Studio Visit with irene gennaro

     Recently I had a chance to visit Sculptors Guild member Irene Gennaro at her Greenwich Village loft we had the opportunity to talk shortly before a Sculptors Guild board meeting. Irene has been a long time SG member. I first met Irene at the Fountain Art Fair last year, and then exhibited with her in the Poetry and Prose section of the SG Transformation show on Governors Island last summer.

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Irene’s imaginative, complex, and colorful work is as intriguing in its technical proficiency, as in its psychological impact. I was curious about how she first became involved in art making. She explained that her father had been a stone carver in Italy in the 1930’s before immigrating to the United States. As a young child she remembers, “Growing up, my hands were never unoccupied as I drew, cut, pasted, painted, and even embroidered, anything I could think of.” She studied art in high school she recalled, “Once a week for three years we trekked over to the Brooklyn Museum’s art school for life drawing class.” The first time she was exposed to sculpture was when she was awarded a scholarship to attend a Ceramic/Sculpture workshop in Greenwich Village. She was exposed to working in clay, wax, plaster, and welded for the first time.

A turning point in Irene’s art making happened in the late 1960’s when she started reading about Tibetan Buddhism. Irene became deeply involved in Buddhism and experienced “An awareness, an awakening if you will.” She suddenly felt as if she now had a vocation- a vocation to carve. She began with carving stone as her father had, but then quickly transitioned to carving wood. In wood she found her calling and her passion. For many years, Irene spent 4-6 hours a day carving. While visiting her in her loft, I felt the intense concentration and dedication she has put into her art production. I imagined the toil of many hours and years of hard work. The complexity and skill of her carving is impressive.

Many of the carvings are colorfully painted with oil paint, giving the loft an otherworldly feel. Irene attributes her imaginative imagery to her Buddhist belief system and says, “Tibetans believe that we live many thousands of lives. I find this belief system quite acceptable and understandable. It is through these lives that we evolve, learn, and grow. It may be this system that informs the subconscious. Today it is commonly accepted that it is our experiences in these lives that inform our subconscious. It is my subconscious that informs my sculptural practice.” Irene describes her artistic process this way, “I experience specific dream images that I document in my sketchbooks and dream books. For many years the appearance of a specific form would appear in my mind’s eye as though a slide had been inserted. Later these images would occur in dream visuals.

I record images as they appear and they are source material for my sculptures.” This led her to create a series titled Ex-Votive. It began as a single dream depicting body parts that she interpreted as ex-votos. A few years later, she had another dream that included dozens of crucifixes that appeared on wall after wall. These dreams were her inspiration for her Impermanence series.

It is however her totems and wall hung relief sculptures that speak to me of her extraordinary imagination. As Irene puts it, “My signature imagery includes animal entities, organic systems, totemic figures, frequent avian creatures and recently, Christian iconography and ritual.” Walking through her loft is like walking through a dreamlike Amazon forest that is populated with fantastical bird-like creatures.

She is currently exploring clay as a medium.
To see more if Irene's extraordinary work visit her website at www.irenegennaro.com

Irene's quotes were taken from my studio visit with her and an interview she did with The Artist Catalog.