A Little about Phil Kantz
Phil Kantz was born in Chicago in 1932. He grew up on the north side of Chicago in a Jewish (though not very religious) household, and attended Senn High School in Chicago’s Edgewater neighborhood.
My dad always claims he wasn’t the greatest of students, but he always loved drawing from a very young age. I disagree with him about not being the greatest of students because he has excelled more than most people I know at being a student of life and doing what makes him happy. He will be 92 this year (2024), and painting keeps him alive.
In 1957 my father married Sandra Steinberg, and they lived on the far north side of Chicago off of Devon Avenue, which was a popular home for Jewish families at the time before those families began migrating to the near north suburbs. My brother Gary was born in 1960, and the family moved north in 1962. I was born in 1964.
I’m a bit biased about this portrait, as the model is my wife.
Phil’s life in the U.S. Air Force will be told in greater detail in the following pages. In his later life, he left graphic design (when it used to be called “commercial art”) to retrain himself in fine art. He has won several awards in Chicago and across the U.S., and his work has been featured on the cover of American Artist magazine.
Here are just a few examples of my father’s artwork, with more to come later in the story.
And now let’s go back in time to the beginning of On The Double!