Joan Giordano

My art is an active process, in which disparate elements – paper, metal, and wax-are combined in a method that reflects the synthesis of my creative ideals and the delicate balance I see between the fragility of the human condition and the continuing power of nature. By bringing together organic and man-made media, my work references the evolution of life through the timelessness of everyday experience.

My work evolves through the use of a broad range of materials, such as encaustic, aluminum, copper, electric cable and wire. But usually my method is one that begins with paper. Although we think of paper as a support for writing or drawing, I regularly use this most humble and ancient material as the form itself. The process whereby the paper is made remains important to me, in that it resembles life processes of destruction followed by creation.

Accordingly, paper and copper are imbued with a presence that evokes history: the passage of time. This strikes a cord with me-
-fascinated with ruins and excavations, I have intensively explored Turkey, Sicily, Italy and Greece, ancient places where erosion is inevitable due to climate and time. As a process erosion is an insistent reality. It’s also a narrative that symbolizes my personal experience of the past as considered by T.S. Eliot in his Four Quartets: “Time present and time past/Are both perhaps present in time future,/And time future contained in time past…./What might have been and what has been/Point to one end,/which is always present.”
Joan Giordano

The work of Joan Giordano has been featured in solo and group exhibitions in museums and galleries throughout the United States, Europe, South America, Asia and Africa, including the The Montclair Art Museum, NJ; TheTrenton City Museum at Ellarslie, NJ; Knoxville Museum of Art, TN, the Staten Island Museum in New York; the American Museum of Papermaking in Atlanta, GA; the Danville Museum of Art in Virginia; the Longview Art Museum in Texas; the Ellen Noel Art Museum of the Permian Basin in Odessa, Texas; Art Link Gallery in Seoul, Korea, the First International Women Artists Biennale in Incheon, Korea; the Fu Xin Gallery in Shanghai, China; Gallery Brocken in Tokyo, Japan; the Museo National Bellas Artes in Santiago, Chile; the Museo Del Corso in Florence, Italy; Santa Maria Della Scala, Siena, Italy; and Feminine Dialogue;UNESCO in Paris and Shanghai Contemporary 2010. In New York she has participated in exhibitions at the Alan Stone Gallery; Sumi New York; Sutton Gallery; New York University Contemporary Arts Gallery, Walter Wickiser Gallery, SoHo20 Gallery, Tenri Cultural Institute, and Serrano Contemporary.

Giordano’s artwork is in numerous corporate, public and private collections, including those of the Hammond Museum and Japanese Stroll Gardens in North Salem, NY; the Housatonic Museum of Art in Bridgeport, CT; the New York Public Library Print Collection, NY; the Awagami Museum Hall of Awa in Tokushima, Japan; the College of the Desert, Palm Springs, CA; Savannah College of Art and Design, GA; Health South, NY; Howard Rubenstein Associates of NewYork; Pepsico, Purchase, NY; American Telecast International; Best Products Company; CBS; Coopers and Lybrand; Diversified Pharmaceuticals; Merrill Lynch; Price Waterhouse; and the Henry Buhl Collection.

She is the recipient of awards and honors including a grant from the New York State Council on the Arts, and residencies at YADDO in Saratoga Springs, New York; the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts in Sweeet Briar; Women’s Studio Workshop in Rosendale, New York; and Awagami Paper International in Tokushima, Japan.