Erminio Pinque: The Artist Behind Big Nazo - Inside Art With Michael Rose

Erminio Pinque: The Artist Behind Big Nazo - Inside Art With Michael Rose

 

If you have attended a WaterFire or scores of other events in Rhode Island in the last couple of decades, you may have run into a troop of colorful robots, aliens, and other creatures. Known as Big Nazo, these larger-than-life puppets are the brainchild of local artist Erminio Pinque. In this project, he has organized performances throughout the region and around the world. Now, through April 12, Rhode Islanders can see original drawings and artworks by Pinque in Angell Street Galleries, a new space at 324 Angell Street in the heart of the East Side.

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Pinque’s characters, executed in signature foam-sculpted costumes, are the artform with which he is most often identified. His sculptural and performance work has been seen everywhere from Japan to Portugal, and he has been featured at places like the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh, Scotland, the Montreal Comedy Festival, the Vancouver Comedy Festival, and New Orleans’ Mardi Gras Krewe of Trucks Parade, among many other credits. He is sought after for his expertise in creating public and interactive art experiences, and for many years, he taught an inventive Creature Creation course to students at RISD.

 

 

In multiple spaces at Atlantic Mills in Olneyville, Pinque and his collaborators conceive and build creatures out of foam, paint, and found objects. A hallway in the historic mill is lined with sculptural puppets designed to be worn by human actors. There are works that look like steampunk armor and others that evoke the extraterrestrial. Bulbous green noses and furrowed purple eyebrows that emerged from Pinque’s mind and pen can be seen in three dimensions. It is a showcase of Pinque’s lengthy career and his rich imagination. He recently hosted a MassArt class, with students coming from Boston to experience the spectacle.

 

A RISD alum who originally majored in Illustration, Pinque attended the school at a time when exploration across departments was encouraged. He took courses in painting and sculpture and was able to study liberal arts at Brown as well. He has been a professional artist since the 1980s so making and performing are a way of life for him. His current exhibition at Angell Street Galleries shows off the illustrative skills that shaped the foundation for this remarkable practice as an artist and performer. The two disciplines are tied together, and he says he never draws any creature he could not render in a sculptural form.

 

 

Pinque has been on the Providence scene for years. He was active in the nascent stages of AS220 in the 90s, and he is now involved on the ground floor of Angell Street Galleries too. Speaking of showing in the space, Pinque says, “It’s a new playing field for me. Exhibiting on gallery walls is not where I’m from and what I’ve done in the past. I usually gravitate towards public exhibitions, public performances, and installations that are in unexpected places. So to have a sanctioned place, walls which are designed to exhibit the work, is really unusual for me.” Pinque goes on to say that his floor-to-ceiling installation method, which includes drawings nailed directly to the wall, is his way of subverting the expected in a gallery situation.

 

The immersive installation Pinque envisioned for this show exemplifies his maximalist sensibilities. Every surface is covered and every piece of paper is a potential canvas for his creativity. Repurposed envelopes from bills are the substrate for images doodled while he was on the phone. Comics and cartoons that he has published are pinned up as well. There are also original drawings for a graphic novel he produced for the late art patron Dr. Joseph Chazan about his career and collecting. Chazan and Pinque were longtime collaborators and the artist was the subject of one of NetWorks documentaries Chazan funded.

 

 

In the show on Angell Street, viewers will find Pinque’s work displayed in its own gallery at the same time that eight other peers are exhibiting. The new space, founded by Tom Petrosino, was formerly a dentist’s office, with the examination rooms now renovated into discrete micro galleries. Alongside Pinque, work by Sage Barton, John Buron, Susan Clausen, Umberto Crenca, Richard Goulis, Chris Kilduff, Lindsay Quayle, and Ruby Goldstein can be seen. The exhibition continues through April 12, when a closing reception will take place from 5-8 pm.

 

For Pinque, art is about sharing and about making work accessible to people, whether on the street in a performance or in a free publication. He has been shaping the Providence art scene with his interactive art for decades and his current show highlights his extensive creative practice and his remarkably productive artistic career.

 

Learn more about Erminio Pinque at www.bignazo.com, and plan your visit to Angell Street Galleries at www.angellstreetgalleries.com.