CYNTHIA DIGIACOMO
Artist and designer Cynthia DiGiacomo presents images that celebrate the rugged yet fragile beauty of life by the sea. This inherent wonderment inspires DiGiacomo’s work in photographic collage utilizing printmaking, photography, paint, and encaustic. Her practice has developed organically through a great appreciation for sense of place, immersing in the environments of East End Long Island, Northern California, and the Cyclades.
My work is a tapestry of sorts – with photographic imagery as the binding thread, revealing untold stories. The sea and its surroundings, with its profound beauty and truth, are a subject central to my artistic expressions. To reveal the enduring interconnectedness and oneness between our natural world and human life, through pattern and movement found in nature, enables me to share my perspective while inviting a participant to reflect on one’s own personal experience and connection to these most precious resources – and to one another.
Favoring collage, Cynthia embraces the opportunity to share many fragments across time, place, and sentiment, expressing who she is and all that brings her here now, woven into in a single composition. The interplay of layers of images, on silk, print monotypes, paint, and crayon manifest in metaphoric abstraction. Dreamlike, each piece shifts from abstract to figurative to symbolic, offering the viewer a mirror in which to explore one’s own liminal spaces.
Cynthia’s recent expressions reflect on a part of her heritage in looking at the role of Hellenic women in weaving, pattern, and myth in ancient and contemporary Greece. Her recent solo exhibit of monotypes, Penelope’s Warp + Weft, intend to illuminate the timelessness of Hellenic women loom weavers, drawing parallels between current day weavers and weaving figures of ancient Greece, including Penelope in Homer's Odyssey and Athena and Arachne in Greek mythology. This collection is a tribute to an overlooked gender and craft in history, inspired by the remarkable women loom weavers of Naxos, Greece. The work, guided by Cynthia’s research and experience, Unraveling Laertes Shroud, Helen’s Peplos, and Panathenaea, mirror human nature and ingenuity. Utilizing discarded fabric, thread, pins, and printed news in the painting and printmaking processes, abstract movement and patterns manifest in method and metaphor. Themes from Cynthia’s investigations are also revealed through symbol, as seen in pixelization textures mirroring the relationship of ancient Greek women weaving practices to the origins of computational math.
Cynthia’s recent residencies include Ridgefield Guild of Artists, Yellow Chair Salon, Skopelos Art Foundation, and ongoing at Dan Welden Studio. Her work is found in private collections and juried exhibitions in the Northeast and California and through Art Studio Hamptons Gallery. Cynthia leads workshops in Markmaking and Printmaking without a Press: Analog + Digital Collage. DiGiacomo holds a BFA in Graphic Design with a fine art foundation and an MA in Liberal Studies. Cynthia continues her 25-year design practice and recent teaching at CCPS/Fashion Institute of Technology.
