The “Full Moon Series”: a 50th Anniversary with artist Joseph Coco

Artist, musician, and Centenary professor Joseph Coco will discuss his “Full Moon Series,” wherein for the last half-century he has painted a synopsis of the concluding year during the full moon of December. Since 2000, Professor Coco has also been including January full moons, with an image that anticipates what the year ahead will look like. His lecture will cover his earliest works from Flagstaff, Arizona in 1972 through his most recent in Frenchtown, New Jersey in 2023. Art History Ph.D Alexandra Olnuf calls the series “a milestone, a first of its kind, unequaled in the history of world art.” No other artist has ever dedicated 50 years to this subject, which includes Coco’s interests in archetypes, astronomy, biography, geography, ritual, synesthesia, and music as principal themes.

Joseph Coco, a native of Passaic, New Jersey, earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Northern Arizona University as well as a Master of Fine Arts from Rutgers University – Mason Gross. His art is in the collections of California’s MOMA-SF, LA County & DeYoung Museums; New York’s Whitney & Guggenheim; Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art & Museum Of Fine Art; Pennsylvania’s Philadelphia, Allentown, & Michener Museums; New Jersey’s Newark, Rutgers-Zimmerli, Paterson & Lambert Castle Museums. As a versatile and prolific singer/songwriter, he has 800 songs and 58 albums to his name and has performed at New York’s Folk City, L.A.’s Troubadour, Switzerland’s Atlantis Club, Sicily’s prestigious Capo D’ Orlando Blues Festival, and Rome’s Teatro Sistina.