For over half a century Karin F Giusti has been creating large-scale, interactive works, often using artist-initiated, site-specific or third space locations. She uses signs, symbols and icons to create a dialogue with the public.
She is the recipient of many awards and grants such as: the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (Fellowship in Sculpture Installation), New York Foundation for the Arts (Fellowship in Architecture/ Environmental Structures), National Endowment for the Arts (New Forms), Connecticut Commission on the Arts (Fellowship in Sculpture), New England Foundation for the Arts, Pollock-Krasner Foundation, Virginia A. Groot Foundation (1st place award), The Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation, The Gunk Foundation (project grant).
Residencies include: Arts/Industry program, John Michael Kohler Arts Center (Kohler, Wisconsin), Lila Wallace Arts International at Monet’s Garden (Giverny, France) and Bogliasco Center (Genova, Italy).
Her work has been included in books like Launching the Imagination and Billboard: Art on the Road, and has been reviewed in publications such as: The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Irish Times, Artforum, ARTnews, Art in America, Flash Art, Sculpture Magazine, Smithsonian Magazine and Stroll: The Magazine of Outdoor Art and Street Culture.
Her work has been hosted by numerous organizations including: Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Creative Time, Connecticut Commission on the Arts, The NYC Department of Parks and Recreations, Art Culture and Tourism, Providence Rhode Island.
She has shown in alternative spaces, like White Box NYC, Real Art Ways (Hartford CT), Diverse Works (Houston, Texas), Smack Mellon (Brooklyn, NY), Thread Waxing Space (NY) and at museums and sculpture parks like the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln Mass, Socrates Sculpture Park (NYC), SculptureCenter at Roosevelt Island (NYC), Chesterwood Museum (Stockbridge, Mass.), The Cathedral of Saint John the Divine (NYC), MIT List Visual Arts Center (Cambridge, Mass.), The Aldrich Museum (Ridgefield, CT.), Art Institute of Chicago, the Arsenal Gallery (NYC), NYC Parks Department as well as overseas like EV+A in Limerick (Ireland), and the Saint James Church (Florence Italy).
Her work was listed in the “Top 25 of 50 years of public art works in NYC” by The NYC Parks and Recreation Commission.
Giusti received an MFA from Yale University and a BFA from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She is a Professor Emerita of Sculpture at City University of New York, Brooklyn College where she taught for 23 years.
She lives and works in Upstate NY and in Abruzzo Italy, where she is developing an Arts Association and a Residency Program.
Installed entirely by the artist.
A 40ft. x 150ft. façade of a mid-century Civic Center Parking Garage in Providence (RI) serving as a loom. The open pillar structure acting as the “warp” was woven with sixteen, 160ft. long x 2ft. wide streams of multicolored fabric patterns and designs, printed on backlight medium, laminated with UV stabilized vinyl film; as the “weft”. Outside light creates a massive stained-glass, cathedral effect that also cast patterns on the interior floor.
*New iterations of Project: Dreamweave for a Thirdspace are currently in development.
Made of clear, greenhouse plastic leaving the roses inside and the dollar bill on the back visible through the portico.
The project highlights issues of transparency in governance, environmental justice, voter participation as well as promotes alternative energy. It was first commissioned by Real Art Ways of Hartford CT. and installed at the recycling center. It was later hosted by Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and The NYC Department of Parks and Recreation and sited in Battery Park NYC. Lower Manhattan was the site of the Nation’s First Capitol, as well as Fraunce’s Tavern, where George Washington bade farewell to his troops at the end of the American Revolution. It is a fully functional greenhouse and the rose bushes inside were names for presidents (Mr. Lincoln, John F Kennedy, etc.), donated by Jackson & Perkins Company, and filled the greenhouse with their intoxicating scent.
OUR HOUSE: The House That Belongs To All of Us
A smaller, mobile version of WHITE HOUSE / GREENHOUSE. Fabricated by the artist to withstand extensive road trips, it was mounted on a trailer and pulled by a biodiesel-fueled truck. It served its purpose well, attracting attention and alluring viewers towards the issues, as it roared down highways, sat at toll booths or sat parked in temporary locations.
