CAMPBELL — Michael Albert originally studied the art of business, but it wasn’t long before he decided instead to delve into the business of art.

“I didn’t study art formally,” Albert, 58, a new American pop artist from White Plains, New York, said.

That didn’t matter, however, to students from the Northeast Ohio IMPACT Academy who attended three workshop sessions Albert conducted Monday morning and afternoon at the Community Literacy Workforce and Cultural Center, 436 Struthers-Coitsville Road, in which he brought samples of his works and gave them opportunities to stretch their creative wings.

Albert attended the New York University School of Business and Public Administration and graduated in 1988 with a bachelor’s degree in business administration. Nevertheless, his interest in art began to blossom as he visited numerous museums in Europe and New York City and was exposed to a variety of masterpiece works.

During the early stages of his art career, Albert drew largely with wax oil sticks, pen and ink, colored pencils, crayons and markers. Beginning in the mid-1990s, he created collages from stickers he amassed largely from junk mail as well as extra and discarded photographs.

In 1996, Albert made his first pop artwork from a Frosted Flakes cereal box — which started what he refers to as “cerealism.”

His key influences include Andy Warhol and Rene Magritte, a Belgian surreal artist perhaps best known for his depictions of common objects in unfamiliar and unexpected contexts. Magritte has been influential in the conceptual, pop and minimalist art fields.

Despite his growingly sophisticated career, Albert isn’t shy about also sticking to using some of the basic staples.

“I say I’m old school — a pair of scissors and glue kind of guy,” the self-taught artist said.

Some shades of Warhol were cast upon some of the works Albert brought to the CLWCC on Monday. They included a colorful arrangement of 777 varying sized numerals he placed in order that make up the number pi, a math constant that is the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter.

Two others he created in a similar style showed each word that President Abraham Lincoln read in the Gettysburg Address during the Civil War, as well as a word map of the world that contained every country and continent arranged geographically.

He also has created a series of “cerealism” works, which entails cutting into scraps discarded cereal boxes — a process he calls “deconstructing” — and making surrealist art.

Other pieces Albert brought Monday included a depiction of the Empire State Building from a single postcard and a collage in which he used words of varying sizes, shapes and colors, each of which starts with a different letter of the alphabet in order and describe character and personality traits.

One of Albert’s largest collages is a 240-square-inch piece he made in 2013 that captures part of Woodstock, the famous three-day music festival in August 1969 on a farm in Bethel, New York, that became intertwined with the counterculture movement of the time.

It didn’t take long between when Albert explained his style of art and the students began creating their own versions.

Even though he considers art a hobby, Nicholas Maillis, an IMPACT Academy junior, was trying to “mimic” Albert’s technique, he said. Maillis also likes multimedia works and said he felt being successful in the art world likely would be difficult.

Fusing art and music was Angelina Grilli, an IMPACT Academy junior who began cutting a Cocoa Puffs cereal box to make a piece that referenced the 2020 song “Sweet Tooth” by the alternative group Cavetown.

For his part, senior Mihali Koullias, who likes to study American history, busied himself by cutting a Count Chocula box to create a collage. Coincidentally, his brother, eighth-grader Yianni Koullias, had constructed a piece of art with the same brand of cereal during an earlier session Albert conducted.

Ralf Urbach, the IMPACT Academy’s Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics and manufacturing director, met Albert about 10 years ago when Urbach, affectionately known as “Mr. Ralf,” worked at OH WOW! The Roger & Gloria Jones Children’s Center for Science & Technology in Youngstown.

The two men formed a bond, which was partly responsible for Albert’s appearance Monday, Urbach said.

Urbach added that he hopes Albert’s sessions will encourage the students to sharpen their critical-thinking abilities, and to have the academy’s curriculum be brought to greater life “in a three-dimensional way” while having the students appreciate the importance of “thinking outside of the classroom walls.”

Monday’s program also was intended to allow the IMPACT Academy students to form greater connections with one another, their communities and beyond, as well as view art in a new way, Urbach said.