Gene doesn't mind sharing his youthful age of 46 years, and that he's married with two sons, aged 21 and 20 years. He's a resident of Tinley Park, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. It was Gene's galleries (http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Gallery/8844) that caught T-zero's attention.

The Gallery Shop and its companion sites [featured at the end of this interview] were an idea bouncing around in my head for a long time. I set up my first web site (an art site [that] highlights some of my pen and ink illustrations) a couple [maybe] 3 years ago on geocities.

Actually, I supplied the art and a friend of mine established the site for me. As the months rolled by, I took over. I added some photography, and decided to add a small coffeehouse "motif" to the establishment. It set me to thinking. I wanted to feature some of my sons' art, and perhaps one or the other of their poems, and a short story or two. I added another site on angelfire I called Annex Past.

I designed it to be a real gallery. Transformed a photo of another gallery I'd taken in Hot Springs, Arkansas, actually replacing the pictures that were on display in the photograph with three other pictures. I liked the feel.

Gallery Too followed. I had had a small exhibit of my photographs set up at the Artists and Writers Collective Work Shop web site. The site closed, and I requested the HTML code its webmaster had used. She sent it to me. I created Gallery Too on fortunecity.com. I called it Gallery Too chiefly because the webmaster had called my exhibit on AWCWS "Gallery Two".   Sally Gooslin was one of the other artists on the site. I contacted her and asked her if she would like to mirror the website she had set up for herself after AWCWS folded. She agreed. History.

I was on a roll, though. I added yet one more site to this virtual gallery. Tripod, [which is] a poetry site [and] specifically devoted to Poetry. I decided I was featuring other people's art - or trying to - at Annex Past. I could feature other people's poetry at MishKar. I headed the site Poetry Spoken Here and drew upon the years of small press publications I had put out over the years.

I linked them [all] together at various points. I'm still figuring out ways to link them, but I've started.  As to the artwork featured, if I don't specify an artist, it's mine. I put Joe Enzweiler's art with his words, but I'm pretty sure I handled most of the other artwork [and] certainly the layout.

I've spent a lot of time - off and on - doing illustration work for various small press magazines. I really enjoy taking something someone else has written and "illuminating" it. I like turning word to line. I've illustrated a handful of chapbooks during the last few years. Most recently, I illustrated a collection of short stories on Time Travel for Kay Weems at Omnific. With her permission (and the authors'), I am going to post some of the tales and spots I did for them on one of the sites.

I'll have to be honest with you. I don't know. I was never inside it. My wife and I discovered this particular shop in Galena, Illinois on a hot April morning. We were on our way home from an all-night barn dance in Iowa and decided to stop to stretch our legs. We must have hit nearly a dozen different shops - antiques, art galleries, ice cream, curio and gift shops, and a couple of museums. This particular gallery, however, was closed all day.

It had a bright red CLOSED sign in its front window (which I removed with PhotoShop) and, at one point, four or five motorcycles parked in front of it. I liked the contrast, for some reason, snapped the shot, added a name to the window and the awning, and raised the picture's overall contrast. Gallery Too was born.

As to content, from the window display, I would say the predominant medium was oil, with watercolor running a close second. Landscapes and buildings mostly, with one full head portrait on a far wall. It was definitely a different kind of shop than the one I opened - more staid, less people-friendly.

I write mainly poetry. Have for twenty-some years now. I like the poems to try to tell some sort of a story, but then, who doesn't? I try to get the poems to speak for themselves. Stories I've written, too. Had a half-dozen or so published in small press mags. I think one of them found its way into an anthology. It's a lot harder to write stories. I think I love the words too much. I want to hone them, raise them, discipline them. I'm almost afraid to let them go.

Thanks. My main medium is pen and ink. For years I had a dreadful fear of color, so black and white appealed to me. I began to use colored pencils a bit in the last couple years, finding myself more and more drawn to color illustration. I never realized the versatility of color, however, until I began to play with computer [programs], like PhotoShop, Paint Shop Pro, and CorelDraw. I started "adjusting" the colors on my photographs, to increase or decrease contrast, and it overflowed into my illustration work.

