Assembly Plant (formerly the Michigan Wayne Assembly Plant) on Jan. 3, 2011, “Lilly” will be there, up front and center. Lilly is the central focus in Roko’s latest work, “Plant Life,” which he created to pay homage to the modern American autoworker. "I was inspired by the way Ford and the UAW handled the auto crisis,” he says. “We didn't bail out, and this work is symbolic of a comeback.

“I wanted Lilly to be portrayed as capable. Lilly is my way of saying, ‘here’s the real deal.’”

Roko has poured more than 250 hours into “Lilly” during the past six weeks. “After observing Ford and the UAW display integrity during a pivotal time in the automotive industry, I was inspired to create this piece of art,” Roko writes in the Artist Statement that will appear beside the larger-than-life piece. “Symbolic of a new beginning, ‘Plant Life’ represents the resilience and unity that our entire work force has demonstrated.”

In his creation of “Plant Life,” Roko mounted scrap metal to repurposed pallets, then painted with automotive enamels exclusive to the automotive industry. “There’s a kind of sanctity in using the very pallets that once served the industry and somehow survived,” he says.

They’ve not only survived, but these pieces of history – also slated to be displayed at the new facility's Live Media Launch of the International Auto Show Dec. 14. -- have found a new home in the Michigan Assembly Plant.

"Tony is an innovative artist," says David Torosian, site manager for the Michigan Assembly Plant. "He's given these everyday automotive materials a new purpose.”

Art and Life – Unscripted

Even though the hours are long and he misses his wife, Mimi, and two sons, “I wouldn’t trade it for anything right now,” he says. “I talked the talk, so now I’m walking the walk.”

Of the 22 pieces he’s created since 2008, only a half dozen remain. All the rest have been snapped up by collectors. “It’s hard for me to believe how far I’ve come in just two years,” he says.

Roko may be best known for his Motown Series created for the legendary Motown Historical Museum. His work has also been displayed at Detroit's most premier galleries, including an upcoming exhibit at the prestigious 323 East Gallery in Royal Oak, Jan. 15 - Feb. 10, 2011.

“The scope of what I committed to in words in the beginning – I’ve now lived it. And the process has been a great experience,” he says. “In retrospect, I couldn’t have scripted it better.”

To contact Tony Roko and to see more of his work, go to: www.tonyroko.com

Amy Rauch Neilson is a metro-Detroit based free-lance writer and editor.

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