March 2009: Contemporary, Emerging Franco Muscarella, The Real Deal
by Julie Ressler
Published: Monday, March 2, 2009 11:18 AM CST
Contemporary artist Franco Muscarella was born on the North Shore and has lived almost every moment there, never travelling further south than Urbana for a brief stay at the University of Illinois.
He went to Deerfield High School and then on to the Art Institute. His art mentor from high school, David Ritter, is still his fine friend, but now they meet as fellow travelers to the Elysian Fields.
Franco’s work sometimes reveals an inner darkness. He has been to interior places few of us ever acknowledge. He has seen the beast within that we all have but rarely have to meet face-to-face.
We are protected by our good manners, our duties, our “shoulds” that no “genius” artist can allow in his life. He has taken the dark and the light into himself, digested it, “Franco-ed” it. His work tells us how we can think in his new way. Many find this new way exhilarating, sometimes frightening. His
work is primarily pen and ink but has now morphed into fabulous watercolors and some mixed media. Plus, he is a fine poet and songwriter on several musical instruments.
His family thought he was always very different, and sure enough he was. He was experiencing genius. He channels the universe direct. In ancient Rome, genius was thought to be some sort of spirit apart from the human who came and interceded and made a work extraordinary, wonderful or whatever.
Genius is a separate force. This leads to the humility and modesty that is truly Franco.
He knows that what happens on his paper comes through him but is not of him People are enveloped
in his process as he tells them how and why is does certain things. How and why he wants just that
title for that specific work. Everyone starts to experience his enchantment.
He often says, “I don’t want to look at too many other artists’ work because I might inadvertently
copy them. Then everyone will say, ‘Oh, he just copied so-and-so.’ I want my work to be original.
An original that hasn’t happened before. That’s what I thought at first, but then I started to look at some of Utamaro’s watercolor prints. I needed to look at them. I needed to see how his colors worked.
I started to feel confidant that I was going to make my own art no matter what I saw.”
Franco is selling well because his pieces tap into a vast universal psyche.
The North Shore writer Jan La Rosa visited “Fortitude” in a gallery window every day and took
strength from the one leaf and the survival of the tree in Franco’s piece. She had lost her home in a lightening strike –all her memorabilia, her treasures, were gone in that moment. Her children were frightened and exhausted. She looked at that tree, still standing, and knew that she could keep going.
She bought a print. She could live with what she had but needed to look at that tree to go forward.
Before Franco’s first show at the Andersonville Galleria, contemporary art critic Everett Campbell
looked through a folio of his pen and inks. Everett said, without hesitation, “This guy’s the real deal.
I’d be glad to write about him.”That was the beginning. It is now eighteen months later,and Franco
sold, to date, twenty-five paintings and numerous prints ;he attended many juried art shows, and
won third place in Highland Park’s Anatomically Correct Art Walk. Franco is playing with his paints
and pencils (an artist’s work) on a daily basis to develop and expand his range. He is producing
art that speaksdirectly to our spirit. Why does he do it? He has to. He is Franco Muscarella.
Contributed by Julie Ressler, President Wilmette Arts Guild, julie@julieressler.com.
