January 16, 2024
HACKETTSTOWN, NJ, January 15, 2024 — JOSEPH COCO will be exhibiting 32-paintings and drawings from the: THE PATERSON GREAT FALLS SERIES, at Centenary University Taylor Memorial Library, January 1 through February 29, 2024. For more information contact the Library Front Desk 908-852-1400 x2345. Library hours are Monday through Friday, 9 AM – 8 PM, and admission is free to the public.
Centenary’s exhibit sets the stage for the new Paterson Great Falls National Historical Park visitor center opening in late 2024, celebrating Paterson’s induction into the National Park System in 2009. Coco is the first artist since the late 1800s to create 4-large-scale panoramic views of the Falls, the largest ever executed. At six by four feet, this cycle of canvases depicts the four seasons at four different hours of day/night. Coco was inspired by the18th and 19th Century canvases of the Falls by the Hudson River School artists William Merritt Chase, Edwin Church, Ralph Andrew Blakelock, in the collections of the: Paterson Library, Lambert Castle, and Paterson Museums. Paterson’s legendary artist/poet, Don Kommit (1937-2022), Coco’s high school art teacher, is a primary influence. Throughout 2018 -21, the series was exhibited for the Passaic County Cultural and Historic Affairs of New Jersey, celebrating their renovated exhibition spaces at: Paterson’s Courthouse Rotunda, and Clifton’s Westervelt/Vanderhoef House, and Hamilton House Museums, as well their new flagship Rea House – Goffle Center in Hawthorne, NJ.
Four smaller paintings from the ANCESTRAL FALLS SERIES and 16 drawings from the FALLS FIVER celebrate the Lenni-Lenape tribes who considered the Great Falls their birthplace, genesis story, where the first woman and man emerged from the cascade. As primordial sacred ground, Native American birthing and marriage ceremonies took place here. In the 1600s, Dutch settlers followed with hotels for weddings. By the 1700s, the British built resorts, creating the first honeymoon capital in the United States around the irrepressible falls, way before Niagara developed marital tourism. Seated on the Passaic River, The Great Falls are the 2nd-largest cascades on the Eastern seaboard, surpassed only by the Niagara Falls. On the edge of a fault line in Garret Mountain, our founding fathers conceived of America’s first industrial park here, modeled on English sites. Opening in 1800, Alexander Hamilton designed the waterfalls to power an ingenious raceway-system of water wheels creating mechanical energy for the mills. Foundries manufactured America’s 1st-locomotives – Rogers train. Textile fabrication led to Paterson’s fame as Silk City. The Colt-45, Winchester rifle, 1st-submarine launch, and Lindbergh’s trans-Atlantic plane engine advanced here, including pharmaceuticals.
Coco composed and recorded instrumental music for all the images, creating the films SOUND IMAGE and FALLS RIVER using analog video with the first desktop digital Apple and PC computers, 1984-86. These films, and two others by Coco were put together on the 3-disk DVD entitled THE RE-MASTERED COLLECTION and are in the collections of: California’s MOMA-SF, LA County & DeYoung Museums; New York’s Whitney & Guggenheim; Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art & Museum of Fine Art; Pennsylvania’s Philadelphia, Allentown, & Michener Museums; New Jersey’s Newark, Rutgers-Zimmerli, Paterson & Lambert Castle Museums; etc. Coco’s 105-solo exhibitions include four Italian Museums. His art is also in the International Collections of: The Gulbenkian Museum-Lisbon; Galleria Nazionale-Rome; and Kridel Securities-Paris.
Currently an Adjunct Professor at Centenary University since 2004, Coco teaches Art Appreciation, Painting, Drawing, and History of Rock n Rap courses.
Contact: Joseph.Coco@centenaryuniversity.edu