Paul Bennett Hirsch

"My inspiration comes from American culture, but I try to stay out of the whole arts thing about this movement or that," Hirsch said.

A Long Branch resident, Hirsch’s richly saturated imagery and his depiction’s of pop culture provide the viewer with a slice of everyday existence. Some of his pieces, like "Dragonfly" and "Bird – The Crow" are playful and colorful, seeming to say enjoy me for what I am, for just being.

Hirsch says he doesn’t set out to have his work say anything. "It’s not my intent. But I know that the bird or crow has a lot of symbolism in various cultures. As does the dragonfly. Basically, the pieces are a celebration of all of those things."

Both pieces reflect his use of technology. They are what he calls "computer manipulated," using Nova inkjet printer drawings scanned into the computer. These two works are each 45 by 56 inches but he often enlarges his original work to 6, 7 or 8 feet with a laser copier in lush dimensional overlays.

He is adamant in his belief that modern artists use the technological advances of the last decade. By balancing two careers, one as a commercial artist and the other as a fine artist, he has access to cutting-edge methods.

Like his contemporaries in the pop art movement, his thrust is to communicate via a visual diary, commenting on what goes on around him. But compared to the pop art of the ’60s, his work is more message oriented, more complex. For some of his work, he uses recycled images from the ’20s and ’30s and transforms them using ’90s materials. They are iconographic images like a man in a gray flannel suit scratching his head while holding a fedora. Some images are puzzling. "Dunce Boy," circa 1930, depicts a young man in a dunce cap. Others are disturbing, such as a 30-by-40-inch serigraph called "Nubian Celebration" that the artist created in 1998. The composition shows a smiling African man with a red gun pointed at his head, a simply drawn flower, and an obelisk, that Hirsch said is actually a monument in Central Park, on a red background that is lush with hieroglyphs. Hirsch was born on June 6, 1960, in Providence, R.I. While still a young boy, he wrote and illustrated his first book and throughout high school he was repeatedly voted "most artistic." His family moved to New Jersey in 1973 and Hirsch attended the School of Visual Arts in New York City. The one-person show opens May 6, with the opening reception between 6-8 p.m., and closes May 27.