Joe Waszak

I've lost track of how many times adults have asked me, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" As I've aged, I can only imagine how many responses I've pacified my elders with. It was, and is, a question that seemed tied to an imaginary line that I would someday cross. It was just something you knew when you grew up. Of all the professions that must have passed my lips, I can't ever recall answering with the word artist. I kept waiting for that line to present itself on the path of my existence. I can't say, even now, it ever did. However, as I was entering my final year at Medina High, someone showed me there was a ladder on my path. When I reached the top, I found a camera. I was shown the mystical ways of bending light to transform a moment into any of an infinite number of alternative realities. I saw new dimensions unfold around me. I knew it was something that could never be unseen. As I entered college an undecided freshmen, I realized there was nothing I wanted to major in unless it involved photography. So fate forced my hand, and I joined SUNY Cortland's small, tight knit art department. I developed a new sense of art and aesthetics as a philosophy. I came to see every artist as a lens. It has always been any artist's job to take reality and bend it to reveal greater truths. To show that the most mundane, grotesque, or unsettling realities can be made beautiful. We are all here to take the ridiculous and make it sublime.

Joe's Published Works
Badlands 1
Badlands 2
Departure
Falling
Ice Sculpture
Ice Sculpture 2
Ice Sculpture 3
Ice Sculpture 4
Orchard
Post-Ennui 1
Post-Ennui 2
Roots
Wisdom Teeth