NICOLE FIACCO GALLERY

The Nicole Fiacco Gallery is pleased to present THE ROAD, a solo show of recent drawings by Gina Occhiogrosso that will take place in the upstairs exhibition space.  According to the artist, “I explore line as connector, as recorder, and as a builder of form. For the past decade I have been focusing my use of line as it relates to thread, conceptually linking weaving, embroidery, stitching with the action of hand-writing. Within these new drawings the line is still continuous like thread but now describes a kind of landscape.”

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Using a Sumi brush, Occhiogrosso challenges the boundaries of line as mark-making and signal-making.  Taking some inspiration from the film “The Road,” based on the book of the same title by Cormac McCarthy, Occhiogrosso shifted her attention to “post-apocalyptic, war destructed, or decayed landscapes. All drawings are done in India ink with a size #0 Sumi brush. With this brush I attempt to create the most variety of form in a single continuous stroke. Most of the forms are created spontaneously, but some are also pulled right from photographs of disasters. I move left to right or in circles, as is the case with the planets. Marks could also be related to the marks of a EKG monitor, every bump a seismic alert to a structure. In addition to buildings and natural landscape structures, words are also hidden within the drawing.”

Gina Occhiogrosso received her BFA in painting from Tyler School of Art at Temple University in Philadelphia, PA. Later she received her MFA in painting from The State University of New York at Buffalo, where she received the Morrison Memorial Scholarship for the Arts, a Teaching Assistantship, and the Mark Diamond Research Grant. Her national group exhibition experience includes a juried exhibition at Brenda Taylor Gallery in NYC, True North at MIA Miami International Airport Gallery, Sugar Buzz, Lehman College Art Gallery, Bronx, NY and Paper in Particular National Exhibit, Columbia College, Missouri. She has had several one-person shows which include Saratoga Arts Council Art Gallery, Saratoga Springs, NY Amrose Sable Gallery, Albany, NY, Lake George Project for the Arts, Yates Gallery at Siena College Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and Rensselaer County Council for the Arts(RCCA). Her work may be viewed in the Pierogi Flat Files, in Brooklyn, NY, and through registries such as The Drawing Center and Nurture Art. Throughout her career Gina has been given three Strategic Opportunity Stipends from The New York Foundation for the Arts. In 1992, Gina was honored with a stay at The Millay Colony for the Arts. In 1996 two of her works were featured in Creative Collage by Jennifer Atkinson from Rockport Books (p.40). Gina lives in Troy, NY and teaches in the art department at The College of Saint Rose, in Albany, NY