Local Artist's Work Featured at Emma S. Clark Library

As a teenager, Patrick Keefer hit the streets of Manhattan and traversed the city's underground, finding beauty in the graffiti on the subway walls and other hotspots for artistic inspiration. The sights became impressions left in his black book of drawings and his own graffiti writing.

For Keefer, who grew up in Port Jefferson and started his art career as a student in , his passion for stenciling and obsession with detail combined to create a unique style that can be seen today in six pieces on display at the  in East Setauket.

In his adult life, his black book morphed into larger works where the influence of his youth is still evident: his medium of choice is spray paint and homemade stencils.

"Basic stenciling is a very simple form of print making;  however, I have developed certain processes to take it to the far extreme, pushing not only the materials but myself to new places," he said.

Jennifer Trettner, one of Keefner's former teachers, recalled how he began playing with stencils during his senior year at high school.

"[He] took it to another level once in college," said Trettner, who serves as chairperson for art and technology at Ward Melville High School.

Keefer, 25, a 2003 alumni of Ward Melville, completed a degree in graphic design at SUNY New Paltz. He landed a job in the marketing department of a real estate agency in the city right out of school and has been there ever since. He is also a designer for Wildboy Clothing and freelances on the side while still finding time to create new pieces of art.

Keefer's pieces have been on display all over the island, but his most memorable show was at Special Sauce in Huntington.

"My four friends and I had a show called '5X5 Show,' which meant five artists with five pieces per artist," he said. "We had such a huge turnout and so much positive feedback from that one show that it drove us to want to do more shows together."

Some large-scale projects incorporating mixed media and 3D elements are on the horizon for Keefer. On Nov. 20 the artist's work goes bi-coastal, as he participates in an exhibit at Onyx in San Diego, California.

"It's wonderful to see that he is still the motivated, dedicated and creative artist that I taught," Trettner said.