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Born and raised in Reading, Pennsylvania.
B.F.A. from Syracuse University,
College of Visual
& Performing Arts.
M.F.A. from Brooklyn College,
City University of New York.
Living and working in Brooklyn, New York. |
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Solo Exhibitions
2011 AUTO-REVERSE, Curated by David Gibson, Art 101 Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
2010 Dean of Undergraduate Studies Gallery, Brooklyn College, Brooklyn, NY
2009 Diggin' in the Crates, The Goggleworks Cafe Gallery, Reading, PA
2007 Summer Featured Artist, Powerhouse, Montclair,
NJ
2007 Chakras & Old San Juan, The Goggleworks Cafe Gallery,
Reading, PA
2006 Downtown Meditation, Qbix Art Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
2005 BoxArt Inc. Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
2004 Selected Works by Julia Cocuzza, Sister’s Gallery, Adamstown,
PA
2004 Resident Artist, Six6seven
Bar*Gallery*Lounge, Brooklyn, NY
2004 Berks Jazz Fest Exhibition, Discoveries Gallery, Reading, PA
2004 February Artist, Muddy
Cup Gallery, Staten Island, NY
2004 Julia Cocuzza, Resident Artist, Luke
+ Leroy Bar/Nightclub, New York, NY
2003 Idle Reflex, Art O Rama Gallery, Staten Island, NY
Group Exhibitions
2011 MEMORY PALACE, Flux Factory, Long Island City/Queens, NY
2011 MFA Showcase, Alumni & Maroney-Leddy Gallery, Brooklyn College, Brooklyn, NY
2011 MFA Open Studios, Brooklyn College, Brooklyn, NY
2011 College Art Association NY Area MFA Exhibition, Hunter Times Square Gallery, New York, NY
2011 Summer Salon, Brooklyn Artists Gym, Brooklyn, NY
2011 Fall Salon, Brooklyn Artists Gym, Brooklyn, NY
2010 The V Spot Cafe Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
2010 Metro Art Expo NYC, Rose Live, Brooklyn, NY
2010 OPEN, Brooklyn College Fall 2010 MFA Open Studios, Bklyn College, Brooklyn, NY
2010 From Uptown Reading & Downtown Brooklyn, Sisters' Gallery, Adamstown, PA
2010 Hello My Name is: OPEN, Brooklyn College Spring 2010 MFA Open Studios, Bklyn College, Brooklyn, NY
2010 MFA Group Showcase, Brooklyn College, Brooklyn, NY
2010 Brooklyn College Registrar Office Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
2009 Learning Curve, Marion Spore Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
2009 Brooklyn College Fall 2009 MFA Open Studios, Brooklyn College, Brooklyn, NY
2009 Opening Night is Closing Night, Maroon Room of SUBO, Brooklyn College, Brooklyn, NY
2009 Wonderful Good Market Cafe Gallery, Adamstown, PA
2009 August Group Exhibition, The Hive Gallery & Studios Los Angeles, CA
2009 Art On Record, APW Gallery, Long Island City, Queens, NY
2008 Fall Artist Residency Exhibition, Prairie Center of the Arts, Peoria IL
2008 Greater Reading Area Literary Festival Exhibition, Alvernia University, Reading, PA
2006 NOW Art!!!, Qbix Art Gallery, Philadelphia,
PA
2006 SnapShot NYC Presents Jerry Gant &
Julia Cocuzza, Bar 13, New York, NY
2005 Berks Arts Council feat. Julia Cocuzza, Steve Garber, & Ed Terrell,
Reading, PA
2003 750 pm, Storch Gallery, Syracuse, NY
2002 Ill Cheese No Ham, Coyne Art Gallery, Syracuse University, Syracuse,
NY
2002 Student Exhibition, Syracuse University’s
Fine Art Studios, Florence, Italy
2001 Summer Showcase, Lowe Art Gallery, Syracuse University, Syracuse,
NY
2001 D.I.A. Exhibition, Spark Gallery, Syracuse,
NY
Juried Exhibitions
2011 CUNY New Music Festival, Baruch College, New York, NY (May 1st)
2009 Emerging Artist Exhibition, Centre Park Historic District Arts & Antiques Fair, Reading, PA
2009 New Arts Program Invitational Salon Exhibit of Small Works, NAP Gallery, Kutztown, PA
2009 So Live! Arts Exhibition, NoName Cafe Gallery of Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY
2009 Berks Art Council's Art of Jazz Juried Exhibition, Goggleworks, Reading, PA
2008 GALEX 42 National Juried Exhibition, Galesburg
Civic Art Center, Galesburg, IL
2008 New
Arts Program Invitational Salon Exhibit of Small Works, NAP Gallery, Kutztown,
PA
2008 Berks Art Council's Art of Jazz Juried
Exhibition, Goggleworks, Reading, PA
2007 New Arts Program Invitational Salon Exhibit of Small Works, NAP Gallery,
Kutztown, PA
2007 Berks Art Council's Art of Jazz Juried
Exhibition, Goggleworks, Reading, PA
2007 In Your Face Juried Exhibition, Goggleworks,
Reading, PA
2006 Berks Art Council's Art of Jazz Juried Exhibition, Albright Cultural
