Artist Statement
A cross-sectional retrospective in 2022 got me thinking about ways of working that I had left three decades ago. So after 15 years of carving wood, I put my files and chisels away and started making new work reminiscent of an older period. In those fifteen years of wood carving, I gradually removed material revealing fluid organic forms. After carving came a laborious process of hand sanding to a smooth sensual surface. In these works, I brought back to life an inert but once-living material. My new work reprising processes from three decades ago is a reversal of the carving and sanding techniques. My pieces are constructed and after the form is created many layers of paint, saw dust, and other textural materials are applied to create an encrusted surface. The tendency towards working in slow processes gives my mind free rein to contemplate the world on macro and micro scales. Throughout the decades of varied processes, I have maintained a continuous theme through the interface between organic and geometric.
Artist Bio
John Cino is a sculptor, art educator, and curator. He graduated from Hunter College of the City University of New York in 1985 with a Master’s Degree in Fine Arts and from Stony Brook University in 1982 with a BA in Fine Arts. After holding positions as a gallery assistant for noted NY artist Ed Buonagurio and art teacher for the NYC public schools John began teaching on the collegiate level in 1999.
Highlights as a sculptor include the installation of Neried on the Mississippi River waterfront in Dubuque, Iowa, artist in residency programs at Stony Brook University and East End Arts Council, and two consecutive NYSCA Long Island Creative Artists Grants in 2013 and 2104. From those grants John first extended his work into public art with Library at Babel: Patchogue and then into multimedia performance with Common Ground. His work has been exhibited in sculpture parks, museums, college campuses, and lobbies including solo exhibitions at the Islip-MacArthur Airport, Ripples:2006 – 2014, Stony Brook University, Tabler Center for Arts, Immersions and Dialogues, 2016, and Farmingdale State College Memorial Gallery, Sacred or Profane, 2016-2017 and a cross-sectional career retrospective, Considering the Goddess was exhibited in 2022 at the Br. Kenneth Chapman Gallery, Iona University.
Cino has taught on the graduate and undergraduate levels courses in a broad range of studio practices as well as many phases of art history. Currently, he teaches sculpture and three-dimensional design at Nassau Community College and Farmingdale State College. While studying mathematics at Suffolk Community College he received a grant to create and implement an innovative course in mathematics that taught concepts in math through art making.
In the mid 90’s Cino was president of 14 Sculptors Gallery, a highly regarded sculptors’ cooperative begun in 1969. During his tenure, he organized exhibitions; and saw to the relocation of the gallery and its eventual reinvention as a non-localized artist collective.
He has curated many exhibitions in New York City and Long Island including 14 Sculptors Gallery, Adelphi University, the Islip Museum, and Nassau Community College. He is the senior curator of the Patchogue Arts Council Gallery, now the Museum of Contemporary Art, Long Island, and has been since its inception in 2008. He developed and co-curated two of its largest exhibitions, the Patchogue Biennials of 2009 and 2011 bringing 40 artists from Brooklyn to the East end of Long Island together in a 12,000 sq ft. exhibition space. Cino speaks regularly on art and art history for PAC/MoCALI, lecturing on historical topics in Learning to Look and interviewing artists in Coffee with a Curator, each is offered monthly through the Patchogue Arts Council.
Cino is most noted for his fluid wood carvings which he began in 2005. After 18 years of carving, a recent career retrospective in 2022 reminded him of his older interests. Since late 2022 he has begun working on new works using techniques developed in the mid-1980s.