I've begun to dabble in watercolors. My experiences with painting, overall, have been dreadful.  I've felt a want of control when I take brush in hand. Oils, acrylics, even pastels terrified me, probably because they were color media more than anything else. I'm re-approaching them, however.

I've been at this in one form or another for [about] twenty five years. I provided illustrations for my high school literary magazine yearbook. That would have been sometime [between] 1968 and 1970. I edited a college literary magazine with very solid delusions of literature. It was in grad school (1975-76), though, that I began to take illustration seriously. I began to scribble my way into slush files of one small press publication after another. I've been at it ever since. I remember sitting up at 3 in the morning, feeding my first son with one hand, and trying to ink a pencil sketch for Pyrate magazine with the other.

Occupation? No. Not yet. Perhaps when I retire, perhaps not ever. I'm a Storyteller by vocation. Anyway, I'm working on it. I'm an Artist and Poet by avocation. In the real world, I work for a quaint mid-western law firm of some 170 attorneys. I'm in Marketing, Web-design and Desktop Publishing. But I can tell a mean story. What I really want to do is write and illustrate kid's books.

Photography is not a portrait, at least not what I do. That belies the word. It's a "snapshot," a slice of reality. As with a story, a poem, or a painting, it is a synergy of Do-er (photographer, storyteller, painter, poet), Do-ee (subject/object or photograph, poem, story, painting) and DONE (audience).

The final product itself is a cast-off. It could not exist, ultimately, without the Do-er. It could not be appreciated (or despised) without the Done, and neither would be moved to create or to react without the Do-ee.

There is no "perfect" moment, either. There are a series of moments, simply. And we, as Artists, are trying to capture those moments as perfectly as possible, sometimes more successfully than at other times. Sometimes the less I know, for myself, I might take a handful of shots to try to capture whatever it is about a scene or a person that moves me. In illustrating a story, I will do several  sketches of a scene or character or word before I catch a spot that appeals to me. That "perfect" moment is a helluva lot o' work.

Everything's for sale, provided I still have the originals. I'm notorious for purging my files of pictures I'm not happy with. At one point or another, I'm not happy with almost everything. It's a tense scenario for a natural-born packrat.

I just had an exhibit of some of my spots and photos at a local real world coffeehouse. Not much sold, but the comments and questions were welcome. I'm setting up an on-line gallery for them also, which will feature - if all goes well - several of the artists who have exhibited in their shop over the last few months.

There are too many projects I could tell you about. I'm inking a comic one of my sons has written. I'm designing a deck of Tarot cards. Illustrating a collection of nature stories that I perform in concert. I'm illustrating a story for Prisoners of Night, an anthology of vampire erotica. The law firm I work for is redesigning its image and I'll be spending a lot of time revamping its web page to encompass the new "look."

Genealogist! I haven't mentioned that one yet. I'm on a Quest to track down the Lost Gryniewiczes. Set up a couple of websites with that express purpose in mind, and I've found nearly three dozen so far. It's fascinating. I design web pages for people who are interested in my work. 

Creating. Art is Creating. It doesn't always matter what, or how. It is the creative process that's important. The Artist is, essentially, a mirror of the creative forces in and beyond the universe. Call "it" what you will. I really think that's the purpose of all ... this ... to mirror, to reflect creation, to continue creating.

The Artist, or Poet, or Writer, though, mirrors that creativity more closely, or perhaps more consciously, than others. It's not enough, simply, to be. One, if he is an artist, must also do. What's the old saw scratched on the coffeehouse wall? "To do is to be", Socrates; "To be is to do", Sartre; "Do be do be do", Sinatra. 

Survival, I think, more than anything else. With immortality running a close second. But seriously folks, I just want to continue to work and develop as a mirror to creation. I like exploring the various media I have. I'm learning, it seems, more each day. I love to learn. And the media continues to evolve. I find it fascinating. I want to watch it happen, help it happen, if possible. It will be interesting to see what develops, certainly. I want to be there. I want to learn how to draw decent feet.

When asked about his general artistic philosophy, Gene advises to just "Do it!" Certainly his work serves an inspiration to that mantra. Cruise some of Gene et al's virtual hot spots: