About
Nicholas Rispoli is an artist, producer, educator, and novelist of Lebanese-Syrian and Italian heritage based in Cleveland & New York. His mythology of figures probes lineage, embodiment, and the sacred through worlds that are playful, transgressive, and in constant transmutation -- suspended between a godless philosophy and a hopeful beyond.
His work has been published in OUT Magazine and Evergreen Review. Solo exhibitions include Transmutation (2015) and Conversations with Strangers (2019) at Paul Calendrillo NY; group shows include Understory Gallery, Cleveland; David & Schweitzer Contemporary Gallery, Brooklyn; and the Squirts Festival at La MaMa Theatre, NYC, as part of Mariam Bazeed's peace camp org. He has held residencies at HANGAR Center of Artistic Research, Lisbon; Visual Muze, NYC; and La Escuela de Diseño de Altos de Chavón, Dominican Republic, where he later returned to teach ceramic sculpture.
Committed to community arts and education, Nicholas partnered with Window Studio in Brooklyn to lead programming, a project that received Brooklyn Arts Council grants for local initiatives. He has taught at Pace University, New York Academy of Art, and Marymount Manhattan College - Bedford Hills Prison College Program. He also served as Assistant Artistic Director of the New York State Summer School of the Arts (NYSSSA), guiding a statewide visual arts intensive for high school artists.