Donald Gerola “Summer Sands”

Ashok Jain Gallery

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Gerola began his artistic career of 44 years in 1974. His choice to abandon a career in physics was the beginning of a rebellious streak against his controlled upbringing and the social norms of the time.

His formative years were spent in Greenwich Village, sketching hundreds of drawings and by night turning them into hard-edged graphics. These evolved into large- scale supergraphic murals and canvases that turned into commissioned works for Corporations and the interior design market. In 78, Gerola pioneered his signature paintings when he became fascinated with the patterns on his studio’s floor formed from the combination of broken sand bags with floodwaters. Trained to solve problems and experiment, Donald discovered how to preserve the unique moiré patterns with translucent finite layers of acrylates, minerals and pigments. Expressions of an imaginary universe - celebrating earth, water, and cosmos - are embedded in his textural radiant paintings.

Throughout the 80s, from his Edgewater studio/gallery, Gerola, a precursor of Public art projects, produced his sculptural installations: ‘The Ninth Volume’ the first computer-controlled laser, LED, fire and water sculpture in the US, and large scale mobiles with woven components. Meanwhile he pursued his study of abstractions from hard-edged architectural compositions to multilayered colored moments-in-time, which he exhibited and sold from his galleries

in Edgewater, NJ and 87th street, Manhattan, NY.

By the 90s, disillusioned by the New York art scene, Gerola left urban life for rural Pennsylvania building by oneself his studio/home compound (part of the oldest working waterwheel in the country). There he pursued his self-funded dream to explore sculpture in the landscape. From maquettes to prototypes, Donald gave birth to his monumental A36 steel sculptures, static and kinetic alike. Incorporating his engineering background he was able to conceive forms and curvaceous structural compositions that defied gravity and nature’s forces, likewise his large site-specific weaving installations, always in total harmony with nature and the built environment.

Through a life commitment to be a producing independent artist and his early call to public art; the self-taught maverick continues to be a non-conformist multidisciplinary artist with a genius ability to visit a space or site and instantly see and explain to the client his vision. Today he offers the art lovers the unique opportunity to witness the world through his eyes.

Imagination, scientific rigor, risk-taking, idealism and instinct are the primal conductors that drive the relentless practice to its ultimate aesthetic ending. Art, after all is the work of a living individual in context.