![]() Several works, including Cat Throne and Chandelier, traveled to Musée d'art moderne et contemporain (MAMCO) in Geneva and Le Consortium in Dijon, France, as part of a multicountry exhibition. The result is an extensive portfolio of striking, often thought-provoking pieces and installations exhibited at venues including MoMA the Guggenheim Museum Pratt Institute Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum the Addison Gallery of American Art the Hudson River Museum the Burchfield Penney Art Center and Cornell's Herbert F. "He impressed upon us that being an artist is a job like any other, and you work at it."Ĭecere has followed Dzubas's example ever since. Dzubas had a studio in downtown Ithaca, and "he went to work every day," Cecere says. From him, Cecere learned as much about work ethic as she did about technique. "I never thought I'd end up making sculptures."Īmong her most memorable professors was renowned abstract painter Friedel Dzubas, a visiting artist and critic at Cornell from 1970 to 1973. And no one is more surprised than she at how much she draws on the lessons of an early sculpture class. Classes in painting still influence her use of color, form, shape, and space. When her parents insisted that she choose a college with a strong arts program instead, Cecere opted for Cornell - a decision that continues to serve her well. Those experiences cemented Cecere's determination to attend art school after Andover. ![]() Art teachers at Andover recognized and nurtured Cecere's talent, and her work was displayed in campus exhibits and at local art fairs. The only child in her family to attend boarding school, at first Cecere felt she was being "sent away." Today, she acknowledges that her time at Andover "totally changed my life," giving her access to classes and opportunities she wouldn't have had at a traditional high school. "I used to paint in the basement," she recalls.Īt the recommendation of a family friend, Cecere was enrolled at Phillips Academy Andover in Massachusetts. When she learned that a neighbor taught painting classes in her garage, Cecere used her babysitting money to pay the 50 cents per lesson and buy paints and other supplies. She also had the confidence and resolve to go after what she wanted. As a child, she often chafed at traditional boundaries. You certainly don't see lace."Ĭecere grew up in Richmond, Indiana, the oldest daughter in an Italian-American family. Her public installations drive that message home by highlighting women's handicrafts in places "where you don't see many curves, natural forms, or anything organic. "These are legitimate art forms with as much value as painting or sculpting," she says. "If you had these creative impulses, the world would let you display them by knitting, embroidering, or crocheting, but that's about it."Ĭecere had bigger plans. They were safe outlets that didn't challenge anybody," she says. I was just fascinated."Īs she got older, Cecere learned that the skills and designs she admired "were never going to be considered art. "My grandmother embroidered designs on pillowcases, crocheted doilies, and made so many different things. "I was pretty young when I started getting interested in lace, embroidery, and different crafts," she says. The five-domed structure is made of white powder-coated laser-cut steel, measures 7.5 feet by 5 feet by 15 feet and, like many of Cecere's creations, has its roots in childhood memories of her grandmother. In Cleveland's Little Italy–University Circle rail station, commuters and other travelers pass under Cecere's lacy Chandelier on their way to and from the train. Her double-sided, doily-shaped bench, appropriately named Double Doily, has provided a unique, if transient, resting place near New York's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) PS1, in a public plaza in Lower Manhattan, and in Civic Center Park in Newport Beach, California. Closer to the ground, Cecere's etched and stenciled designs have adorned Jersey barriers along Manhattan's FDR Drive and are featured in laser-cut tree guards on Myrtle Avenue in Brooklyn. Her artwork has been installed in trees in Socrates Sculpture Park in Queens, attached to a baseball backstop in Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx, suspended above a courtyard at Pratt Institute Sculpture Park in Brooklyn, and hung in the gateway of a Staten Island Ferry Terminal in that borough. Cecere's giant doilies - some as large as 20 feet in diameter - have graced public spaces throughout New York City, where she has lived since graduating from Cornell.
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