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 lives and works in Upstate NY and in Abruzzo Italy, where she is developing an Arts Association and a Residency Program.
Her work was listed in the “Top 25 of 50 years of public art works in NYC” by The NYC Parks and Recreation Commission.
My works are symbolic gestures.
I’m prompting the general public to participate in the formation of the sign.
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).
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.
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 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).
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.