Thursday Tell All’s

We will be bringing you all the inside scoop from JP: from clients to vendors, account managers to graphic designers. JP is an open book and each Thursday you’ll get a new chapter!

Meet Art Reker: esteemed Account & Creative Executive, Bewitched enthusiast, and master in the kitchen.

1. What is your greatest accomplishment?
My greatest accomplishment is getting married on July 4th 2008. I was really lucky.


2. What’s the best thing you’ve ever eaten?
The best thing I’ve ever eaten was something I actually cooked myself . It was Chicken Marengo from a Julia Child recipe and I think it goes back about 25 years that I did it. It was a big event.


3. Tell us your most embarrassing moment at work.
I was president of that Fresno Advertising Federation and, at a Christmas party, I got up and told some planned jokes that turned out to be a little inappropriate for the room. I ended up apologizing for that. It wasn’t embarrassing right at the moment, but it was long turn embarrassment. What was I thinking?


4. What is your best piece of advice?
Never give up. Because it might take 20 or 30 years to accomplish something you want to do or you might get it done before lunch.


5. What song would you say describes yourself?
Do You Wanna Dance? A great early 60’s song by Bobby Freeman


6. What superpower would you like to have?
Invisibility. It seems like it’s the one that you can do the most with.


7. Who or what inspires you most?
I’m really inspired by young people who are involved in politics or the environment-that sort of thing, especially young people who kind of dedicate themselves to marching and holding placards and calling their congressmen and writing their letters and raising awareness about issues especially related to the environment. That just knocks me out.


8. How did you choose this profession?
This profession chose me. It goes back to when I was about 12 years old or so. I started writing at a very young age. Darren Stephens on Bewitched drew up ads for a campaign so he would go into his den and come out the next morning with an ad campaign. That just seemed so exciting that that’s what I started doing at that age.  I got a job before I was a teenager and I’ve been doing it for 40 some-odd years.  TV changed my life, I sat in front on the TV and said, “I want to be in there.”


9. What is the best investment you’ve ever made?
My education and a desire to never stop learning.


10. What book could you never get sick of reading?
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. Also my motto comes from the very first lines:  “Think for a moment of the long chain, of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers which never would have been bound but for the formation of that first link on one memorable day.” 


We’ve asked Art to draw a picture of how he sees himself in under a minute. The answer? Purple, with a giant smile and a mark on his left cheek.