“Do we want to simply retreat to our studios and make art, or do we want to jump in and try to do something about this?”
Hysterical Coney Island is a unique, personal story of how two artists and their colleagues made an impact on the cultural life of New York City and helped pull America’s great historic amusement beach out of a nosedive. It is a chronicle of a “handmade” time in the worlds of art and amusement that will never be seen again.
Join the Coney Island Museum as we welcome authors/artists Philomena Marano and Richard Eagan to celebrate the launch of their new book, Hysterical Coney Island: An Art Memoir of the Coney Island Hysterical Society.
*Suggested Donation $5
Admission Free for CIUSA members and residents of 11224
*Your $5 donation supports the Coney Island Museum, including our Ask the Experts programs.
Books Will Be Available For Purchase
About the Authors:
In the late 1970s, after a series of dreams about his childhood days at Coney Island, RICHARD EAGAN turned his Brooklyn woodworking shop into an artist’s studio. He and studio mate Philomena Marano soon formed The Coney Island Hysterical Society, which became one of the prime drivers of the 1980s’ turnaround of Coney Island’s historic amusement beach.
Over the years Richard’s work has ranged from sculpture through constructed painting and into pure painting, chiefly addressing the issue of the turmoil that lies beneath the seeming complacency of outward appearances.
In addition to his visual work, he has acted in in film, chiefly in the short films of Todd Gordon. As the charismatic and lovely entertainer Miss Kay Sera, he co-hosted the annual Coney Island Mermaid Parade for over fifteen years as well as hosting award-winning karaoke nights in Red Hook, Brooklyn. His Coney Island monologue performance Alive on the Inside, has recently transitioned from the stage to become a “theater of the mind” audio play.
Richard’s work has been shown at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, OK Harris Works of Art (NYC), U.S. State Department’s Art in the Embassies program (Mexico City), Williamsburg Art & Historical Center (Brooklyn), 440 Gallery (Brooklyn), the Coney Island Museum, and various other venues.
He lives in Croton on Hudson, NY with his wife Liz and their dog Millie.
Philomena Marano grew up just six stops from Coney Island. As a very young child, she imagined that the elevated train WAS the roller coaster, and it came to pick her up each day (along with her mom, sister Chris, Aunt Dottie & cousin Alfred ) and chauffeured them to the beach. That same imagination sparked a lifetime of Coney Island inspired cut paper works and limited edition prints. Philomena learned papier collé, the elegant cut paper technique she practices today, during her time working as an assistant to Robert Indiana, but insists she inherited her father’s DNA for precise cutting. At Indiana’s New York studio she rendered his stage designs for the Gertrude Stein/ Virgil Thomson production of the opera, “The Mother of Us All”; the story of Susan B. Anthony’s fight for women’s suffrage. Philomena attended the High School of Art & Design in NYC and later earned a BFA from Pratt Institute as a drawing major. Her work has been exhibited in numerous venues including: Tabla Rasa Gallery, ACA Galleries, The Bronx Museum of the Arts and at Ringling College of Art and Design ,The DeLand Museum, Arts Advocates Gallery, Art Center Sarasota, and Gallery 502 in FL, & George Krevsky Gallery in San Francisco. Philomena is a member of the historical women’s group “Petticoat Painters”. Her work is in many public and private collections including the Brooklyn Museum. She lives in Sarasota, Florida with her husband Eugene.
philomenamarano.com instagram: philomania13