This weeks Highlighted Artist of the Week is Jeff Geraci.
Jeff Geraci is an environmental scientist who has studied the Salton Sea for two decades, having lived in the Coachella Valley since 1975. He graduated from the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Academy in 1995, then later graduated from UC Riverside with a B.S. in Environmental Science. He has appeared in Palm Springs Life Magazine on occasion for his work with Salton Sea, and his numerous op-eds concerning the sea can be found in the Desert Sun Newspaper online.
For years, Jeff experimented to find a useful purpose for the hundreds of millions of discarded barnacle shells that line the shores of the Salton Sea, until he developed and perfected a process of using the shells to create mosaics. His works are often mistaken for paintings at first, until a closer examination reveals the intricacy of this labor-intensive process. He creates his medium by hand, collecting just the right shells for the best results. The shells must be washed, decontaminated, rinsed, sun dried, crushed, re-rinsed, all foreign material removed, sieved, sorted, pigmented and then dried; at this point, the shells are finally ready to be used. He must then place the shells by hand and meticulously arrange them into the images that you see.
The mosaics take one to three months to complete, requiring about 65,000 to 100,000 shells. All of Jeff’s images are created face down and in reverse on a flat treated surface; that means he never knows exactly how the mosaic is going to turn out until he’s finished and the piece is turned over (the ‘reveal’ is always a very stressful and nerve racking moment!). And since he’s color blind, he must first sketch out a few preliminary color schemes, at which time his wife will advise him on which colors simply don’t work (what may look like tanned skin to Jeff turns out to be an olive green!). His style is one that allows the viewer to view the image from afar.
Jeff continues to work as a scientist, creating mosaics whenever he can. His other interests include shooting, fishing, high-powered rocketry, playing the bagpipes, novel writing and art.
