Thursday, Aug. 19, 2004 | 8:11 a.m.
Ruby Mazur is on all fours, lip-to-lip, nose-to-nose, whisker-to-whisker with his 4-year-old Rottweiler, Lucy, exchanging "I love yous."
Classic rock is pouring through Mazur's spacious home, his 250-pound Newfoundland, Zeus, is circling the commotion and the artist's 16-year-old twin sons, Cezanne and Miro, visiting from Vienna, are glancing over with a smile.
"Lucy, I want you to say, 'I love you,'" Mazur enunciates carefully to the husky dog.
"I love you," Lucy snarls, her tongue slithering through her glistening canine teeth as she forms the words.
Now in his 50s, Mazur, a prolific graphic designer and pop artist who created thousands of album covers during the 1970s, is living a charmed life.
He's up at 3 a.m., paints until 8 a.m., naps, then paints into the evening before going out with his buddies, particularly those with whom he bowls.
He keeps framed photos on his walls of himself with Dennis Hopper, Tony Bennett, Whoopi Goldberg and others. Magazine articles featuring him and his work are within reach, as are prints of his cigar art that he sells for $100 (originals sell for upwards of $10,000).
Coming out of his printer, intermittently, are chapters of his biography in progress, or as Mazur calls it, his "book and movie."
"I'm in a major upswing right now," said Mazur, who has left Lucy on the floor and slid onto a stool at the kitchen counter, flicking his cigarette ash into a red ashtray he says he stole from a nightclub in Prague with actor Jason Priestley.
"How I felt in the early '70s, when I was networking and making connections with all the rock stars, I feel all that energy coming about. Vegas is emerging. (George) Maloof is starting a record company. Hard Rock is starting a record company. This is now what L.A. was in the early '70s. It's just gonna snowball. And I'm here."
Bald, tan, with a gray beard and a small frame, Mazur's a showman with a smile that erupts into laughter at any given moment. He's the life of the party, or as his friends and associates say, "He's a great guy."
Mazur's been everywhere. He's been in the recording studio with the Rolling Stones and on Long Island pushing the talents of a chunky young piano player who would later be known as Billy Joel.
Mazur has designed thousands of album covers and is connected with the notorious Rolling Stones lips and tongue, which he claims as his and reportedly tried to file suit against the band two years ago, and is still pursuing the legalities with the statute of limitations on licensing rights. Mick Jagger has credited John Pasche for the logo, and Mazur grumbles when Andy Warhol is mistakenly noted as the creator.
Waiting for Ruby
Mouth and tongue aside, Mazur has designed several album covers for such artists as B.B. King, Jimmy Buffett, Dave Mason, Dusty Springfield, Elton John and the soundtrack to "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory."
Now living in the golfing community of Rhodes Ranch, Mazur can sit back and scan his past and future. Two of his children -- 18-year-old son Matisse and his daughter, actress and model Monet Mazur -- are grown.
His contemporary, somewhat enigmatic and colorful art covers the walls of his 2,800-square-foot home. The rest sells for $5,000 to $10,000 through his Web site or at Art de Vignettes gallery at the Fashion Show mall. On Sunday, Mazur's work was featured at Caramel at Bellagio for a one-night cigar-art show and party. On Sept. 9, Art de Vignettes will be hosting a Mazur gala in its gallery.
And word in art circles, in gossip columns and blogs is that Mazur is about to be inducted into the Whitney Museum of American Art. But calls to the museum elicit the following response:
"At the moment, he's not on the exhibition schedule through summer 2005," said Meghan Bullock, who two weeks prior said that Mazur is not booked for any kind of show or appearance. The only buzz generated in her office, Bullock says, is from Las Vegas media who keep calling to confirm a Mazur exhibit.
"It is possible that we will," she added. "It's just that we have nothing scheduled."
The fact that nothing's been chiseled in stone hasn't hindered the spirits of local Mazur enthusiasts. In fact, it's created sort of a "Waiting for Guffman" atmosphere, where everyone, hyped about the Whitney induction, is trying to get a piece of the artist before he escapes into legendary status.
"I wanted to get him before he's going to get too big, too busy," said Marklen Kennedy of the Light Group, which partnered with local company ArtSource to host Mazur's one-night show at Caramel.
"Ruby is a dear friend of mine," Kennedy said. "I said, 'If Ruby would do this here, it would be incredible.' "
Like others puffing on stogies at the bar where Mazur's art was on display, Kennedy said he met Mazur "several years ago in New York."
