These pieces are for sale at the Erie Arts and Culture (EAC) conference room and lounge spaces in the Cashier's House at 419 State Street (take elevator to 2nd floor) in downtown Erie, PA.
EAC spaces are open to the public Mondays through Thursdays from 10am to 4pm, as well as for Erie Art Museum Gallery Nights
Thomas Ferraro
Artist Bio:
Thomas Ferraro is a painter, teaching artist, and a public art multi media artist. His work references the influence of place and emotion as elements that shape our identity within the context of contemporary life. Hints of social commentary are often found in his paintings with imagery that touches on freedom, strength, innocence, danger and history. He states that the goal of his work is to form a narrative with roots based on his own life experience, yet to challenge viewers to form their own interpretations based on their own life’s experience.
Tom had his first solo exhibition with Glass Growers Gallery in 2004. Since that time, he has participated in fifteen solo exhibitions, including at the Erie Art Museum and numerous invitational and juried art shows . Among his highlights are works selected for exhibition at the Carnegie Museum of Art, The Erie Art Museum, Hoyt Center for the Arts, the Westmoreland Museum of Art, the Crary Art Gallery, Gannon’s Schuster Gallery, Mercyhurst University Cummings Gallery and the NYU Grey Art Gallery.
Tom has championed the local art scene as a member and past Chair of the Northwestern Pennsylvania Artist Association. He became a teaching artist with Erie Arts & Culture in 2010 and has served on their Board of Trustees, Board Chairman and Interim Executive Director in 2018.
Artist Statement:
My work seeks identity between the personal influences of my inner self with the complexities of contemporary society. For more than a decade, I have worked with a community of artists as the co-founder of the Looking Glass Art Project a program that has allowed me to immerse myself in collaborative public art projects and mine content from visual stories and experiences from a variety of community groups that have influenced my world view. As a result of this work, my paintings have taken on broader themes related to the discourse surrounding social issues such as global warming, racial and economic inequalities, gun violence and more. My public art work has also sharpened the focus of my paintings bridging the intersection of public and intimate private spaces exploring the impact of place on ones identity.
This selection of paintings curated for the offices of Erie Arts &Culture represents examples of my work beginning with my early years of involvement with the Looking Glass Art Project. Paintings such as “Still Hoping” blend figures into architectural space, creating a mystical mood of reflection and wonder. In “Excavation” the innocence of children playing on the beach contrasts with an ambiguous grouping of figures blended into the architectural background creating a dual perspective of formal structure and narrative. This collection of work also includes my most recent work influenced by my interest in the shapes of the human body as seen in dance advertisements found in New York City subway stations. These static forms contrast with my paintings of dancers from the Ronald K Brown dance company “Evidence”, whose energetic movements create a visual explosion of the human condition through the sensory connections of history and tradition.
