When Irwin Karassik was halfway through his first year at Harvard as a music major, he made two discoveries. The first was that ”“ surrounded by a caliber of musicians he hadn”™t encountered in high school ”“ he was probably “not good enough to make a career as a musician.” A living, perhaps, but not a career. The other was that he really wasn”™t too sure he wanted to live the life of a struggling artist anyway. “I could have made a modest living as a musician,” he said, “but I wanted access to profits, I wanted the ability to make a better living for myself.”
Karassik didn”™t take long in sorting through his options, choosing to become a lawyer. “It was something my heart just became set on as an alternative to music,” said Karassik, who will be 78 in August. “I don”™t think I was hardwired to become a lawyer. I considered medicine, considered other things, but it just seemed my talents led me in that direction.”
Before he could attend Harvard Law School, however, he had to settle on a new undergraduate major. “I needed a major that would be of assistance to me or provide a background for what I had chosen for a career,” he said. “I wasn”™t a student of history or languages or science, so, comparing all the other majors and looking for a path to livelihood, I thought economics would be a more practical tool for me when I became a lawyer.”
It was and it wasn”™t. Karassik specialized in labor law at Harvard, then worked in a general practice law firm in Manhattan after graduation. “Over a period of time I went into three main specialties,” he said. The first was health-care law, the second was health-care labor law, the third was administrative law.
“I entered health-care law when there was no such thing,” he said. “That was back before Medicare and Medicaid, if my memory serves me right. And I had been working as the executive director for an association representing nursing homes, which led me into the field of health care law. I helped develop the Medicare and Medicaid program in New York. I was probably the first lawyer in the country who worked in the field of health care on a full-time basis. I think I reached a measure of some acclaim ”“ or notoriety ”“ in my industry.”
Karassik worked for several major law firms until he semi-retired in 1997 and then fully retired three years later. By then he and his wife, Harriet ”“ they”™ve been married 54 years ”“ had moved from Queens to Norwalk, in part because they had tired of the city and wanted to live in “a rural area,” in part because one of their two married daughters was living in Westport. (Six months after Irwin and Harriett moved to Norwalk, their daughter and her husband moved to New Jersey with a career change.)
“As I was nearing retirement, I decided I wanted to go back into music,” he said. “I knew my limitations in music, but I had never explored art.”
Heart and soul
Karassik was born in the Bronx but lived all his life in Queens, commuting to the High School of Music and Art in Manhattan because “I liked music and art.” He played the violin and dabbled in drawing and painting, but decided on a career in classical music. “My father was a professional violinist and had a band in a restaurant in New York,” he said. And while his dad played classical music at home, he was a pop musician “in order to make a living.”
At Harvard he was concert master for Harvard”™s orchestra, and played in ensembles and chamber orchestras in New York until he moved to Connecticut. “I still play the violin, but not as much as I used to,” he said. “To maintain my interest in music, I”™m on the board of the Norwalk Symphony Orchestra.”
Around 1995 he decided he would take some training in art, and started taking private lessons in Forest Hills. “I worked first on drawing, then graduated into monochrome colors, then graduated to colors.”
Once in Norwalk, Karassik continued his lessons at Silvermine Guild Arts Center school of art, at the local community college and at workshops. “I even took a course in Chinese brush painting,” he said. Now, he said, “I can paint for six or eight hours before I look up. I”™ll be completely engrossed in the subject matter. It”™s very similar to music. When I get involved in music, I can practice for four or five hours, and the time disappears.”
And while both art forms engross him, “if I play the violin, the music dissipates into the air unless I record it,” he said. “If I”™m painting something, it”™s on the canvas and I can look at it and put it on the wall.”
That, in fact, has been what Karassik has been doing all these years ”“ putting his paintings on the wall of the couple”™s large, four-bedroom house at Saugatuck Landing. “I built a gallery in the basement and the whole house is decorated with my paintings and the paintings of artists I know or works I”™ve picked up in my travels. If I see something of another artist that I like and I can afford it, I try to buy it.”
Karassik has sold many of his works and has exhibited in the area ”“ he will exhibit next month at Max”™s Art Supplies at 68 Post Road East in Westport ”“ “but my position now is that I really don”™t want to sweat it” if he does or does not sell.
“My passion really is in the arts,” he said. “My preference is drawing and painting. I love the law, but it was an exercise of the mind, and that”™s something I love ”“ the process of determining outcomes and things of that sort is challenging and rewarding, but it”™s a love of the mind.” Painting, he said, “is the love of the heart and soul. I express myself through my paintings. I don”™t think I expressed myself through the law.”