Center, Reading, PA
2005 Havre de Grace International Juried Show, Riverview Gallery, Havre
de Grace, MD
2005 New Arts Program Invitational Salon
Exhibit of Small Works, NAP Gallery, Kutztown, PA
2005 Berks Arts Council’s Art of Jazz
Juried Exhibition, Wynham Gallery, Reading, PA
2001 Society of Illustrators Los Angeles Student Competition Online Exhibition
Artist Residencies, Awards, & Honorariums
2010 Horlick Award, Brooklyn College Graduate Art Program, Brooklyn, NY
2009 First Place, Centre Park Historic District Emerging Artist Exhibition, Reading, PA
2008 Prairie Center of the Arts Fall Artist Residency, Peoria, IL
2008 Greater Reading Area Literary Festival Honorarium, Alvernia University, Reading, PA
Live Painting
Performances
2010 Mustaches vs Cancer Art Battle at Jonny Utah's, New York, NY
2006 SnapShot NYC at Bar 13, New York, NY
2004 Six6seven Bar*Gallery*Lounge, Brooklyn, NY
2004 Luke + Leroy Bar/Nightclub, New York,
NY
2003 The Duplexx Nightclub, Brooklyn, NY
Published Works
2011 Organs of Vision & Speech magazine, featured visual artist (winter 2011)
2009 Brooklyn Review, Vol. 26, featured artist
2009 Margie Perez Singing For My Supper, cover illustration
2008 YRB Magazine, featured apparel artist (Sept/Oct)
2007 Mute Magazine, featured artist in premier
issue (Oct/Nov)
2007 JAZZIZ Magazine's
"Women 8" Limited Edition CD, cover illustration (July)
2007 JAZZIZ Magazine's "Traditional
Romance" Limited Edition CD, cover illustration (March)
2006 JAZZIZ Magazine's "Women 7" Limited Edition CD, cover illustration
(July)
2006 JAZZIZ Magazine, editorial illustration
on jam-band & jazz cultural fusion (April)
2005 JAZZIZ Magazine’s “Women 6” Limited Edition CD,
cover illustration (July)
2004 Taxi Talk Newspaper, cover illustration (June)
2003 New York Press, spot editorial illustration (November)
Organizations & Registries
ART HOOD
# Art Mesh
Artist Meeting Place (AMP)
Artists Space
Brooklyn Art Project
Brooklyn Arts Council
Berks Arts Council
Freelancers Union
NUTUREart Non-Profit, Inc.
Society 6
Syracuse University Alumni Community
Artist Statement 2011
Over the past few months, I merged a range of techniques and ideas to create diverse but more conceptually pointed and layered work. Their unifying elements stem from my passionate interaction with music and my emotional loyalty to life in the city. I’m fascinated with the big city’s relentless and unapologetic success, the small city’s ongoing struggle and diminishing market value, and the pressure and beauty that buzzes throughout both. Many of these works capture contradictory moments of the beautiful and the toxic, the intimate and the isolated, and the general conflicting electricity of human interaction and memory.
These works represent a launch point for several future bodies of work. Prepared over the course of the semester, below are statements for selected individual works:
Untitled (Chrome Cassette Wall)
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A cassette tape is simply a physical container for music. On every tape exists someone’s dreams, their pain, their love, their art. Labored and rehearsed, recorded and retouched, captured into a tangible pocket-sized form. Varying in audio content, the shape of a cassette is consistent: the way it feels, the sound it makes when you shake it, drop it, or rewind it. It was a literal vessel connecting the music with the audience, the sole object we could interact with. Through the repetition of playing a tape again and again, the affection, memories, and emotions associated with that tape are unconsciously projected onto these physical forms.
Today most everyone has long abandoned their physical music collections for concise digital versions, sprawling collections that take no physical form besides a speck inside a hard drive. With that shift, this intimate experience is lost. No visual or tactile associate is created. There is no object between music and its audience; the art goes directly from producer to consumer without ever taking three-dimensional shape. |
Like many, the image of the cassette tape is burned into my memory and it echoes constantly, just like the music it once carried. Memories of that music are projected onto these repeating forms. Memories of my past, of myself, are mentally projected just the same. This reflection of memories isn’t that of a mirror, it’s weathered and shows its age.
