Ford picks ex-factory worker to paint artwork
Historical train station to feature man’s talents.
In a funky, faceless, DETROIT — 2,000-square-foot art studio at the edge of downtown Plymouth, Tony Roko stands, paint brush in hand, staring intensely at a looming 6-foot-tall canvas.
The 48-year-old Roko has sketched on it an image of a bygone era’s train conductor.
The painting, though far from finished, is worth tens of thousands of dollars: Not for what it is, but for what it will be and where it is expected to be displayed. There is also the value of Roko’s rising clout in the art community.
“The frame will make it 8 feet tall,” said Roko, who stands about 5 feet 10 himself.
To create it, Roko becomes a casting director for a silent film. “I’m shaping the story. So I consider, ‘Who is this guy? What were his convictions? What is he proud of.’ ”
This guy matters a lot. Roko said Ford Motor Co.’s commercial real estate arm, Ford Land, wants him to do the painting for the permanent art collection in Detroit’s historical Michigan Central Train Station. Ford bought the station in June.
For Roko, who’s painted works for stars such as Jay Leno and Lady Gaga, as well as for various Detroit businesses, few clients matter more than Ford. It was Ford leaders who discovered Roko’s talent when he worked on the assembly line nearly 30 years ago installing panels on Escort subcompact cars.
“That’s the great irony of it all,” Roko said. “Ford believed in my skills before I did.”
Creating a conductor
Ford bought the dilapidated train station for an estimated $90 million in June to turn it into the hub of a tech campus in the Corktown area, bringing some 5,000 workers to the neighborhood.
A spokeswoman for Ford said that while the carmaker has not officially commissioned any artist to work on pieces for the station yet because it’s so early in the renovation process, the company has been in discussions with Roko.
“He has done really great work for us before,” said Christina Twelftree. She said Roko is currently a “safety painter” at Ford’s factories, meaning he designs the visual health and safety signs in plants.
Ford plans to have restaurants and stores as well as offices in the train station, so, “We’ll work with multiple artists to bring the spaces to life,” Twelftree said.
The completion of the station’s renovations are a few years out, but Roko said he was “overflowing with inspiration” when Ford approached him, and he got to work immediately creating a painting.
For the subject, he contemplated the station’s history, the grit of Detroit and the nostalgia of train travel, and knew the character of that guy in his painting: “He’s sincere, loyal, complicated and dedicated, but he looks like he could be in a Charlie Chaplin film.”
The painting’s frame will embody the past. Roko constructs his frames using wood and materials from abandoned barns, old houses and other era-specific relics he finds from collectors. In this case, expect a 1920s-30s authentic conductor’s clicker counter, a lantern, a whistle and a pocket watch to be embedded into the frame of the painting he calls “The Conductor.”
Silent film
Roko’s success blossomed from humble origins. His parents were refugees from Montenegro, a piece of the former Yugoslavia along the Adriatic coastline. They came to Detroit via Rome in 1968.
His father worked as a barber and his mother cleaned houses. They settled into subsidized housing in Canton in the early 1970s, when Roko was born. The family did not speak English, so Roko and his parents watched the only movies they could understand: silent films.
“In retrospect, when my parents watched those, as a kid, I remember they were engaged and enjoyed it,” said Roko. “It was that expression of non-verbals.”
Even once Roko was in school and started to learn English, he relied on the visual cues of his classmates and teacher to navigate the social scene and curriculum. It’s why Roko wants to tell a story in each painting he does and uses whimsical characters and nostalgic auras to do so.
“When people say my work is so expressive, it’s because I am communicating through expression because that’s what my formative years were,” Roko said.
Shy and awkward, Roko said he drew “obsessively” in school and that habit spilled into adulthood.
Painting the plant
In 1989, at age 18, Ford hired Roko to work on its assembly line at Ford’s Wayne Stamping and Assembly plant, Twelftree said. On his breaks, Roko said he passed time sketching. Soon word spread there was “an artist on line 1.”
“I started being asked by people on the line to do sketches of their family members or if someone was retiring, they’d ask if I could do a card,” Roko said.
Ford management one day asked him if he was the artist.
“I thought I was in trouble,” Roko said, laughing. He quickly assured bosses that he only drew during his breaks. “But they asked me if I’d like to spearhead a plant beautification program,” which entailed painting large-scale murals on the factory walls. The initiative was intended to boost plant morale.
To ensure employee involvement, plant leaders set up a suggestion box for workers to choose the inspirational images they wanted Roko to paint. The workers chose Muhammad Ali, Clint Eastwood, John Wayne and Joe Louis. It took him three months to complete them.
Today, Wayne Assembly is closed, but Ford uses part of it as a warehouse for Michigan Assembly plant, also in Wayne. Of Roko’s original four murals, all except for that of John Wayne remain on the walls.
“I didn’t know the impact of that until I started painting the murals,” said Roko. “People would take their lunch breaks to watch me paint and they’d start talking to each other about their memories of Muhammad Ali or Eastwood. It encouraged dialogue.”
It also changed Roko’s life. He wasn’t on the assembly line again after painting the murals. Ford had a different use for him, he said. He became Ford’s point person to help devise safety signs and graphics throughout Ford’s plants.
A Roko print can cost $50 to $1,200. For those with deeper pockets, a Roko original painting can run $3,000 to more than $20,000. Not bad for a former factory worker.
Roko’s art graces various Detroit businesses and landmarks. He recently completed a 6-by-8-foot painting commissioned by the Detroit Foundation Hotel for its permanent collection. The hotel at Larned and Washington was the former Detroit Fire Department headquarters. Keeping true to its history, Roko painted a battle-scarred fireman with a stoic, determined expression.
Breaking barriers
Celebrities have commissioned paintings from Roko, too.
In 2014, comic Jay Leno paid Roko to paint a portrait of actor Steve McQueen. Leno is a well-known car enthusiast and a McQueen fan. McQueen famously drove a 1968 Mustang fastback in the movie “Bullitt.” In 2013, Lady Gaga’s band manager hired Roko to paint a work for her as her tour came to an end. “He said she loved it,” Roko said.
But Roko’s heart lies in using art to help others. About three years ago he started Art Foundation. It’s a single, four-hour class that uses the power of painting to help people express emotion. He has worked with teenage boys from juvenile detention to women who escaped prostitution to cancer survivors.
“Each experience is so different,” Roko said. “When we worked with the boys from detention, a lot of them were drug runners, wards of the state who were in abusive situations. When I start the class, they won’t even make eye contact with me. But there’s that moment in the class when they’re suddenly aware of what they’re capable of and it’s a surge that you can’t articulate.”
American dream
Roko is now seeking a grant to fund a six-week art entrepreneur course he’s developed for budding artists who can’t afford tuition at such schools as the College for Creative Studies.
“It’s a comprehensive and focused course on the business of art,” Roko said. “It would teach art skills, but also how to sell their art and make a living as an artist. It’s one of the least understood career paths.”