Steve Fiorilla (January 12, 1961 – July 29, 2009) was an American artist born in

Paterson, New Jersey Paterson ( ) is the largest City (New Jersey), city in and the county seat of Passaic County, New Jersey, Passaic County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey.Buffalo, New York Buffalo is the second-largest city in the U.S. state of New York (behind only New York City) and the seat of Erie County. It is at the eastern end of Lake Erie, at the head of the Niagara River, and is across the Canadian border from South ...

. Throughout his career, Fiorilla emphasized the grotesque and surreal in illustrations, sculpture and fine art. As a sculptor, he produced a variety of bizarre, malformed creatures. His film reviews appeared under the pseudonym Jacques Corédor.

Print

Fiorilla illustrated for books and magazines ('' Heavy Metal'', '' Video Games and Computer Entertainment'', ''

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''), T-shirts, small press journals (''Eegah!'', ''Magick Theatre'', '' Moody Street Irregulars''), catalog covers (

Gregg Press Gregg Press was founded about 1965 by Charles Gregg in Upper Saddle River, New Jersey to distribute in the United States the antiquarian reprints published in the UK by Gregg Press International. Gregg decided he wanted to publish scholarly repri ...

), fanzines (''Horror from the Crypt of Fear'') and mini-comics (''City Scenes''). One of his 1985 sculptures was featured 12 years later on a cover for the magazine ''Bloodsongs'' (1997). He created numerous drawings and product designs for

Ed "Big Daddy" Roth Ed "Big Daddy" Roth (March 4, 1932 – April 4, 2001) was an American artist, cartoonist, illustrator, pinstriper and custom car designer and builder who created the hot rod icon Rat Fink and other characters. Roth was a key figure in S ...

, including a belt buckle, T-shirts, caps, ads and catalog illustrations. Fiorilla sometimes worked in tandem with illustrator

Jim McDermott James Adelbert McDermott (born December 28, 1936) is an American politician and psychiatrist who was the U.S. representative for from 1989 to 2017. He is a member of the Democratic Party. The 7th District includes most of Seattle, Vashon Isla ...

, such as their collaboration for Stephen J. Spignesi's ''The Complete Stephen King Encyclopedia'' (1991).

Film and television

Fiorilla's work for films included sculptural designs for Boston's Olive Jar Animation. The short film ''Things Never Seen'' (1989), with creatures designed by Fiorilla, received multiple showings on

MTV MTV (Originally an initialism of Music Television) is an American cable channel that launched on August 1, 1981. Based in New York City, it serves as the flagship property of the MTV Entertainment Group, part of Paramount Media Networks, a di ...

during the 1980s and 1990s. In addition to special effects makeup for videos (Tennie Komar and the Silencers) and films (''Winterbeast'', 1991), he designed masks for Death Studios and horror films, including ''Saturday the 14th'' (1981) and ''Till Death Do We Scare'' (1982). The MTV animated logo "Guillotine" featured a sculpted horror by Fiorilla, and he also created the customized skeleton guitar writhing in a popular 1987

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video seen on MTV.

EC Comics Entertaining Comics, more commonly known as EC Comics, was an American publisher of comic books, which specialized in horror fiction, crime fiction, satire, military fiction, dark fantasy, and science fiction from the 1940s through the mid-195 ...

publisher

Bill Gaines William Maxwell Gaines (; March 1, 1922 – June 3, 1992), was an American publisher and co-editor of EC Comics. Following a shift in EC's direction in 1950, Gaines presided over what became an artistically influential and historically import ...

owned one of Fiorilla's latex masks depicting EC's Old Witch (''

The Haunt of Fear ''The Haunt of Fear'' was an American bi-monthly horror comic anthology series published by EC Comics, starting in 1950. Along with '' Tales from the Crypt'' and '' The Vault of Horror'', it formed a trifecta of popular EC horror anthologies. ''T ...

''). In the second season of HBO's ''Tales from the Crypt'' anthology television series, a photo of this Old Witch mask was a prop in the June 26, 1990 "Korman's Kalamity" episode, adapted from the EC story "Kamen's Kalamity." Illustrated by

Jack Kamen Jack Kamen (; May 29, 1920 – August 5, 2008) was an American illustrator for books, magazines, comic books and advertising, known for his work illustrating crime, horror, humour, suspense and science fiction stories for EC Comics, for his work in ...

, the original self-satirical story is set in EC's offices where the EC editors have a meeting with Kamen about his artwork.

Miscellaneous work

''Buffalo's Low Down Dirty Low Brow Art Show'' was a 2002 group exhibition "inspired by the artwork of Steve Fiorilla," although he did not participate in the show. Fiorilla's articles and reviews were published in the online magazine, ''Flickhead''. He also did film reviews under the pseudonym Jacques Corédor (a pun on

Samuel Fuller Samuel Michael Fuller (August 12, 1912 – October 30, 1997) was an American film director, screenwriter, novelist, journalist, and World War II veteran known for directing low-budget B movie, genre movies with controversial themes, often ...

's film ''Shock Corridor''). Fee Fie Foe... Fiorilla! is a blog displaying Fiorilla's characters in a surreal narrative setting. Steve Fiorilla died July 29, 2009, in Buffalo at age 48."Steven C. Fiorilla, widely renowned artist of the grotesque," ''Buffalo News'', August 6, 2009.
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References

External links

Fee Fie Foe... Fiorilla!Latex Mask Central
{{DEFAULTSORT:Fiorilla, Steve 1961 births 2009 deaths Alternative cartoonists American cartoonists American speculative fiction artists American film critics American people of Italian descent Fantasy artists Artists from Buffalo, New York People from Paterson, New Jersey 20th-century American sculptors 20th-century American male artists American male sculptors Sculptors from New York (state)