John Ferdico, an art lecturer with the digital media arts program at Hawaiʻi Community College–Pālamanui in Kona, is the artist-in-residence at Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park for the month of July. Ferdico takes hyperreal model aircraft, painstakingly builds them, paints them and then uses them as a launching platform for surrealist visual experiments that both entrance and estrange.
As part of his residency, Ferdico will produce a presentation for visitors on Friday, July 20, 10 a.m. at the Kahuku Unit of Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park.
“What I try to do is make each piece appear to be this exquisitely detailed and accurate model, but with this strange marking scheme,” says Ferdico. “I suppose it is a surrealist strategy, meant to cause the viewer to reconsider the more ordinary elements seen in the juxtapositions.”
For more information about Ferdico and the presentation on July 20, see the news release from Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park and the National Parks Arts Foundation.
More about John Ferdico
Ferdico is a visual artist who was born in New York but raised in Kansas City, where he earned his bachelor of fine arts from the Kansas City Art Institute. He later earned his master of fine arts from the San Francisco Art Institute and lived in Oakland, California before moving to Hawaiʻi in 2012.
—By Thatcher Moats
