Tagged Opioid Crisis

Graduate Student Biennial 2019

Graduate Student Biennial 2019

The Clay Studio
137-139 North Second Street
Philadelphia, PA 19106

Currently on display from:

May 31, 2019-July 14, 2019

 

Timelapse of my installation at The Clay Studio in Philadelphia, PA. USA

for The Graduate Student Biennial Exhibition 2019.

The Clay Studio | Graduate Student Biennial 2019

Ciro Di Ruocco

 

 

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Medium & Materials:
Porcelain, hand blown glass, LED light

Measurements:
15" x 7" x 31"

Date:
2019

Description:
I was deeply moved by “how understanding our past informs our present and, more importantly, our future.” As I researched Whitman’s work, I loved seeing how he celebrated everyone; even the “The opium-eater reclines with rigid head and just-open’d lips” from his poem “Song of Myself.” This poem is often used in the recovery community to teach addicts/alcoholics that they need to forgive and love themselves. I also identified with his ability to be of service to others in an advocacy capacity. “You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self.” I reach global audiences through contemporary activist art that touches people’s emotions and gives a voice to those who are most vulnerable. I believe graduate studies are reserved for people who aspire to change the world, and this is what I am doing.

 

Read more

Nanaimo-based ceramic artist uses pottery in fight against the opioid crisis!

‘Ceramics brought community into my life and I’m really grateful for that”

Anna Dimoff · CBC News · 

Ciro Di Ruocco, a ceramic artist and recovering addict based in Nanaimo, B.C., uses his work as a form of advocacy for the opioid crisis and other issues that impact his life like sleep disorders. (Ciro Di Ruocco/Facebook)

After a decade of battling addiction, artist Ciro Di Ruocco found community and peace at the pottery wheel.

Di Ruocco got serious about ceramic art when he was in recovery in Nanaimo, B.C., for oxycontin and fentanyl addiction.

“When the clay is spinning at the wheel I’m not in stuck my head, I’m just thinking about what’s in front of me,” he told North By Northwest producer Matthew Parsons.

“I felt the most present when I was at the pottery wheel, and I felt like I walked away — sometimes — with something to show for what I did.”

After his family and close friends hosted an intervention, Di Ruocco travelled across the continent, from Vermont to Vancouver Island, to seek treatment for his addiction.

When he got to Nanaimo, he found a drop-in pottery studio close by. He could once again try his hand at the artform he’d set aside in high school and it fit into his treatment schedule.

The seriousness of Di Ruocco’s addiction began after a soccer injury in college. He remembers the strange feeling of realizing his body was detoxing the painkillers he was taking.

“I remember waking up one day and being like, ‘Why do I keep getting the flu?’ Really I was detoxing from this medication and it feels like the flu,” he said.

“You’re not even wanting to get high in the end … It’s really hard to explain to someone, this fear of being sick that’s driving your addiction — that it’s not enjoyment, it’s torture.”

Di Ruocco’s work is his form of advocacy, and a way to express the powerlessness he felt when his friends were dying around him of overdoses.

The community he formed while living in Nanaimo helped him feel like a “functioning member of society,” he said, after years of isolating addiction.

“What I found through art was I had something interesting to talk about and I was able to reach an older group of people that I now have this common language with,” he said. “Ceramics brought community into my life and I’m really grateful for that.”

 

Source:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/nanaimo-based-ceramics-artist-uses-pottery-in-fight-against-the-opioid-crisis-1.4774609