Today we’d like to introduce you to Ryan Carroccino.
Ryan, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
Although I tend to utilize a shortened moniker, “ryccino”, on my social media platforms. I suppose it’s for ease of typing. Carroccino tends to be a mouthful (it rhymes with cappuccino, if that’s of any help). I’m a visual artist, mostly a painter. Last year, I was received my BFA from MassArt, with a concentration in Illustration. I specialize in acrylic portraiture, but I also work in 3D illustration and bookmaking. Born in Salem, MA, I grew up in southern New Hampshire. I’ve been a resident of Boston since 2012, having moved through the communities of Jamaica Plain and Allston before settling in Brighton. Beyond my work in the arts, I am an Americorps and City Year Boston Alumni and have spent the past five years bartending. These days, when I’m not in the studio, you can find me slinging cocktails at Barcelona Wine Bar in Brookline.
Has it been a smooth road?
The road has never been smooth, but it has been entertaining at the very least. I was always an artistically inclined child. I’ve been known as “the kid who can draw” since I was in elementary school. When I was in middle school, I used to do graphite drawings of Pennywise the Clown from Stephen King’s It for a few bucks on the school bus. I suppose this was my first commissioned work. I flourished artistically in high school, I was fortunate enough to have some incredibly nurturing educators behind me. During high school, I struggled with a deep depression, fed by my repressed homosexuality. My grades declined at an advancing slope through the four years of high school. The art department granted me some level of stability, offering a comfortable environment in which I could develop my skill set. I finished high school in 2009 and was faced with the realization that college was not an immediate option for me.
As the youngest of five kids, my parents were unable to cosign student loans, and I was left in an educational purgatory. All of my classmates and peers went off to college and I was left working full-time at a supermarket, still living at my parent’s house in New Hampshire. My desire to attend college, particularly art school, went unattended for a couple of years. I used that time to attempt to broaden my horizons and educate myself in whatever ways I could. Having never left New England in two decades, I spent some time in London and Paris. In a chance conversation in the fall of 2011, I found out about City Year, an education-based Americorps program. The mission statement of City Year looks to address the drop out crisis in America by placing teams of 17-25-year-olds into inner-city schools to offer one on one mentorship to struggling students and support to the school at large.
I applied to the Boston corps and was accepted, granting me the opportunity to pack my bags and move into the city. I was placed on an incredible team of the hardest working 20-somethings I had ever met, supporting the Mildred Avenue School in Mattapan. Having been so fortunate to have some incredible mentors while I struggled in high school, it was strangely cathartic to work with students who’s struggles mirrored my own. I was only 21 at the time, and the year felt like a crash course in professional expectations. I worked from 7 am to 7 pm (if not later) every weekday, often working service projects on the weekend. I occasionally joke that I aged five years in that one year, but it feels true. I had worked harder than I had ever worked in my life, I had met some of the best people that I have ever met (to this day, the people I met in City Year are some of the greatest people in my life), and I had realized the value of education and an improved work ethic. As City Year closed, I was accepted on a scholarship to MassArt.
As a 22-year-old in classrooms of 18-year-olds, I often connected more closely to the faculty at MassArt than my peers. I picked up bartending on the weekends to pay my rent, as well as working in the Center for Art and Community Partnerships at MassArt. Between full-time school and work, I was essentially exhausted for four years, often having to schedule out when I would do homework to the hour. But I never minded. I felt so fortunate to be there. I reveled in my assignments. A still-life of cylinders felt so exciting to me. For years, it felts like art school was a privilege I would never achieve, but there I was, a full-time illustration student. I picked up book-making from one of my professors, Suzanne Barnes, an artistic practice that I never would learn otherwise. It felt like the spiritual culmination of my studies occurred in the spring of my senior year, when I was fortunate enough to be selected to study design in an intensive abroad program in Tokyo and Seoul. I have come to think that the most important and informative thing any artist can do is to travel. It doesn’t have to be across the country or to a new continent, but anywhere that isn’t the four walls in which you spend your day-to-day can provide so much insight. It’s cleansing.
These days, I share a studio space in Brighton with my partner, Matt. I keep painting, taking any commission I can. I can be found bartending at night still, working at Barcelona Wine Bar in Brookline. Of course, I want nothing more than to be working with artists day in and day out, working in my studio, but I think there is so much inspiration to be found in the journey. I wouldn’t be half the artist I am today without it, and I look forward to years of development.
So let’s switch gears a bit and go into your artwork. Tell us more about the work.
I mainly work on a commission based basis these days. I specialize in portraiture, but I am always willing to take on new challenges. I keep a personal studio practice and try to be in the studio most days for at least some amount of time. In my recent body of work, I tend to veer towards queer subjects. My college thesis was illustrating a classic of queer literature, Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin. Published in 1956 and considered a literary classic, this novel has had no adaptation to speak of, no visual interpretation. Perhaps, in the wake of critically acclaimed and financially successful queer films like Moonlight and Call Me By Your Name (even the popcorn-binge inducing Love, Simon), we’ll see more queer literature adapted into other media. Recently I have begun researching a project that pays homage to the former queer spaces of Boston, many of which were pushed out in the redevelopment of the Combat Zone (Downtown Crossing) in the late 1970s. For such a liberal and socially charged city, our availability of queer spaces is lesser than most other metropolitans of similar scale. I think there’s a myriad of reasons for this, and I think there are a lot of stories along the way that haven’t been told. As a gay, Boston-based artist, I am interested in discussing and illustrating the stories of local queer history. There is so much to learn from the voices of others.
How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
I think or at least I hope, that the visual art field will continue a shift to maximize the voices of those whose voices have been heard the least in the canon of art. I think, especially in light of the current political climate, it is more important now than ever before to be aware of the voices of queer people, women, people of color. The arts have always been progressive, but now is the time to leverage the arts to maximize these voices. I think this shift is already prevalent, but I personally can’t wait to see the work that will come over the next few years.
Pricing:
- $150 for a 9×12 portrait
- Commissions open
Contact Info:
- Website: ryccino.com
- Phone: 603-546-8147
- Email: ryccino@gmail.com
- Instagram: ryccino
Image Credit:
All by Ryan Carroccino
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