Latrobe artist Adalberto Ortiz moves on from career in set design to passion for painting

As a young man growing up in New York City, Puerto Rican native Adalberto Ortiz considered designing buildings for a living.

But he realized projects on such a grand scale might take years to come to fruition.

He found more immediate fulfillment in a career as a set designer and, recently, a return to one of his original creative outlets — painting.

“I get to design it, it gets built, and I can see it,” Ortiz said of the sets he's modeled for everything from television studios and corporate exhibitions to elaborate theatrical productions.

A theatrical set, he explained, is “like a big puzzle you have to put together,” making sure the mechanical and aesthetic aspects of the set pieces work with the blocking of the actors.

Ortiz had the opportunity to compare notes with famed playwright Arthur Miller in New York when he prepared the performance space for the Jewish Repertory Theater's early 1980s revival of Miller's “Incident at Vichy.”

Set in Nazi-occupied France, the play shows German authorities interrogating detainees to determine if they are Jewish.

Miller “liked what I did with it,” Ortiz recalled — including an image of train tracks that represented the ultimate threat to the characters, being transported to a concentration camp.

“I put a column in the front of the set, where people could hang their coats, so the actors could interact with something,” Ortiz added. “They could lean against it.”

On a much larger scale, Ortiz helped design a giant eagle set piece for a Rockettes revue on the massive stage of Radio City Music Hall.

Ortiz met his wife, Ramie, who was studying dance, when they attended college together in New York. The couple eventually moved to Latrobe, Ramie's hometown.

Ortiz continued his work in the theater, including sets for productions of “La Cage aux Folles” and “The Nutcracker” at Point Park University.

“I like to do musicals, I like it because they're complicated,” he said. He noted, in most cases, “You have to work very fast.”

At Seton Hill University, where he served as an instructor, he also was responsible for designing sets for as many as five shows in a season.

Ortiz also has created sets for Saint Vincent College's Gilbert and Sullivan Players, but he's largely retired from theatrical work to devote more time to painting.

Ortiz's paintings fall into two groups. Many capture images of isolated buildings, taken beyond their ordinary context by emphasizing geometric shapes and unexpected colors and shading.

“I try to add something that's different than just a regular landscape painting,” he said, pointing to one piece that sets buildings against a pronounced yellow sky. “The sky doesn't have to be blue. It can be any color that you want,” he said.

Other paintings in his portfolio are loosely derived from some of his archived set designs. He digitally deconstructs them and uncovers raw material for abstract compositions that convey to the viewer new stories.

Among the latter pieces is “Celestial,” which hints at an observatory looking out upon a nighttime sky. Another, “Daydream,” received the Award of Excellence in 2015 at the 28th Annual Northern National Art Competition in Rhinelander, Wis.

Ortiz, whose paintings are in collections around the globe, prefers to work in the morning hours. For now, he's concentrating on creating enough pieces to stage a solo show. His last such showcase was in 2016 at the Sewickley Public Library.

Reaching back to his past work as a commercial artist, Ortiz also is creating line drawings that will illustrate the text his brother, Miguel Antonio Ortiz, has penned for their proposed children's book, “Mario and the Cow.”

Ortiz gets the most enjoyment out of the initial stage of his painting process, when he composes shapes and experiments with different colors and lighting effects using a 3-D software program.

“There are a lot of decisions you make when you paint,” he said. “I like to solve all my problems on my computer first.

“But once you have that, you can loosen up on the canvas. You put paint on the canvas, and it tells you what to do next. It gives you feedback. That's the way interesting things come out. It might take you in a different direction.”

Jeff Himler is a Tribune-Review staff writer. Reach him at 724-836-6622, jhimler@tribweb.com or via Twitter @jhimler_news.