Ron Rocco

Ron Rocco (1953- ) is an american sculptor and multi-media artist.

Rocco was born in Ft. Hood, Texas in 1953, grew up in the Bronx, New York in the ethnically Italian neighborhood surrounding Arthur Avenue. He studied the Natural Sciences at Fordham University in New York City, and the Visual Arts at the State University of New York at Purchase, with sculptor Tal Streeter, photographer/musician John Cohen, and printmaker Antonio Frasconi, receiving a Bachelor in Fine Arts degree.

Rocco undertook graduate studies at CAVS /The Center for Advanced Visual Study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology under the instruction of filmmaker Ricky Leacock, technological-anthropologist, Heather Lechtman, and as teaching assistant to the program's director and German Group Zero artist, Otto Piene.

At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Mr. Rocco developed a digital video image processing system, which he employed in collaborations with musician David Hykes and the Harmonic Choir, as well as with Chinese-American choreographer, Mel Wong and his Dance Company. The fruit of his collaboration with Mr. Wong was presented on tour in the United States, and was a performance that New York Times dance critic, Jennifer Dunning called "one of the most successful integrations of video imagery and modern dance". This performance, which was funded by a 1984 Inter-Arts Grant from The National Endowment for the Arts with generous support from SONY Corporation, may well have been the first live application of computer generated video imagery for dance.

Rocco's large-scale, site specific installations include The Horizon is Nothing More than the Limits of Our Sight.

For Ithaca, New York's Ithaca Festival, Ron Rocco working closely with architects, engineers, and city planners creating Altar, a 30xl5x8 foot matrix of PVC tubing, stainless steel cables, and aluminum fittings suspended five stories above the downtown shopping promenade for the "Celebration Ithaca" arts festival.

In 1989 he was commissioned by the ArtGarden Foundation of Amsterdam to create a major work expressing the unique relationship between the Netherlands and the sea. Waterline Project, three sculptures of steel, glass, wood, fiberglas, living vegetation and electric light, juxtaposed the earth, sea, and sky in a vivid, shifting interplay of sightlines and daylight. In 1996 he participated in a group exhibition at the Rotunda Gallery, New York.

Rocco produced subsequent projects for the Ithaca Festival and the Atlanta Arts Festival. He has created works in cities including Tempe, Arizona; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Banff, Alberta, Canada; and Berlin, Germany, among others. His sculptures were acquired by the Washington State Arts Council "Art in Public Places Program" and by the Berlinische Galerie, in Berlin, Germany as well as by private collections in the United States, Europe, and Japan.

He has received grants from The National Endowment for the Arts, Art Matters, New York Foundation for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, The Creative and Performing Arts Council of Cornell University and the Netherland-America Foundation.

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