Dean Sladek, has spent his life as an artist. His journey began in 1938 while at Charles Dickens Elementary School during the depression years. After seeing Dean’s drawings, his teacher paid his streetcar fare to attend classes at the Cleveland Museum of Art. When at Alexander Hamilton Jr. High, his training began in mechanical drawing and type setting. He attended East Tech High School specializing in Art. His last year was spent taking Art classes for half of each day and working the other half at Universal Engraving’s art department.

At 17 Dean enlisted in the Army serving in WWII. When he returned home he went back to work for Universal Engraving from 1946-1948 and in 1948 he moved to Manning Studios where he worked until 1963. During this time he was called back to service during the Korean War. After leaving Manning Studios Dean worked as a free-lance artist until retirement.

For over 45 years he was an illustrator and retoucher. He was a master of the air-brush with his work appearing in Time Magazine, US News & World Report, fortune Magazine, and others. In the 1960’s Dean briefly taught air-brush classes at Cooper School of Art.

Dean worked directly with studios, agencies and corporations such as GE, Parker-Hannifin, Timken and Telarc Records and many others. His work has received both local and national awards. Once such award was Telarc’s compact disc cover, “Beethoven or Bust” illustrated by Dean. This CD cover won “1989 Classical Cover” for that year.

Since his retirement, he has devoted his artistic endeavors to transparent watercolors. “Transparent watercolor is exciting.” He says, “and challenging!” His transparent watercolor titled “Washing in the Ganges” was published in the 20th anniversary edition of the North Light publication “Splash 12 - Celebrating Artistic Vision”. He was one of the 100 artists chosen out of a thousand entries submitted to the judges for the 2011 hardcover publication showcasing the best in contemporary watercolors.

Dean’s work has been shown and has won many awards in the Gates Mill Art Show, the Fairmount Art Show, the Burton Art Show and others. His work is in private and corporate collections throughout the country.