His most recent works are condition-sensitive pieces in pursuit of a sublime experience, generating mystery from the mundane. The materials that he works with are discards or found in nature. Construction waste, building off-cuts, driftwood, found wood, and abandoned paint colors are the starting points of his labor.
Joe Ferriso grew up in a household with roots in Dominican, Honduran, and Italian heritage in a middle-class, conservative community on Long Island, NY. His parents were deeply involved in a Christian fundamentalist doomsday cult during his childhood, which guided his development into art making. Drawing during church services and skateboarding after school provided an outlet for processing his experiences with authority and doctrine.
Embracing play, freedom, and optimism, his sculptural and painted works are primarily concerned with how color perception impacts emotion. Ferriso’s subject is the relationship between architecture and nature, expressed in the language of color. His love for tuning color and the sheer energy of color motivates his actions. Like a vine to a lattice, his color enmeshes with the art object, bringing it to life.
Ferriso works in series that emerge and recede at their own pace, driven by his previous experiments. His most recent works are condition-sensitive pieces in pursuit of a sublime experience, generating mystery from the mundane. The materials that he works with are discards or found in nature. Construction waste, building off-cuts, driftwood, found wood, and abandoned paint colors are the starting points of his labor.
Ferriso moved to the Bay Area in 2009 and is a graduate of The Cooper Union (BFA 2003) and Stanford University (MFA 2018). He lives with his wife, two young children, and a dog in Sebastopol, CA. He is an Adjunct Lecturer of Painting and Sculpture at Sonoma State University.