Joe Ciardiello

Ciardiello attended a Catholic grammar school and was accepted into the High School of Art and Design. When Ciardiello was a senior in high school, he was setting his sights on becoming a cartoonist, until Murray Tinkelman came to the school as a guest lecturer. After hearing his lecture and looking at his drawings, Ciardiello decided that Tinkelman's approach as an illustrator offered more possibilities for him than cartooning. When he enrolled in the Parsons School of Design, it was as an illustration major. At Parsons he met his second important influence on his work, his figure drawing instructor, Jim Spanfeller through whom he learned a love of drawing in an expressive way. Other instructors at Parsons included Bernie D’Andrea, Lorraine Fox and Maurice Sendak. Ciardiello would graduate from Parson in 1974 and receive his BFA in 1975.

In 2019, Fantagraphics published Ciardiello's A Fistful of Drawings, a collection produced over the previous five years inspired by Westerns.

In 2016, Ciardiello won the Hamilton King Award, which is the highest award the Society of Illustrators can bestow to a member. The award was presented on behalf of Ciardiello's work illustrating the book On The Snap by Brian Case.

In 1999, Ciardiello had a one-man exhibition of his works Portraits of Blues and Other Images at the Museum of American Illustration, which is housed by the Society of Illustrators, New York City.

After the publication of Like Jazz, Ciardiello began illustrating for the Capitol Blues Collection for Capitol Records, which lead to 23 illustrated volumes, including the first in the series T-Bone Walker The Complete Capitol / Black & White Recordings (1995)[1] and the last in that series, CAPITOL BLUES #23: VARIOUS ARTISTS Chicago Blues Masters Volume Three (1997).[2]

World's Best Reading Series, Reader's Digest, 1990-1999 These books, re-published from the original texts were illustrated by Ciardiello and distributed by the publisher to a mail order book club

In the late 1980s, Ciardiello began work on a series of black and white drawings of his favorite jazz musicians, such as Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Charles Mingus, Thelonious Monk and others. The drawings were compiled into a book, with poems by John Kruth, and art directed by Patrick Flynn. The book, titled Like Jazz was published in 1992.

Ciardiello's work first appeared in print in 1974 during his senior year in college, in Crawdaddy Magazine, who's offices were a few blocks from Parsons and which Rolling Stone credited with being the first serious journal dedicated to rock and roll. The illustration was a black and white depiction of Lenny Bruce. Another early client who published Ciardiello was Penthouse Magazine. Scholastic Magazines was also an early client for the young artist. His first piece accepted into the Society of Illustrators Annual Exhibition was in 1975.

Joe Ciardiello (born 1953) is an American illustrator who has been the recipient of numerous awards from the Society of Illustrators. Ciardiello works primarily in pen and ink on water color paper and is best known for his work as a portrait artist, for clients such as American Express, Barnes & Noble.com, Capitol Records, The Folio Society, The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Rolling Stone, Smithsonian and Time.

Ciardiello was born in 1953 in Staten Island, New York. His grandparents were Italian immigrants who settled on the Island and his parents were born there as well. His father, Joseph A. Ciardiello was the youngest of four boys. He operated a dental practice in Staten Island., but also had a lifelong interest in drawing.