Artist visually inspired in Teton Valley

VICTOR — There’s a new artist in town.

He’s the type who packs up his family’s small apartment in Manhattan, heads for the Midwest for a few months, and then makes a beeline for the Tetons. He seems like he’ll stay put for a while.

“I have to be visually inspired,” he says, equating the Tetons or the Snake River Range behind his home to the imposing New York City skyscrapers.

He’s also the type that will offer you something cool to drink and lead you right into his office-turned studio in his Victor home. This is where his works are born, in acrylic, where there are no security guards in red blazers waiting to tell you to “Please step back from the painting.”

He’s also the type to take you on a quick tour through his home to show off a handsome collection of up-and-coming artists’ work, all while spouting off encyclopedic summaries of their lives and work, and he’s not ashamed to tiptoe around his children’s books and toys in the process.

Jason T. Borbet, known by his artist moniker “Borbay,” has been in Teton Valley for three weeks. He says he’s here for the space, the fresh produce, the landscapes and the opportunity to create something. He’s not exactly sure what that “something” is, but it likely involves a new art scene.

He mostly sells his work directly to customers, who can set up time to drop by his studio, and says he’s built his own business “market” by leveraging contacts throughout the art world. It’s not always easy, but he maintains his creativity, and his margins.

“If you represent yourself, you have to perpetuate your entire business model,” Borbay says.

And so, unlike many artists who place work in galleries, Borbay is both artistic director and business manager. He’s also interim diaper changer in his home studio space.

“When (a painting) is in the underpainting phase, I don’t mind a little baby,” he says as his toddler daughter scratches her fingers against a newly-painted canvas leaning against the wall.

Borbay set himself up to create his own business by working in business — he was a self-designated “Legal Development Assistant” at The Trump Organization, as well as a creative recruiter and business director elsewhere, and don’t forget the pre-career careers in stand-up comedy and reality TV. But on July 2, 2009, he decided to take his Bachelor’s of Fine Art training from Boston University and turn it into his full-time gig.

“I call that my Independence Day,” he says of the day he decided to give his six-weeks’ notice and start producing art full-time.

It was around that time that he honed in on his style of cutting headlines from the New York Post and working them into his paintings. His work has now been auctioned to benefit the Serena Williams Foundation, used on a hip-hop album cover and as the cover of the new book “Michael Jackson, Inc.”

Though he says his piece of the art economy — think pieces valued anywhere between $8,000 and $20,000 — was “obliterated” by the financial downturn, he’s watching prices rise again. Still, in his opinion, the unregulated world of art is still the “wild wild West,” fitting for a move to Victor, Idaho.

“My purposes are very clear,” he says. “To create and sell to facilitate more work, and spend more time with my family.”

See his work online here.

This story was originally published in Teton Valley News. It is used here with permission.