The news site of Santa Barbara City College.

The Channels

The news site of Santa Barbara City College.

The Channels

The news site of Santa Barbara City College.

The Channels

Local artwalk artist finds time to help students in printmaking class

It’s early Sunday morning when a noisy and multicolored Volkswagen van runs from west to east on Cabrillo Boulevard. It stops right after Stearns Wharf.

Somebody steps down from the driver’s seat dressed in clothes as colorful as the van.

He is one of the many Santa Barbara artists who display their artwork every Sunday by the beach, but no one dresses like him. His shirt, pants and chef-like hat are full of color.

The back of his shirt reads “Art is free” and “Art is cookin.”

Story continues below advertisement

He is Pali Szilvassy known as Pali-X-Mano, born in 1949 in Budapest, Hungary. He is well known in the Santa Barbara artistic community not only for his hand-painted cars and clothes, but also for the gigantic inflatable sculptures and floats that he designs and builds for the Summer Solstice Parade in town.

Pali means Paul in Hungarian. X is an abbreviation for eXperi-mental and Mano is Hungarian for “little mischief.” Mano also means ‘hand’ in Latin.

“My life is a play and my art is my playground,” Szilvassy said.

He considers himself an art-shaman.

“My whimsical creations, self-painted clothing and painted cars make people smile; smiles extend life,” Szilvassy said. “Therefore my purpose is to make more and more people smile.”

Szilvassy is a student and tutor at City College, working in the art department for more than ten years. Currently, he is a tutor for the printmaking class taught by artist and instructor Stephanie Dotson.

“He helps students with their projects and knows where things are,” Dotson said.

For her, the way Szilvassy dresses is “very Pali, very unique.”

Szilvassy graduated from the Hungarian Academy of Art and Design in Budapest in 1982. He created unique furniture and designed wooden toys.

“I won prizes for best quality in designing kindergarten toys,” Szilvassy said.

Back on Cabrillo, Mano opens the doors from the van and begins to download his cargo. It is well organized inside, with shelves to protect the paintings, prints and assemblages.

He grabs every artwork one by one and it takes him as much as two hours to have everything set-up. He has to do it slowly and with care. Otherwise, some work can break or get scratched, and will be lost.

Szilvassy has followed this same routine since 1992.

Most of his work includes acrylic paintings. Some look like cave paintings, others look more like cubism with defined lines in geometrical shapes.

Recently, Szilvassy designed for the Santa Barbara Zoo. He made a kite, representing a condor, whose wings move with the wind. It will be suspended from two giant palm trees, scheduled to be exhibited in April.

“And on May 1, I will start working for the Summer Solstice Parade,” Szilvassy said. “This year’s theme will be Splash.”

He will design and make inflatable figures for the grand finale of the parade on June 20. Afterward, spectators join the parade and dance all the way to the festival at Alameda Park.

Among all these activities, Szilvassy stays busy during his tutoring hours helping art students with silk-screen techniques in the printmaking class.

“Pali is a fantastic resource; he can do anything with his hands,” says Pamela Elliott, an art student at City College who is taking the printmaking class for the third time. “He is an artist himself and a great help for Stephanie; we love him.”

More to Discover