Meet Thomas Ferraro, community artist

People expect to see art in a gallery or a museum. However, artists know that art is everywhere. They live with it. The challenge is to get everyone else to experience it in their lives. Erie painter Tom Ferraro accepted that challenge when he decided to take his skills, and love of art, into schools and into the streets.

The journey began with a rundown warehouse at East 11th and Holland streets that he and fellow artist Jon Bowser bought in 2007 — unused for about 30 years — Ferraro called the place “a disaster.” Volunteers helped transform it from urban blight to an urban art venue for gallery shows by local groups and schools.

“Our first exhibition there in 2009 was called “Nuts & Bolts,” Ferraro says. The event featured works by artists with the Northwestern PA Artist Association, of which Ferraro was a co-director. “It was a magical show, and it stunned people in Erie and opened their eyes to what can be possible with some of the empty space that we have.”

Ferraro and his wife, Cathy, also an artist, lived in the building’s upstairs apartment, but he realized his goal wasn’t to run a gallery. During the same period, he began doing art residencies at local schools, and that opened up a new direction for him.

“The goal is to relate art to core subjects like math, or language arts, like I’m doing at Parker Middle School. It is about driving ideas and getting kids thinking. That’s where I found my interests moving,” Ferraro says.

While he still was painting, working with students showed him how to get others involved with art. Some mural work led him to create the “Looking Glass Art Project” with fellow artist Ed Grout. The two go into senior centers to discuss public art projects based on their life experience.

“We get seniors to recognize they are still vital and have legacy to share. They love the art making and how it plays into their lives,” he says.

One project at Lifeworks Erie dealt with technology, and seniors told Ferraro they felt disconnected from it. The artists showed them how their generation set the stage for modern technology. “We took them from Morse Code to party lines on telephones into Facebook and texting. They recognized that they were a part of it — and still are,” he says.

Ferraro came to see that public art reached people who otherwise might not have an interest in a painting or sculpture.

“Public art is very special because you don’t have to walk into a gallery or museum and feel intimidated as some do when they are looking at art,” he says. “It allows them to engage in it whenever, at their own leisure. Sometimes people are not interested at all, but they find themselves over a period of time with repeated contact to a piece, it starts to speak to them.”

In 2015, a multimural project in the neighborhood around St. Stanislaus Catholic Church at East 13th and Wallace streets became one of Ferraro’s largest public art endeavors. He and Grout worked with a neighborhood group to create four murals on buildings in the area that reflected the impact that immigrants from Poland, Bhutan, Nepal and Somalia have had on the neighborhood. Members of those groups helped in the artistic process.

“We get the ideas from the people in the community. If they want to help create it, great, but if not, we’ll do it. The neat thing is that the property owners improve their areas. We saw the same thing with a similar project in the Little Italy area. Art is helping to accelerate the changes,” Ferraro says.

Ferraro believes that art is a positive catalyst for life-improving changes to an urban downtown. He saw it firsthand in the 1980s when he lived in Soho and worked in a restaurant for a developer who encouraged artists to move into his properties. He remembers, “once the artists were there, things started to happen.”

“I have a real interest in urban development. That is why I still live downtown. The downtown is really the heartbeat of a city and a region,” Ferraro says.

Though Ferraro sold his interest in the Holland Street property in 2012, he and his wife have been putting their artistic touches on a three-story house downtown built around the turn of the last century.

The house had a connection to Erie’s art scene that they didn’t learn about until after they bid on it. As it turns out, it was once the residence of Fred and Dorothy Livingston. Fred Livingston was an art critic for the Erie Times-News as well as a sculptor.

“When we mentioned the house to other artists, many of them said they had been in the house many times. They (the Livingstons) lived here for about 30 to 40 years. That kind of gave us a good feeling about the house,” Ferraro says.

The beautiful interior of the home is full of ornate dark wood trim, pocket doors and art but not just their own work. Every room has pieces by fellow artists that the Ferraros have come to know.

“It is like our friends are here,” Ferraro says. The works give him comfort and inspiration.

The next big public art project the community will see in 2016 from Ferraro and two other artists involves students from the Erie County Technical School. Three large pieces focus on Erie’s industrial heritage, past, present and future. The art will be placed across the city, from the Erie Playhouse’s warehouse at East 12th and Brandes streets, to the PA Labor & Industry building at West 13th and Holland streets, to West 12th Street and Greengarden Road.

A grant from the National Endowment for the Arts — and additional support from many local partners, including the PA Council on the Arts, Erie Arts & Culture, United Way and local manufacturers — made the project possible. Ferraro says the students benefit from learning workforce development skills, as the project involves seven different school labs that typically don’t interact.

Ferraro’s own interactions, with seniors, students and other artists, belie the stereotype of the artist as loner. He thinks he is “a fairly easy person to work with” as he develops more and more public art. Ferraro still paints in the privacy of his studio but sees the public art side stoking a more enriched place for everyone to live and work together.

“Communities all over have collaborative art projects that are sometimes interdisciplinary — art, music and dance. It’s happening more and more, and it’s becoming more valuable to communities to support it,” he says. LEL