In a Drop of Water

A Drop of Water

Kean University Karl and Helen Burger Gallery

Fall 2025

A Drop of Water

The work in this show spans the last four years. This pictorial investigation, though, has been largely the same since I was a child. Water has always been central to my work, not so much as a form or object but instead as a framework, an environment. These works range in concept of scale from the microscopic to the macroscopic. My projects jump back and forth between sculpture and painting. It is a tension between real and contrived space. Sculpture shares the space with us. Painting describes its own space. I want to create a tangible object that exists in a contrived space. I love the idea of a drop of water. It is a distinct environment. It is an object but also a window into a space. It is essential and it is fragile. It is like an artwork: a closed system, unaware of the viewer. It is a stage, a world. A drop of water has its own physical properties, viscosity. Objects within exist in not quite the same way as they do in our space. It is an apt metaphor for the way I think about art. It feels infinitely scalable. The art piece is a droplet, I am a droplet. My community is a droplet. The world is a droplet and onwards. It is insignificant and it is everything.

Joseph Castronova is an artist, educator and environmentalist. He holds a BFA (sculpture) and an MFA (painting) from The School of Visual Arts (SVA) in NYC. Joseph has held multiple positions in art education and administration over the past twenty years, from teacher to mentor to director of duCret School of Art. He has worked as an educator, custom carpenter, graphic designer amongst other things; always shifting between 2D and 3D in his work. He has received multiple awards for his fine art, graphic design and his carpentry, including the Weissglass Purchase Prize at the Museum of Arts and Sciences in Staten Island, NY.

More recently, Joseph has concentrated solely on his fine art work. Participating in Community Art projects, focused on social and environmental justice, in the last ten years has had a transformative effect on his work. Projects like Windows of Understanding (WOU), the Middlesex Greenway Art Cycle project and the Residency at First Presbyterian Church of Metuchen have given Joseph the opportunity to work one-on-one with the people in his community. This year he worked, through WOU, with area Girl Scout troops to build a multimedia display focused on the local ecosystem. The ‘Local Eco’ project continues this Fall with a solo show and environmental symposium in Metuchen as part of Mr. Castronova’s final project for his Rutger’s Environmental Stewards certification.

Since 2017, Joseph has had eleven solo exhibitions as well as participating in many group shows. Venues have ranged from M Galleries in Washington NJ to Art Lab in Mendham and Art Alliance of Monmouth County in Red Bank. Co!!ective, an art group he is a founding member of, is showing at the Center for Contemporary Art in Bedminster this Fall.

Joseph considers himself a “builder” of paintings. His methodology is materials driven: always looking for a surprise approach to using things. “I like to use and reuse my materials for multiple purposes: as stencil, as tool, as collage until they eventually become the art.” “I try to think of the studio as a forest ecosystem with me amongst the leaf litter.” The work draws on a lot of subject matter ranging from graffiti to science to abstraction, always speaking about the riotous simultaneity one finds in nature. Color, form and chance describe a world suggestively earth-like but not, a sphere where the physics are slightly atilt.

Website: www.josephcastronova.com

Instagram: @josephcastronova