O V E R V I E W
My drawing-based work often begins on paper and expands to materials like string, steel, rust and all their inherent references. It is fundamentally physical stuff, and I intend the act of making as an embodiment of personal content through tangible transformation – a materialization of meaning.
My work seeks ways of understanding human nature by looking to the general as an entrance to the singular. Starting from the premise that sentience implicates us in the surrounding landscape I regard human nature as more than an internal experience and envision it as an entanglement of wild and cultivated worlds yielding a compound human/nature – a hybrid condition, but one that still values the ethical imperative of human autonomy, especially as a reference point for assessing the outcomes of our actions.
Those consequences, the signature we inscribe in each domain we contact or colonize, are the mark of the human difference – our legacy. Assuming responsibility for that heritage, including the preservation of memory, is the project of reconciling our engagement with exteriority and creating a history of meaningful marks.
In practice, I address these issues through abstraction, a method I choose for the opportunity in its discontinuities and openings, the spaces between what we feel and what we think, what we see and what we know. Those gaps, like all voids, are charged with a capacity for prompting experiences ranging from anxiety to insight. Thoughtfully shaped, those encounters can be a basis for knowledge and value that is unique to the experience of art.
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N O T E S o n I R O N O X I D E W O R K
How do we reconcile with temporality?
Time advances our actions, works and aspirations but also subjects us to the cost of its movement. As it carries forward our endeavors it inexorably shapes the material and meaning of those things, eclipsing personal agency behind a body of notional history and making the fugitive nature of individual and cultural memory a steady pressure of de-humanization. Opposing this force, shoring up against the collapse of memory, is the production and evidence of personal value.
My thinking about this work has been informed by my need, as a welder, for a practical understanding of the material properties of iron-based metals. Ferrous metals originate in oxide-rich rock which is mined, decomposed, melted and formed into industrial iron and steel. The lifecycle of these materials moves towards inevitable loss of electrons (oxidation) with the outcome being rust, and finally disintegration into oxide particles – the iron dust that brackets the origins and ends of much of our material culture.
The physical records of culture, the systems and constructs that we imprint on all our various kinds of landscapes, are, at their most valuable, traces of productive action in the face of loss; testimony to human and humane choices in our approach to being, living, and remembering. These decisions are enacted daily in countless ordinary and ambitious ways as we cook a meal, solve a problem, raise a family or build a city. From this perspective “to be” – our stance towards temporality – is a commitment to persevere in making and preserving meaning, even against the prospect of dust.
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A R T I S T ‘ S R E S U M E
2014 Ragdale Residency
Accepted for Summer/Fall session
Lake Forest, Illinois, USA.
2013
International Sculpture Center
Exhibiting artist at ISC annual conference
2013
Textile Arts Center
NY, NY, Invitational show
2013
Gleanings book.
http://www.blurb.com/b/4346138-gleanings
2009
Ernest Rubenstein Gallery at The Educational Alliance.
NY, NY, Invitational show
2008
Laramie Community College
Cheyenne, WY, Installation proposal at invitation of arts commission.
2007
Ernest Rubenstein Gallery at The Educational Alliance.
NY, NY, Group show
2007
Meany Studio Theatre at University of Washington
Seattle, WA
2006
Westchester Community College Fine Arts Gallery
Valhalla, NY, Group show
2005
Art in Odd Places (AIOP)
NY, NY, Selected for public installation
2004
Art in Public Places Program
Cheyenne, WY, Finalist for artpark proposal
2002
Published in book “Sticker Shock”.
Burbridge Books, Author: Matthew Kraus, stickershockthebook.com
1997
Washington Square Windows
NY, NY, Solo installation on Washington Square
1995
Esther & John Clay Fine Arts Gallery
Cheyenne, WY, Three person show,
1987
Viridian Gallery
NY, NY, National juried exhibition, Jurist: Thelma Golden.
1982
Chuck Levitan Gallery
NY, NY, National juried exhibition, Jurist: Ivan Karp.
1982
The Bergen Museum of Art & Science
Paramus, NJ, Solo museum show.
1982
Washington Square East Galleries
NY, NY, National juried exhibition.
1982
National Arts Club
NY, NY National juried exhibition
1982
Sydney Frane Gallery
NY, NY Affiliated artist.
1982
Arthur A. Houghton Gallery
NY, NY, Three-person show.
1982
BFA: The Cooper Union School of Art
New York City, New York
© 2016 John Schettino