Today we’d like to introduce you to John Ruggieri.
John, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I am an award-winning artist, and my range of work includes painting and drawing, photography, public art, curatorial and education projects, writing and design. I’ve been a professional artist in SoWa for several years, even when it was an edgier neighborhood, which definitely can stimulate art-making. I feel fortunate to be living and working in the South End, with all of its dynamic modern development mixed with world-class historic homes!
I was shaped by nature. My process always begins there, then ends in abstract form. Even though I’ve been gazing at the bright blue rays of TV since childhood — and into the hot yellow sun of pop culture in America — again and again it is to nature that I return. It is the filter that informs my work.
I’ve used my experiences with nature directly and indirectly to translate them into abstraction. As a child — shuffling between my prized Minolta and vintage cameras — I spent hours collecting the details of flowers and small objects on film using macro lenses. I made ethereal portraits of my father on the breakwater in Narragansett Bay by blurring a 35mm lens with Vaseline.
I see the world as a myriad of graphic slices. And I thrive in the variance of color and atmosphere blended by natural forms and the urban landscape, often thinking about and working in so-called pretty color. The vivid appeal of locales such as Provincetown, Miami, New York, and Los Angeles — as well as France, Italy, Jamaica, and Mexico — inspire what I create.
I studied painting, photography and fashion design at RISD full-time for two years. Encouraged by my teachers I pushed myself to the max and created large-scale, site-specific light installations at Providence landmarks, including Point Street Bridge and the Roger Williams Memorial at Prospect Park.
A couple of thoughtful professors told me that I “like to think” and recommended Hampshire College, where I later transferred. There I studied philosophy and literature; I took courses such as Buddhist Poetry and African Philosophy. Utterly amazing. Then I returned to studying art feeling enriched and intellectually fed, capturing my B.A. there.
I had immense freedom within Hampshire’s self-designed atmosphere, and that can either paralyze or elevate a student’s thinking. I thrived there, questioned everything, and sought out every thinker and book I could to answer my biggest questions about the universe, politics, ethics, culture and identity.
After graduation I moved to the art colony of Provincetown, where I continued with figure drawing and painted more abstractly and expressively. I was energized by the town’s artistic history and soft light, which filtered into a pastel palette on canvas. It is an incredibly open and generous creative community and made a huge mark on me and my work. I exhibited and sold my work for many seasons there, then later moved to Boston, continuing to paint and exhibit nationally.
I don’t know if there’s a “gay” or “queer” abstract art. But I think it’s important for artists of any orientation to feel comfortable in their own skin. For me the work became more abstract and personal, less dependent on observation, as I came out more within myself. I became more subjective, not as self-involved. More space opened up in my mind for thinking in more abstract terms.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
I’ve learned to carefully match my ambitions with the budget I’m given for design and public art projects, and to keep lines of communication open as much as possible!
There’s a wonderful sense of freedom with solitary studio work, but I also love connecting and collaborating along the way. I can wear many hats and juggle a lot, but I am at my best when I’m creating personally at the highest level possible and taking risks.
I’m proud that I can excel in more than one medium, and have never allowed anyone to pigeonhole me or my work, though some have tried!
I like to challenge stereotypes about artists. I’ve always had a practical mind, with a creative heart. I can understand, create and optimize any budget. But I’ve learned to lean on other more technically talented people for their knowledge, too. My dream is to launch the public art project Alphabet Soup on a large scale!
John Ruggieri Studio – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
I like to network and connect with communities and highly creative people and make big things happen! It’s my passion. My background includes public art projects involving youth and international artists.
What I also bring to the table is expertise in branding and a broad portfolio of projects in the art, design, social media and marketing spaces, for very diverse clients and audiences, from nonprofit organizations to blue chip corporations, from at-risk children to luxury brands.
There’s another kind of success outside the studio that I’ve cultivated: collaboration. I enjoy curating exhibitions, being a visiting artist, working with other highly accomplished creatives, and writing about art exhibitions and travel for publications such as Big Red & Shiny. I bring all that experience and learning back into my personal work.
I make the most of anything that life throws me, and try to learn a lesson every time, and to know my limits. And to be ready to flop, fail, sit back a bit, then get back up and make it bigger and better!
What is “success” or “successful” for you?
I’m thrilled to have my work in collections from Paris to L.A., and to find out it will be included in a museum collection. Both sales and recognition are important: when an exhibition of my work is nearly sold out by one collector, as well as having my work selected by well-known museum curators and gallerists. I’m psyched to have several of my photographs included in Getty Images!
I’m always my toughest “competition” and always am focused on the future, where I feel my best work is. These days I’m proud of where my art is. There’s no stopping my creativity. It’s taken many years to get to this point—open to outside inspiration, but trusting in my own vision, never feeling a creative block.
I’m honored to have won many awards, and attract major sponsors, for my art as well as public art and education projects. My largest public art project, ART@NIGHT and its accompanying documentary, was supported by a $30,000 grant from the Fund for the Arts, a restricted fund of the New England Foundation for the Arts.
I received the Jean and Kalil Gibran Award for Excellence in Art from the Copley Society in Boston, from Carl Belz, Director of the Rose Art Museum, for my painting Breakwater. I made it by scraping on and off layers of marble dust-whitened tones of yellow and green oil paint. In this painting I distinctly recalled the hours spent at the tip of Cape Cod on the breakwater, jumping off into shallow waters, where the rocks gleamed with green sea vegetation and golden light.
Success has a softer side, too. My lifelong campaign to open young minds about contemporary art resulted in a young girl named Alyona, age 8, from Russia emailing me out of the blue about her love of abstract art.
A Japanese gallery owner visited my studio in Provincetown, then later wrote me a long, glowing review of my painting: “The delicate light I found in your works made me imagine the delicate sensibility I could feel in both European works and Japanese ones…”
I was touched when collectors who were devoted to more traditional landscape paintings bought their first abstract art—a massive painting and a series of photographs—from me. It’s great when you feel you’re helping to show someone another way to enjoy art!
Later, those same collectors asked me to make shipping arrangements for my painting during their chaotic cross-country move to the West Coast. I drove my mother on a rainy Mother’s Day to their home on the Cape. It was the best feeling to show her in person my largest oil painting, a field of thin layers of muted tones of pink, her favorite color. It was inspired by a childhood memory of a porcelain vessel she had made and displayed on her dresser.
Contact Info:
- Email: JohnJRuggieri@gmail.com
Image Credit:
© John Ruggieri
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