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Ed Attanasio is a great believer in putting good out into the world as a way to counter the bad.
So when the coronavirus pandemic sent his income from six figures to nearly zero in just three phone calls, he began thinking of ways to make a difference in other people’s lives.
The answer was found in 3 by 3-inch Post-it notes, the preferred canvas for his art. For several years, Attanasio has been creating what some call abstract and others call outsider art, creating images with black ink and colored pencils.
He created a Facebook page, Pandemic Pet Project, and asked people to send him photos of their pets. In turn, he would create an image for them, asking only that they pay it forward with donations to their favorite pet rescue groups.
“I thought that would give me something to do for a week,” Attanasio said from his Castro Valley home. Now it’s several weeks in, and he’s still doing them.
Attanasio reckons he’s made around 145 drawings and raised a few thousand dollars for rescue groups, and he still has at least 80 more to go. He’s been working at a pace of four a day.
Most people ask for just one or two pet drawings, but a woman in Ohio had a longer list.
“When she said she had six pets and wanted six drawings, I thought maybe I better rethink this,” Attanasio said. “I told her I didn’t think I could do that many. But she said OK, she would donate $100 for each pet, so that was $600 for a rescue that I couldn’t say no to.”
Attanasio’s unique style and accouterments came about entirely by accident. All his life, he had wanted to be a writer. After graduating from San Jose State, he got a job on a newspaper copy desk and later began writing advertising copy.
But in 2009, at age 50, he suffered a mild stroke and had one of those life-changing revelations. He was overweight and hadn’t been taking care of himself. It wasn’t dying, so much, that worried him. It was that he wouldn’t be able to write anymore, so he began to change his life.
The stroke originally left him with some speech deficits. One day during a group speech-therapy session, he was drawing on a Post-it note when someone loudly noticed his work — which brought others over to look. His speech therapist told his wife to buy him a box of Post-its and let him exercise his brain through his art.
He drew and drew and drew some more. The sticky notes would make their way to the refrigerator, then disappear. Attanasio assumed his wife had been throwing away the older ones, but one day she presented him with a binder full of 400 of his little creations. He could see how he had progressed, almost daily, and so he focused more attention on his art.
He drew animals of all sorts, including elephants, which he has a particular appreciation for. He also created a 1910-era baseball team, giving his imaginary players names, colorful monikers, histories and stats. He was starting to mix his creative writing with his art.
“The Bushers — Players Drawn from Left Field” was, to his amazement, accepted by the George Krevsky Gallery of American Art in San Francisco for its 15th annual baseball art exhibition, “The Art of Baseball.”
It was not only his first showing, it was his first and so far biggest sale. The collection sold for $3,000, purchased before the show even opened.
Attanasio eventually went back to writing, starting his own small ad agency and doing freelance work, mostly for the business-to-business automotive trade. He’s continued with his art, too, and is the artist in residence at San Jose’s Kaleid Gallery. When the Bay Area shut down in the COVID-19 pandemic, almost all of his work was furloughed.
He expects it will pick up again, but in the meantime, he’s putting good vibes forward with his Pandemic Pet Project. It’s been rewarding for him to hear from so many people, he says, and get to know their pets, which have included, in addition to the run-of-the-mill priceless pets, a raccoon and an eyeless dog.
Some people, Attanasio says, have trouble recognizing the animal based on his abstract depiction. He did one for a family, whose young daughter complained that her pet wasn’t blue, while her brother noted that the drawing was like a Picasso.
Attanasio has no interest in drawing an exact replica. People would inevitably compare the drawing to the real thing, he says. He likes to draw what he sees and leave it up to the observer to make his own interpretations.
Pandemic Pet Project
How to get an Ed Attanasio original:
- Post a photo of your pet and its name at www.facebook.com/pandemicpetproject
- Provide a mailing address, if you want this piece of original art (“If I ever cut off my ear,” Attanasio says, “it could really be worth something one day.”). Allow 2 to 3 weeks for completion.
- Donate to the pet rescue of your choice. (Attanasio’s is Muttville in San Francisco.)
- Pass the word
