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JOHN TUCCILLO gallery

John Tuccillo is a Kansas City native who currently resides in Peoria, Illinois where he is an Associate Professor of Art and Chair at Illinois Central College. He received his M.A. and MFA from The University of New Mexico in Albuqurque.

The artist finds inspiration for his sculpture at his feet! Paying tribute to natural and industrial forms residing in the urban landscape, from the detailed metalwork of sewer grates, manhole covers and time shifted concrete, to organic inclusions of tree stumps, roots and rock, Tuccillo creates a 21st century museum of artifacts, painstakingly recreated in paper pulp. He begins by making a urethane mold directly off of the street, then casts the mold in archival paper. A skilled painter, the artist uses acrylic paint and trompe l'oeil techniques to replicate the rust of stained cement and the gritty tar of asphalt to interpret and celebrate the look of the original site.

The artist focuses on manhole covers, sewer grates, and other elements of a manipulated environment, as primary subjects for his creative work, as both personally expressive motifs, and as contemporary artifacts, both functional and decrepit. He has also been interested in the tradition of landscape painting, and to some extent, his work is a contemporary extension of that tradition, as they originate from a specific site within the greater landscape. As highly illusionistic works, his paintings are often mistaken for "ready-made" pieces; ordinary objects that are appropriated by the artist from their functional context and presented as-is, in the gallery environment. His intent is precisely the opposite. Through the materials and process, he re-creating the world around him, faithfully approximating the appearance of the subject rendered, and taking care to blur the distinction between art and reality as much as possible.

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