This is not meant to celebrate a sweeping nostalgia for the past, however, as nostalgia can be dangerous in its relationship with racism and sexism. This is intended to spark personal memories through the stacks of art, shelved and left to collect dust. The form carrying the art becomes obsolete and, through the shuffle of time and technological transition, the art and the audience’s interaction is often lost. The artists’ work and identities are discarded because their shape is no longer current. The emphasis becomes not simply the lost content but the form itself, the sheer weight of a collection, once revered, now considered a physical burden. Abandoned forms of one type of art are reclaimed to produce another. From such salvaging, an environment is created for recollection and reflection, whether solemn or celebratory, all ignited by the simple, anonymous, loaded relic that is a cassette tape.
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Lasting 58 days and gushing approximately 2.5 million gallons per day, the 2010 BP Gulf oil spill was a catastrophic, graphic, historic, explosive, hemorrhaging environmental disaster, simultaneously rapid and sluggish in its appearance. Devastating, colorful, and hypnotizing through the perpetual relay of media footage. It all became one massive lethargic spiral: The slow drift of the oil on the surface, the slow drift of authority to respond and fix it, a swirling failure of leadership, a sprawling toxic nightmare. A visual contradiction of speed and inertia, startling beauty but absolute grotesque horror, much of which has since dissipated into the ocean and surrounding shore lines with its physical consequences generally certain but specifically unknown. |
This piece, meant to look like an attractive abstract painting at first glance, is a combination of many widely distributed images of Gulf oil spill through various online American media sources. The extended life span of this disaster provided plenty of photo ops, from initial explosion to the quiet trails of oil drifting with the tide towards land. The combination of this merged imagery speaks of that early summer 2010 narrative: the oil won’t stop bleeding out the ocean floor and all of us on land can’t do anything except look, and keep looking.
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Ambition exists in everyone to some extent or another, but it is an absolute requirement for big city living. It’s the need for distinction among the indifferent unforgiving masses. It’s the fire, the quest, the chase for achievement. It keeps us moving through life at a pace where we are less likely to get completely trampled on a daily basis (maybe just stepped on from time to time). Our ambition shapes how we think and behave in ways that are so deeply embedded it’s difficult to recognize our own patterns. We all have some level of ambition of our own we are pursuing and we are constantly tangling with the ambition of others.
A city, any city big or small, is built on the lives of the past and present, built on their ambition. New York City is all ambition, all day, all night. There’s so much pent up ambition on the ground that it hangs a heavy buzz on the horizon and ambition debris flickers into the air. The faces are tense, tired, and proud because it’s the evening. The workday is over. Dusk is drifting in, city lights cascade over the high-ranking and low ranking masses together. The privileged and the hungry, unevenly packed together, all grinding with hopes of reaching the top, seeking distinction among the nameless.
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Untitled (Row Homes, Historic District, Reading PA)
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Across the country, small cities are struggling. No resources, diminishing tax base, rising crime rate, falling property value, broke public schools, no job growth, zero encouragement. The topic is so common it might put you into a coma, with the issues so layered one can only shrug in fatigue. Problems mount slowly and political action is inert. Reading, Pennsylvania, where I’m from, is an example of a small Northeast city, beautifully historic, richly diverse and once prominent, on the brink of dilapidation. This piece (which combine spray paint, acrylic, screen-printing, and woodblock ink) is an attempt to draw attention to a forgotten city that is saturated with culture and beauty yet sadly vacant and under pressure.
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Stanley Milgram conducted an experiment in 1961 where the Subject was placed into the role of “Teacher” and, obeying orders from the authority of the Experimenter, delivered severe shocks on an increasing scale to a helpless third party (the “Learner). The experiment concluded that common and typically moral people can easily be convinced to inflict lethal harm upon another person, powered by the “call of duty” under someone else’s authority. Certainly this historic experiment in social psychology is relevant today in not only circumstances of war (domestic and abroad), but in activities we take for granted, such as how policy is enacted and information is disseminated. It is human nature to do what one is told, sometimes to a damaging extent. |
Milgram’s entire 189-page book Obedience to Authority is plastered left to right, top to bottom. A transparent silhouette of two police officers violently subduing a citizen is placed upon this factually loaded surface. Footprints blur and scatter to emphasize frantic human movement as well as the symbolic oppression of stomping. Abstract oppressive spray painted lines are layered on top. Enlarged black oil stick drawings, based on an illustration inside the book, are added but with a very subtle shift in content. “Experimenter” becomes a politician, “Subject” becomes a media pundit, “Learner” becomes a media-wired citizen. This emphasis on politics is simply one example of how this triptych of authority, oppressor, and oppressed can be portrayed.
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