The Power of Facebook, A Visit with Artist Joe Gemellaro by Paul Marotta
Facebook. Social media. Online networking. It's replaced the once simple act of picking up the phone and saying "Hey man, haven't heard from you in a dog's age and I just wanted to see how things were going." It is in its own way however pretty much the same thing.
When I reconnected with an age old friend from literally 35 years ago on Facebook last year, well, it was a cool thing, fun to see where he and others have ended up, what they've done with their lives in the intervening decades.
What I was not prepared for was what happened after that. The normal procedure seems to be people collect friends on Facebook, old and new, check in, and move on. When Joe Gemellaro however sent me an email saying he wanted to get together, that he had been watching my own postings paying close attention to my photography work, I was a bit surprised, pleasantly so.
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Joe is an artist and invited me out to his house to see his artwork and maybe help him with a project or two, all of which which seemed like an interesting enough thing to do. I've been given the gift of time lately and it's allowed me to explore all kinds of new things, including the development of among other things my own art and business, photography. Joe offered to make lunch, asking me if brown rice and mushrooms would be ok with me since he was eating healthy these days. So, I said, terrific, sounds great.
Compared to the 35 years we had been out of touch, the nearly one hour drive out to his house seemed like a small distance to travel. Frankly, my last recollection of hanging out with Joe in middle school wasn't a good one, through no fault of his own however. Seems it was mid-winter and we were out in his front yard, making snowballs and throwing them at passing cars on his street, common enough past time for rambunctious adolescent young boys in the late 1960s. The problem though, was that there must have been some broken glass in the snow: my hands were frozen (yes, no gloves, hey I was what, 12?) and my snowballs were turning bright red. I looked down at my hands and one was very badly deeply cut, requiring a trip to the hospital and stitches, the works…yes, bad memory.
35 years later, I arrive at Joe's doorstep for lunch, camera gear in hand, ready to check out his art, have some lunch, hang out, and move on. What I discovered tho was a far deeper trip down memory lane than I expected. Joe's hospitality was gracious, lunch was terrific, his blind dog Rocky was curious enough about me, and his art was terrific. More than that, a lot can happen in 35 years.
Seems somewhere along the way Joe had a work place accident which he really doesn't want to talk about, mostly it seems he just doesn't want to burden a guest with that stuff and most likely he just wants to move past it all. He's retired, and has dedicated himself to his art.
The dining room is stacked high, I mean piled high with so much of his work, he is prolific, that it's a tad difficult to wade through it all and find things. He needs help scanning, shooting and documenting it all, and much of it goes back to his student days at Mass College of Art and the Museum School. We wade through some of it, I offer to take some pieces to see if I can scan some things or shoot them for him to help out, and then ask again about my ulterior motive. Can I see his studio? Can I shoot him while he works? Artistic process has always fascinated me and this is clearly an artist whose work and process need to be captured, nurtured and helped along.
So, with that, we head upstairs to his work space. It's a large room at the end of the hallway and filled. I mean it is filled from floor to ceiling with as much stuff related to his work and music passion as you can imagine. Yes, music. When we were on the phone last week arranging all this, he asked me to hold on for a second while he got his dobro to play for me over the phone.
I won't duplicate here what's recently already been written about Joe. He recently drew a portrait of boxing great Rocky Marciano which was unveiled and hung in the Brockton Public Library (see links below) and his uncle, Jerry Zullo, was Marciano's publicist.
Joe showed me a piece he had been working on of Barack Obama while I snapped away, but then he was anxious to get down to business. Out came the dobro and stories of playing gigs with friends, concerts he had been to, and more. The passion in his voice and in his eyes equaled and even surpassed that of when he was drawing. Then he plugged in an electric Fender Stratacaster guitar into a 1962 amp and it all looked so familiar.
As he carefully explained to me its provenance, the revelation of it all came flooding back. We were both friends it seems with a young guitarist and bassoonist in high school, Dave Douglass. Dave was diabetic and according to Joe, slipped and fell, and died of complications of traumatic head injury. And some years after that Dave's father gave some of his gear to Joe.
Well it seems this stuff has all found its way to a good home with Joe, and I'm glad for that. I'm also glad to have renewed this old friendship with Joe and look forward to helping him toward building both his ability to somehow merchandize his artwork along the way as well as perhaps just catalog his many decades of work and creativity.
Joe's portrait of Rocky Marciano and more of his work can be found on his own web site at www.joegem.com.
A recent piece in the Eagle Tribune with additional details about the Rocky Marciano portrait: Eagle Tribune
Artist Joe Gemellaro
Artist Joe Gemellaro's studio
PerfectBokehPhotography
Paul Marotta