and spent long periods of time with my paternal grandparents. I attended a one-room schoolhouse with eight to 12 other students of different ages, until the 4th day of my attendance when I accidentally hit the ear of a classmate with a stick. I was pulled out and kept home, where free play became my default setting. I befriended the hummingbirds, mango trees, black bean plants, crayfish, chickens, and rocky rivers until they smelled like me and I like them. The geography was my friend and not other children my age. This normalcy was torn when I landed in Elizabeth at age ten. The stark contrast between the hibiscus and wet earth to the smell of the chemical plants and refineries, and the move towards an indoor life with a TV and six hours of schooling split me in half.

It has taken a lot of work to accept this new world, but the time in my studio, after the surgery, has collapsed both worlds. A sense of Caujery has returned, not dressed in a literal memory, memories have always been there, but in living forms that fill my torso with air. The feeling in the studio is hard to describe because in its invisibility it has mass and weight in my torso and it feels like something alive and breathing.

My practice is to conjure Caujeri and to give it a temporary form. My dad’s body reminds me of the topography of Caujeri. In my youth, I would push small pieces of wood shaped like prisms over his body and imagine they were the trucks that had overturned in the hills we traveled through, before reaching the valley.

These works are also a way to bring to life his loving gentle patience into my studio. The caressing of colors, scratching of line, and constant layering and excavation of the surface, are methods of activating my father, grandparents and the ecology of Caujeri. Layering for optical effects is not the intent; the intent is to caress over time the surface until a presence appears and my heart opens just a bit more.

Bocio Explains to Tintoretto
I caress the surface of the invisible
The way, blood, urine or semen
Might cover wood and fabric
Some fluids holding on to their forms
And others easily diffusing into pores
Each caress moving through time
And drying their own way
Animating something inside the trunk
Or inside me
I don’t know which way the door opens anymore

Patinas of breathing memory
Layers talking in whispers
Sounds gently stroking the inner ear
Stereocilia barely moving
Ephemeral secret shapes, hiding under the lake
Layers collapsing the future into the past
Pouring milk over black stones and raw canvas
To hear its sounds echo inside the cave
To see it breathe again
To feel we are all dancing the same dance

Cuppari completed his education in Italy as a mechanical engineer, but realized early on that engineering was not what he wanted to do with his life. Moving to New York in 1957, Cuppari began a formal study of painting and music. He recorded several compositions and painted exhaustively while working to support his growing family.

Cuppari found his first opportunity to exhibit his work in 1979, when he bought an old historical building in Elizabeth, NJ. He transformed this building into an “All Arts Center,” where he co-founded two galleries through the federal C.I.T.A. program. He recruited a group of artists and set them up with studios and workshops. Through 1983, Cuppari organized monthly art openings and weekly poetry readings for this group and the surrounding community.

In 1982, by invitation, he was one of the exhibitors at the “13 Collection” gala opening at Sotheby’s New York, alongside contemporaries such as Warhol and De Kooning. In 1985, Cuppari curated his “More is More” show which showcased works from his acclaimed “Forces of Nature” and other series.

For the next 20 years, Cuppari isolated himself to compose music, write poetry and paint full time. His output was tremendous through these years as was his passion to express his innermost convictions.