Commercial career
Mazur was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., grew up on Long Island and took three years of college at the Philadelphia College of Art. During this time, Mazur's father owned a restaurant and Ruby and his brother were in charge of booking the entertainment and managing the bands.
By age 21, Mazur had talked his way into Paramount, where he became director of art. Eventually, he opened his own studios.
"I was getting all these groups calling me up to do their covers," Mazur said. "Album covers were becoming a form of art then. It was just happening. I got a loft in New York with 10 assistants. We were knocking out 15 album covers a week. Then I moved out to the West Coast. Between New York and California we were knocking out 40 albums a month. It was 1970. I was really rockin.'
"And then album covers just became a formula. It became CDs, just 6 inches. Then rap music. So I started painting. That was 15 years ago."
Mazur's efforts in painting have created a portfolio of animal art, showgirl art, erotic art, cigar art and animal women art, which features celebrity faces applied to animal bodies: Sharon Stone's mug on an eagle, Calista Flockhart on a cat, Claudia Schiffer as a monkey, and others.
After reading "The Dark Side of the Game," a book that offers a scathing glimpse into the reality of the National Football League, Mazur created a series of paintings with the slogan "Don't Do It," rather than "Just Do It." One of the paintings features a football player with a bleeding gash on his face in the shape of the Nike logo. His next one will be a player foaming at the mouth with pills coming out.
Mazur also keeps a working collection of his whimsy and humor, such as "A Howlin' Holiday," a Dickensian portrait of a formal Ruby, his dogs Lucy and Zeus.
Aside from his album covers, Mazur's pet portraits and cigar art are probably the most notable among collectors.
"Ten years ago I was in my loft in New York," Mazur said. "I was working on a painting of a model. A friend from a cigar magazine came up and saw it and asked, 'Why don't you put a cigar in her hand?' That night Prince Mohammed Al-sudairy of Saudi Arabia came up. He saw the painting. He bought it. He didn't even ask the price. It wasn't even dry.
"So then, I did another one. Then cigars became a big fad. I was commissioned by every cigar bar and restaurant in Manhattan. Jason Priestley bought one and commissioned me to paint one of his French bulldog Swifty. Then I painted one of (KVBC Channel 3 weatherman) John Fredericks' (dog) Jordan and was doing pet portraits. In the two minutes it was on TV, I got 23 pet commissions to do."
Crazy artist
In mixing animals and cigars, he gives us images of bulldogs smoking, a smoking crab cooked and on a plate with melted butter, smoking bears and smoking sea lions. He interjects his humor in one painting. A grizzly bear in the foreground is smoking, and there are two bears mating behind him.
In other Mazur paintings, you might find the lips and tongue logo hidden in an ear or on a label.
"When I met him he was painting lips and tongues on girls' stomachs in bars," said Jonathan Scott, publisher of Cigar Smoker Magazine, who flew in from Chicago to host the party at Caramel.
Scott met Mazur through the magazine, which ran a six-page editorial of the artist and his work.
Puffing on a cigar, Scott says, "I love Ruby Mazur. Ruby should be recognized as a pop artist icon along the same lines as Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, just as a modern art master.
"He needs the recognition. He needs a better publicist."
Publicity might be on its way with or without the Whitney. Mazur, who is inseparable buddies with Clint Holmes' musical director, Bill Fayne, wants to get into marketing for local Strip headliners, beginning with a CD cover for Holmes, who is releasing a new CD next year.
"It's not a done deal, but we're talking about it," said Holmes, a friend of Mazur's who was at the Caramel party.
Neil Cantor of ArtSource, which represents a handful of national and international artists and partners with the Light Group to hold one-night shows at Caramel, is planning to work with Mazur on entertainment memorabilia prints.
"He has a history of over 3,000 album covers," Cantor said. "We're interested in mining his material for limited-edition prints. He's going to enter a new phase in his career.
"Ruby has been around a long time. He knows the business. And he knows that this is a business. His work is very marketable. Financially, critically, he's been pretty successful."
For Mazur, however, paintings of clouds are in his future.
"I pull the car over when we're driving to look at the clouds!" Mazur said.
"What did I say just the other day, when I make it big again and retire, what am I going to paint?" Mazur asks Cezanne, who is busy manning the I-Mac.
Cezanne giggles and says, "Psycho. Clouds. Paintings of clouds. He doesn't care if anyone will buy them. He'll just hang them in the house."
"When I pass on all they have to do is look up in the clouds and know where I am," Mazur says. "Right Zanny? That's where I'm going to be?"
"In the clouds," Cezanne said. "It's not normal. He drives on the street, pulls over horizontally, takes pictures of clouds. Crazy artist."
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