Three Seasons at Black Forest Farm
The farm in Sullivan County NY where Giusti and Schwarz lived as partners is represented here in a full holographic loop created by standing on a chart used to map a full 360 degree panorama of the landscape, photographed over a six- year period. The photos were then sutured to create a “strings of time”, printed on backlight material and used to construct 16, 20 foot tall by 3 ft. wide, sentinel-like columns, lit from within.
Here as light pillars, Smack Mellon Gallery, Brooklyn, NY. Highlighting a transformative absence, the installation included a sound-track of Schwarz chopping wood.
Hand drawn paper and wire skeletons woven into a ten-foot diameter lace-doily installed at the Baptistry of The Cathedral Of Saint John The Divine NYC. Spotlit from above to project a twenty-foot diameter (approx.) shadow on the floor of the cathedral.
Although also installed in Limerick, Ireland and in Florence in Italy, the original installation in NYC, shown here, included the suicide note left to the artist, with the request “Make A Piece For Me,” in the hanging net. Also known as “David’s Peace”, the work is a memorial project to the late David Blakeslee, friend and confidante of the artist. The work is the artist’s symbolic gesture to transform tragedy into aesthetic light and beauty.
A call to environmental stewardship about the delicate aqua-culture in the Long Island Sound, New Haven Harbor and the oceans at large. Promoted and encouraged education and environmental responsibility through “edu-tainment” with the oyster opening, closing and “singing” a patchwork of facts, songs and musical interludes.
Sponsored by the Connecticut Commission for the Arts and sited at the New Haven Tourist information booth on the New Haven Harbor. Also shown at Socrates Sculpture Queens NY. Pearl Necklace alone at Chesterwood Museum Stockbridge Mass.
Original casting at the Kohler Wisconsin Arts/Industry residency, Kohler Wisconsin.
Exhibited by Sculpture Center of NYC, (but installed and hung from a parking facility on Roosevelt Island,) Also the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park in Lincoln Ma. and the Lyman Allyn Art Museum in New London Connecticut.
Various materials: Individual sculptures each approximately 6ft. in height: Wishbone, Rabbit’s Foot, Dice, Italian Horn, Crystal Pendant were linked together on a 40ft.long, steel and fiberglass chain necklace.
Commissioned by the Arts Extension Service for the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
This steep-pole maze was loaded with 4”x 6” colored and flavored clear, hard-candy tiles. The tiles were sheathed in crispy packaging, then stapled to plastic straps within steel frames, creating large, primary-colored panel-walls that were assembled to build the structure of a maze. As one walked through the maze and looked through the panels, the others behind would create secondary colors. Being edible, the viewing public was invited to eat the work and enjoy the candy flavors: Pineapple, tart cherry, licorice, cinnamon etc. As the candy-panels were picked, the remaining panels and patterns created new secondary and tertiary colors, making the public integral in the work’s progression.
Commissioned and exhibited by the Springfield Museum Corporation. Installation in The Quadrangle Metro Center, Springfield Mass.
Six quonset huts constructed from steel tubing, industrial netting, homemade calking compound and found objects.
Commentary on the American Dream of home ownership, the homeless crisis in the city of Springfield and the nation at large. A crisis which continues, and has worsened, today.
Installed at the Chesterwood Museum in Stockbridge Mass. and The ZONE Art Center, Springfield Mass. Commemorating the Anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. Six 9ft. fans, each made from Approx. 40 steel rods woven together then covered with a taunt, primary-colored, mesh netting over the surface, to create the shape of the fan.
As viewers moved about the field and changed perspective, different primary colors would interact to create different secondary and tertiary colors.
The fans were used as props in a video performance wherein, on a white stage-set, animated figures operated props and elements to change the color dynamics, finally ending with the figures exploding a black netting over the entire stage, signifying the destruction caused by the bombing.