Joseph Fiore, 83, died peacefully at home in New York City on Sept. 18. He was born on Feb. 3, 1925 in Cleveland, Ohio where he grew up and attended public schools. Immediately after graduation from high school he was drafted into the army WWII.
Joe s father was a member of the original Cleveland Orchestra, playing violin. Joe was also musical and music was always an important part of his life. He began his life as an artist as a teenager, taking classes at the Cleveland Museum of Art. After the war he used the GI Bill to become a student at Black Mountain College in North Carolina. There he studied painting and drawing with Ilya Bolotowsky and Josef Albers and during one summer, Willem De Kooning. He also studied music there and sang in the chorus with Charlotte Schlesinger. He studied one year at the California School of Fine Arts. He was then appointed teacher himself of drawing and painting at Black Mountain College where he worked until moving to New York City in 1956.
Joe became an active member of the art world there, a member of the National Academy of Art, showing in various galleries and museums and being a regular visitor himself to museums and galleries. He taught as a reverse commuter at the Philadelphia College of Art and later at the Maryland Institute of Art. He was then very involved as a working artist and as visiting and resident artist and teacher at the Artists for Environment program in what later became the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area.
Joe himself became very involved with landscape painting at that time in his own work. In 1959 Joe and his wife began spending summers in Maine and bought an old farmhouse in Jefferson where they went for 50 years. In Maine Joe was also an active member of the art community there and showed regularly in galleries and museums.
In Maine and New York he developed an interest in bird and butterfly watching and kept daily records of sightings in each place. Joe was resident artist one summer in the Dordogne, France under a program of the Parsons School. That tied in with his interest and study of Native American Art.
Joe leaves his wife Mary; their two children, Thomas and Susanna Fiore; sister, Eleanor Alexander; nieces, Karin Lohiser and Gayle Poole; two grand-nephews and one grand-niece.
Contributions may be made to Damariscotta Lake Watershed Association, P.O. Box 3, Jefferson, ME 04348 and National Academy of Art in New York City.
