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7 To open the door into any one of the multiple studios that have belonged to Joseph Zito over the last 35 years is to come upon a well-organized and highly personal crime scene of conflict and exorcism. Talismans and touchstones form an array of cultural obsessions and artistic inspirations that have always been a part of the visual scenery peppering every wall and surface of his various workspaces. There have been certain constants that bear noting pictures of family added to and annotated with each celebration of a new addition or a keepsake commemorating a loss postcards of favorite exhibitions by famous artists are mixed in with less well known but nonetheless still notable moments acknowledging the hard work of the small group of artists with whom he came up through the ranks. In his current studio in Red Hook Brooklyn sandwiched between other small working factories there is a Shaker-like precision and lack of pretension to the white walls and unadorned cut plywood. Signs of a carpenters hand are everywhere with carefully constructed and pragmatic forms like a large working desk peg boards drawing cabinets and hidden in a corner the occasional sleeping quarters that would be less out of place in the bow of a very small boat. The bookshelves groan with an overreach of cultural history from the Pleistocene to the Renaissance from Wyeth to Smithson and Rubens to Nauman. The CD selection is weighted heavily towards jazz bebop in particular Charlie Parker specifically organized in its own little open plywood coffin box next to a banged up CD player. It is also the studio of a metal sculptor so the anvil welders mask and heavy wooden handled hammers are not out of place. A cluster of naked light bulbs hang tangled in the large chain hoist that dominates the center of the studio like a noose. Smaller more delicate tools line the walls most of which seem to be put in their proper place with the careful forethought of a serial builder. Written with ballpoint pen in an architects precise block print there was a laundry list of favorite materials that I lifted off his desk in the early stages of this portrait of an artist organized with one single capitalized word per line like an alchemic recipe for process. IRON. COPPER. STEEL. ALUMINUM. BRONZE. LEAD. WOOD. CLOTH. WAX. CHOCOLATE. RUBBER. GLASS. HYDROSTONE.