Forest Hills Man Reinvents Himself in Art

Mark Stein creates worlds framed within metal, filled with the history and influences of steel and a life shaped by survival.

Scenes of a barge filled with coal passing under the Smithfield Street bridge, an incline, Falling Water and a playground all are separate scenes he has created, all with the simple tools of his hands, a welder and steel.

The working man’s artist, Stein recently was named one of eight Emerging Artists in the upcoming Three Rivers Arts Festival. where he will have his own spot at booth 29 behind Gateway Towers between June 3 and 7.

But this is a new start for Stein, who already has been through two life-threatening incidents and a career of challenges from all angles. He has overcome bypass surgery and a fall from a ladder that led him to seven leg surgeries and 42 days in a hospital.

His wife and biggest fan, Joan Stein, made the decision to enter him into the Emerging Artists competition as she watched Mark create art she had never seen.

“In essence, the application was quintessential us – I wrote it and he did the work,” she said. "I found out about the Emerging Artists scholarship program and Mark has never been one to promote himself, so I was going to enter his work."

After 26 years of marriage, Joan said she knows there are some things she should just do without telling Mark, who often expects the worst, while she is the “eternal optimist.”

"We were nervous wrecks because it had to be submitted in February and they said we would be notified by March 30," she said. "Well, nothing was in the mail and we hadn’t heard anything, and March 31 I sent an email to check."

Mark's birthday is April 1, so that night the couple went out for dinner with a few friends. Joan read the email in the parking garage on her Blackberry and screamed at the news.

"Eight people were named and he was the oldest," she said. "The intern there said out of all the artists who entered, his story was most compelling."

Stein went through high school with an undiagnosed learning disability, but always had a knack for using his hands. He quit school at 17, joined he U.S. Coast Guard and spent most of his life working as a chief engineer.

His wife said there isn't anything in the world her husband cannot figure out by taking it apart and putting it back together himself, a first he accomplished at eight years old with the family's toaster.

"He was always working with his hands," she said.

 In 1988 at the age of 41, he had emergency bypass surgery and escaped death.

“A year and a half after that, he was fired from his job while he was in the hospital because his manager said ‘I don’t want to have to call 911 for you,’” Joan Stein said.

Within days of losing this job, he started M&J Home Repair Service. Stein would go to peoples’ houses, paint and offer wall services and anything else they needed.

On July 20, 2009, he fell from a 24- foot ladder painting a customer’s house. The legs of the ladder broke and he fell 16 feet, landing on a cement wall and falling down 12 flights of stairs to a cement pad.

“He came home and spent six months in a hospital bed in the living room and that was the end of working,” she said.

As a part of his therapy, both physical and emotional, Mark started to go into his basement workshop to create art, starting with jewelry. After making a shift into an all-new medium, his wife was amazed at the metal creations her husband started to craft.

“I just wake up, go downstairs and work,” Mark said. “I just enjoy making things that look good. When I used to paint houses, I used to stand back and admire my work because when I got done painting, it was a showpiece. It was my palate. The boss wouldn’t even come to check for spots anymore. If he put me on a job it was perfect. And I made people happy.”

And with his new art form and Emerging Artist platform comes a new chapter in life – MJ Stein Studio. Stein will have a prime spot at the festival and also will be provided a mentor to help him along the way.

“It was beyond our wildest dreams,” Joan said.