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Arts & Entertainment

Two Decades of "Cerealism" on Display at Library

The work of former Woodmere resident Michael Albert is featured at the Hewlett-Woodmere Public Library until the end of the year.

One man's trash is another man's treasure, but for Michael Albert, it's also a canvas to create works of art.

Albert, who said he never wanted anything to go to waste, began crafting art about two decades ago from empty cereal and cracker boxes, candy wrappers, cartons and canisters of popular snacks and foods.

The artist, who grew up in Woodmere and now lives in White Plains, started his journey into modern pop art by cutting up an empty Kellogg's Frosted Flakes cereal box and re-constructing its mixed up pieces to form a collage. He titled this first piece, "A portrait of American Classics," and now refers to it as "the birth of Cerealism" in his career as an artist.

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"Deconstructing an image, mixing up the pieces, then reconstructing it back in a new and original way was my cubist version of art," Albert said. 

Now 20 years of his work, showcasing several pieces from his "Cerealism," "Sir Real," and "Epic Works" collections, is on display at the 's Boehm Meeting Room until Dec. 31 as part of a special retrospective exhibition.

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"I am especially honored to come back to my home town," Albert said. "It is great to come back to where I came from and show everyone what I have been up to for the past 20 years."

Each collage in the exhibit consists of several hundred pieces of clippings from popular consumer products, all of which were collected and handmade by Albert.

"I wanted to create pieces that you can instantly recognize ... pieces that were relatable to the world," Albert said of his collection.

He admits that his passion for art emerged while studying business at NYU. Regular visits to New York museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art inspired Albert's passion for arts.

Albert began experimenting with magic markers and wax oil sticks, sketching in whatever free time he had. About seven years later, he began his collection of collages using unwanted material such as leftover photos from his family albums. Albert said he felt like it was a waste to throw the extra pictures out so he began cutting them up and rearranging them back together in a new way. This, Albert said, led him to his "pop art revolution."

After re-creating several family photos, Albert quickly realized that he needed to make his art more identifiable and relatable to the general population.

"I was re-creating photos of my family but only we could appreciate the image because only we recognized who the people in the pictures were," he recalled.

Thus the creation of his "Cerealism" collection, which now consists of over 500 original cereal box collages.

"The idea was to make it interactive so that people can spend some time with every collage and pick pieces that they can identify," Albert said.

After graduating with his business degree, Albert and a few friends started a natural food distributing company called "Sir Real." The company's juice boxes feature Albert's drawings and are now sold in BJ's Wholesale Club.

In 2008, Albert wrote a 48-page picture book, "An Artists America," which tells his story through collages. He also teaches programs at several Long Island libraries to children and young adults. His art is displayed in seven Cosi Restaurants throughout New York, Connecticut and New Jersey.

"I realized that these artists created works so many years ago, and it seemed like a hundred years from now people will be studying things that we created, trying to figure out what this generation was all about," he said. "I knew I had to somehow be involved in this."

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