ABOUT
Joshua Winer,Artist
Artist · Architect · Educator
ARTIST'S STATEMENT
A Life Between Art & Architecture
Art has always been at the center of my heart and mind.
I grew up in a family that values creativity and personal expression.
My mother and grandmother were both artists. My grandmother explored Impressionist painting. My mother wrote whimsical children’s stories and poems, and illustrated these as children’s books.
I discovered my passion for creating art when I was a child growing up in Wayland, Massachusetts. My brothers and I loved shared adventures with our father, exploring the world and seeing new places. In addition to my family, I was fortunate to have two powerful, loving women as creative mentors. Margaret Hoenig taught me the joys of ceramics and imagination in her basement pottery studio. Lois Tarlow inspired me by her example of a life of freedom in celebration of nature and beauty. And my friend Peter Hoenig was always there to share in endless creative journeys.
I majored in Painting at Yale University and graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts. My roommate, Los Angeles architect John Kaliski, and I shared the study of art, architecture, and history. We collaborated on making amusing and provocative community art projects, and formed a lifelong friendship.
Following Yale, I explored Europe to expand my knowledge of landscape painting and discovered the magic and powerful beauty of mosaics and frescos in public buildings. This experience led me to the study of Architecture at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, where I graduated with a Masters in Architecture.
My Harvard classmates have remained colleagues and friends and travelers on our mutual creative journeys, and also take time to hike, travel and vacation together.
After graduation, I worked as an architect for four years in Cambridge, Massachusetts. During this time I entered into competitions to design and paint large architectural murals on public walls and won several of these. I created half of dozen large trompe l’oeil facades, combining local architecture with history.
The best known was a 60 foot square mural on Newbury Street in Boston’s Back Bay that celebrates the arts and history of Boston. This led to me forward to embrace my career as an independent artist. I have continued with this work for more than 4 decades.
After graduation, I worked as an architect for four years in Cambridge, Massachusetts. During this time I entered into competitions to design and paint large architectural murals on public walls and won several of these. I created half of dozen large trompe l’oeil facades, combining local architecture with history.
The best known was a 60 foot square mural on Newbury Street in Boston’s Back Bay that celebrates the arts and history of Boston. This led to me forward to embrace my career as an independent artist. I have continued with this work for more than 4 decades.
I’m passionate about creating artwork that is inspiring and educational, detailed with images of figures and nature that celebrate the aspirations and culture of local communities. My designs are original and site specific, creatively exploring architectural settings and viewing experiences. Much of my work includes community participation in a variety of ways, including design workshops, ceramic tile fabrication, hands-on painting and mosaic fabrication.
I often collaborate with artists and design professionals, including architects, landscape architects, building developers, and interior designers. My two closest collaborators are Boston artists David Fichter and Yetti Frenkel, We have worked together on projects locally and nationally, making mosaic murals and painted murals on monumental public walls. My friend Catherine Joyce has provided support and wisdom for two decades of my creative journey.
I have worked as an Artist-in-Residence in more than 50 schools in Massachusetts and across the United States, on projects of all kinds. I work closely with school communities of all levels on teaching, design, fabrication and installation of painted murals and mosaic murals. Working together we create permanent works of legacy art on school entry walls and in school lobbies. I love the energy and passion of the students working with their parents and teaches on these imaginative site-specific projects.
This work has also led to opportunities to create community public art internationally. My first international project was designing and painting wall decoration for Chateau de Picomtal, a Renaissance castle in the French Alps which my dear friends Sharon and Jacques restored to create a magnificent B&B. I combined 10 years of work at the castle with visits to see my son Charles who lived nearby. He would often stay at the castle and work side by side on the scaffolding with me. Our travels in France and Italy seeing the great works of art and architecture inspired his love of travel and creativity, and continues to shape his stories as he pursues his career as a screenwriter.
To celebrate my 60th birthday, and at the invitation of my Wayland friend Dr. Mark Vanelli who was working in Bangkok as a United States State Department international psychiatrist, I developed a volunteer community mosaic program in Chiang Mai, Thailand, called ‘The Peace Train Global Community Mosaics Project’.
I worked with community members to create three large exterior community mosaics in three different settings: An Orphanage High School;
A Psychiatric Hospital; and the Chiang Mai School For the Deaf. I created a Kickstarter Campaign to provide financial support to bring my son Charles and my niece Molly as assistants for this project. Their kindness and energy was invaluable and much appreciated. I also worked as an Artist in Residence at the Shanghai American School creating a mosaic on ‘Past, Present and Future’, with Molly, who speaks Mandarin, as my teaching assistant.
My work and artistic practice continues to fill me with joy, as I work and travel and teach and make new friends and follow my heart.
Every day is a new adventure into the possibilities of artistic creation in the public realm!
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
Welcome to My Studio
Every mural and mosaic begins here. My studio is where ideas are explored, designs are refined, and craftsmanship comes to life. Surrounded by sketches, color studies, scale models, reference materials, and works in progress, I develop each commission from its earliest concept through fabrication, carefully considering its relationship to architecture, materials, and place.
Whether creating a monumental public mural, a handcrafted mosaic, or a community art project, this studio is where vision, creativity, and decades of experience come together before each artwork is installed in its permanent home.
AT WORK
In the studio, in the community
Nearly every project is made with the people who will live with it — students, congregations, hospital patients, volunteers
and fellow artists, from Massachusetts to Chiang Mai.
‘Treasures Above and Below Our Shores’ — the finished mosaic laid out in the Waltham studio before installation, Marblehead, MA
