All roads lead to art for UW-Madison delivery driver
Jeff Toseff, a driver for the Division of Information Technology, peers through a cluster of paintings on his easel as he discusses his twin hobbies of painting and collecting artwork. The walls of his basement studio are lined with stacks of his own unfinished paintings, as well as unframed artwork he has bought from estate sales, consignment shops and student art shows. He credits this collection of prints and paintings as inspiration and as a source of ideas for new techniques. “I could talk about art all day,” says Toseff. “I’ll have plenty to keep me busy when I retire.” Photo: Michael Forster Rothbart
“They said, ‘What do you mean, giving up a golf Saturday to take an art class? Where are your priorities!?’”
Jeff Toseff’s golfing buddies will not approve of this story.
For him, however, there’s no hesitation. “I love golf, but I’m obsessed with art,” he explains.
It’s an obsession that quite possibly would not have seen the light of day without UW–Madison, where Toseff has worked for 33 years as a motor vehicle operator, most recently for the Division of Information Technology (DoIT).
“My parents didn’t have a lot of money, and I never was exposed to art as a child,” he says. “I never realized what a center of printmaking Madison is until I started working at the university. The art department has some really important artists on its faculty, some real treasures.”
Those include, Toseff says, John Wilde, Jack Damer, Warrington Colescott, Dean Meeker, Ray Gloeckler and many others. Toseff first made their acquaintance through their work, hanging in a number of often-overlooked galleries around campus that he encountered in the process of making deliveries.
“After 33 years driving around campus, you know it like the back of your hand. You know about places most people don’t,” he says.
Some of Toseff’s favorite campus galleries include relatively new hallway spaces at the School of Veterinary Medicine; the School of Medicine and Public Health’s library; the art department’s exhibition area at 1922 University Ave.; the pre-Overture Center Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters on Old University Avenue; and the UW Hospital and Clinics, among other places.
In fact, Toseff has been been collecting for about 10 years, and he acquired one of his most treasured pieces at a hospital art sale.
“The hospital sold it at a warehouse sale — Lee Weiss’ watercolor ‘Sand Dunes.’ She painted it as a donation to the hospital when a family member was ill there,” Toseff says. “I called to tell her I had it and find out its name. When she told me the story I offered to sell it back to her for what I had paid for it, but she said I should keep it.”
And so it joined the 50-60 other works that Toseff has amassed in his decade of collecting. Like the hospital sale, he often acquires his purchases incidentally, while something else is going on, either for him or for the seller.
“People have told me I have a good eye,” he says. “I look for quality. There’s usually something in the details of a piece that tells me how much effort and care went into it. I also watch for pieces that are a little different, off-center somehow. The last few years I bought some things by graduate students in the art department. It’s been fun to follow their careers and see how they progress after they graduate.”
And so Toseff prowls lesser-known, out-of-the-way places for hidden treasure. “Consignment shops (I bought a signed, numbered Joan Miro print at one of them), estate and yard sales, auctions, the UW SWAP Shop. I once got a Ray Gloeckler — ‘The Social Mogul’ — at the SWAP shop. Somebody in an office was going to throw it out. They didn’t realize what they had!” Toseff says.
“I never realized what a center of printmaking Madison is until I started working at the university. The art department has some really important artists on its faculty, some real treasures.”
When area artists discover the extent of Toseff’s interest — he usually encounters them at gallery openings such as the opening of the James Watrous Gallery in the Overture Center — they sometimes invite him to their studios.
“It was really something to visit John Wilde’s studio. I saw the actual things that show up in his paintings: his Welsh corgi dogs, a particular table, entire rooms, his wife. It really was amazing,” Toseff says.
And inspirational: He’s dedicated the basement of his new condominium to art space. “Nothing as elaborate as John Wilde’s studio or Lee Weiss’, but it’s a place I can paint. Or start to — I tend to start projects but not finish them,” he says.
Among the work Toseff has finished is “Good Day Bad Day,” his personal favorite.
“There’s a guy fishing in a rowboat on a creek. You see all this from overhead. He’s pulling a fish out of the water. There’s a thunderstorm rolling into view in the background, and some other stuff going on in the foreground. The point is, whether it’s a good day or a bad day depends entirely on your point of view,” Toseff says.
Although Toseff could be the subject of a treatise on lifelong learning, he doesn’t eschew regular art classes. He’s a veteran of several Union Mini Courses and others through the Division of Continuing Education, and he is a member of the division’s Regional Arts Program, whose exhibition in Madison opened Feb. 11 (see calendar highlights on page 9).
“I live and breathe art, and since I do, I couldn’t think of a better place to live,” he says. “My job at UW–Madison has expanded my view of the vitality of our art scene, and I really appreciate that.
“The worst things can be happening in other areas of my life, but give me a piece of art and it wipes it all away.”