Paul Korona Dyer
I make the familiar impossible to ignore.
That has looked like a lot of things. Twelve years of Our City, Our Story. Three hundred paintings sold, most of them to people who had never bought art before. A one night show where every artwork is $304 and people go home with the first piece of art they have ever owned. A feature length documentary that moves back and forth in time between Białystok, Poland and Rockford, Illinois.
I was born in Rockford, Illinois and I have never left, which says a thing or two about loyalty.
My name is Paul Korona Dyer.
For 25 years, I wore Pablo Korona like armor. In Poland, Paul came back. Korona, my ancestral name, stayed.
The reason
Pablo was a show name. I made it up in 2001 and it did its job for 25 years.
The first time I went to Poland for work, not to see family, people called me Pablo. Not Pawełek, which is what Paul is in Polish. I was standing in the land of my ancestors being called a name I made up.
It stopped fitting. So I stopped using it.
Korona stayed. That part was never invented. It is my family's name in Poland, and it is the one piece of Pablo Korona that was always true.
Same person. Same hands. Same loyalty.
Filmmaker.Painter.Concept Artist.Creative Partner.
Those are not four careers. They are four ways of doing one job, which is getting people to look differently at what is in front of them. Sometimes I'm hired to make the thing. Sometimes I'm hired because I can see what the thing could be.
International Documentary Director
The Only Copy? The Untold Story of the Białystok Copyists
My first feature. A WWII era painting, discovered in Rockford, made in Białystok, Poland by a man who painted it to stay alive, for the men who murdered him anyway.
Rockford as canvas
100+ stories of Rockford, Illinois
In 2012 Fast Company called me a branding vigilante. Shows, magazines and newspapers across the country were using my hometown as a punch line. Instead of letting other people tell Rockford’s story, I decided we should tell our own. So I started telling stories about the people who revealed its character.
The first was about a singing tailor who owned a record label and had the chance to sign the Jackson 5. He passed. Twice. But that wasn’t really the story. His grandson cared more about performing his grandfather’s music than the fame he almost had.
What stayed with me was his grandfather’s rule. Never be jealous of anybody. Be happy for everybody, and everybody will be happy for you.
Since 2011, I’ve told more than 100 stories about Rockford. One of them has been watched more than 200 million times. I feel like I was born to tell these stories, and this is the body of work I am proudest of.
Painter
Over 300 paintings sold
I started in 2020 because everything stopped. I posted one on Facebook and somebody asked to buy it. Then it happened again. And again. And again. And again. What I like most is that mine are usually the first piece of art somebody buys. So that is who I paint for, and that is why I keep the prices where I keep them. You can see the abstract work here.
Concept shows
Shows with purpose
This is the part of the work where I am a concept artist. The show itself is the piece. Different formats, same idea: democratize participation in art, as a maker and as a buyer.
Video Producer / Director
A professional since 2003
I’ve been sent to the Republican National Convention to find the stories nobody else was looking for, filmed inside Sargento’s test kitchen, and made commercials in Rockford that are still airing fourteen years later.
I’ve directed crews of eighteen and made things entirely by myself. More than twenty years of doing this has also built a network of people I trust, so I know when to scale up, when to stay small, and who needs to be in the room.
But one of the things I’m best at is sitting across from people who aren’t performers. I’ve interviewed people living on the street, CEOs, politicians, artists and factory workers. I get people past what they think they’re supposed to say. Sometimes they make connections in their own lives they hadn’t seen before.
I can be hired to direct, produce or make the work. Increasingly, I’m also brought in earlier, when someone knows they want to make something, but hasn’t yet figured out what it should be.
If something comes up that matters, I would like to be part of it.
Tell me about it