Two materials have been consistent for me for over two decades: wood and paint. The combination of these two materials seems to produce endless results. Recently, I’ve revisited collecting driftwood as a starting point for beginning my art. The forms have their own attitude and gestures. They are embedded with the accumulation of time and the history of their previous life. Similarly, I source plywood from construction waste. The castaway segments have markings, angles, and traces of their use. These two forms of wood are as far apart as can be. One lived a life formed solely by nature. The other lived a controlled life, being highly manufactured, compressed, and cut into standardized sizes. I see these two forms of wood as the relationship between our own building of architecture and the natural landscape.
The thoughts of trees are frozen in their form. They reveal their thoughts in their movement towards the sun or away from external conditions. The growth rings chart time, but the grain movement also holds something else. Because I wondered about the wood that I found for my artwork, I had to ask whether the trees themselves wondered about their future or what they might become. There is expression in the forms of trees. It is this expression that triggers decisions in the studio. Using paint to overlay color onto the wood allows me to cast my own experiments of expression in a collaborative manner. The use of color further removes the wood from its previous history and brings it into a state of otherness and back into a state of wonder.
Joe Ferriso grew up in Long Island, NY, and moved to the Bay Area in 2009. Working in multiple mediums and disciplines, His artworks are primarily concerned with how color relationships impact perception. Ferriso is a graduate of The Cooper Union (BFA 2003) and Stanford University (MFA 2018). He lives and works in Sebastopol and The Sea Ranch, CA.