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Artist Vita: Ann Guiliani...born Ann Mercorella
I went to Memorial High School in West New York, New Jersey and had the good fortune of being exposed to great art teachers. My fellow art students were gifted, and serious such as Lucas Samaras. The Manhattan skyline was in constant view from my apartment and proximity to New York City’s museums brought me exposure to a broad spectrum of art styles. This fostered an eclectic and sophisticated outlook at a very early age. I was the first person in my family to go to college and in 1959, graduated with a degree in art Education from Montclair State University. While teaching art in the public schools in Northern New Jersey, I entered and completed the Masters program at New York University studying nights and summers. In 1969, I married and while raising my family, embarked on a career in the graphic design field as a free-lance illustrator and designer. I moved to Cape Cod, Massachusetts in 1984, and have been teaching art on the adjunct faculty of Cape Cod Community College from that time to the present. In 1998, I earned a second Masters Degree….this time in Printmaking and Visual Design from the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth. A background in painting and drawing from life was expanded by the intriguing possibilities of Printmaking. Most of my images then were Monotypes 28” x 38” (as large as my printing press could accommodate.) They were actually paintings from observation uncontrived. I called them: “happenstances”. This had to do with Things as I found them in the interior of a room untouched.
In 2001 I became the “Artist in Residence” at Cape Cod Community College. My solo exhibit was entitled, “Roads Travelled”: (literally about the roads I’ve travelled mostly between Cape Cod, Florida, New York City and New Jersey. Towards the latter part of that year, personal family responsibilities forced me to leave the Cape for Florida suddenly and indefinitely. The subject of my solo exhibit “Roads Travelled” had a deeper significance after all. For it was really about my life and the twists and turns...the roads and paths and choices we all make. I had some time to contemplate art and life as I sat in the doctors’ offices. Where do I go now? How can I balance my life responsibilities and my own need to express art? Constant travels in a car became a way of life and oddly the most significant form of expression for me. As I tried to draw in a frenzy, the images that passed my view at 70 miles per hour (My husband was driving) I discovered a new way of thinking and experience space that had components of time in motion. I liked the spontaneity and blend of diverse stimuli as well as the challenge of spontaneous drawing that had energy and life. I slowly realized that traveling in a car correlates so much with the fleeting moments of life itself. That also, we all experience specific times and spaces in quite unique ways whether we are in a state of movement or suspended somewhere frozen in time (just like sitting in a doctor’s office). Art and life are indeed meshed together. IT HAS HAD A LIBERATING EFFECT ON MY ART. |