DAVID JAMES OGORZALY

Dave Ogorzaly has been working part-time as a  Fine Art Instructor for the Palatine Park District for nine years.  Last year, he painted the Park District's bench for the Palatine Chamber's “Best Seats in Town”, which sold for the highest amount at the Auction.  The Bench can be seen at the Clayson House  Historical Society in Palatine.

Dave grew up in the working-class neighborhood of South Chicago, across the street from U.S. Steel.  At Leo High School, he honed his skills by doing artwork for the yearbook, newspaper, and poster club.  While enrolled at Northern Illinois University, he majored in painting and drawing.  It was at that school in the cornfields of DeKalb, IL that he created his first “watermelon painting,” and thereafter the large green fruit would be a recurring motif in his repertoire.  He joined the Village of Schaumburg Public Works Department, where he used his skills designing, drawing, painting and even “creative routing” for a multitude of Village projects.  When he transferred to the Engineering department, artwork had become such a part of his job that he was known as “ the Village Artist.”

Some highlights of Dave's career are his completion in March 1981 of the DuSable Mural (depicting the life and contributions to Chicago of Jean Baptiste Pointe DuSable), the winner of an area-wide competition sponsored by Talman Bank (which metamorphosed into Bank of America);  and the acceptance of his “Remembering the Apocalyptic Vision (Total Recall)” in the New Horizons in Art 1982, a juried exhibition of Illinois artists sponsored by the North Shore Art League.  The DuSable Mural was recently re-dedicated in 2006 to St. Sabina's Parish near Leo High School on the South-side of Chicago.

In 1983, Dave received  the Master of Arts degree from N.I.U.  In 1986, “Public Image/Private Fantasies” was a unique exhibit that appeared in conjunction with the Grand Opening of the Schaumburg Prairie Center for the Arts; it featured work that Dave had done in a municipal capacity, as an employee for the Village of Schaumburg, along with art indicative of his personal surrealistic style.