Jim Dessicino is a multi-disciplinary artist and arts administrator born in 1985 in Atlantic City, NJ. He holds an MFA in Fine Art with a specialization in Sculpture from the University of Delaware (2015) and a BFA from the University of the Arts (2007). He also studied abroad at Temple University in Rome, Italy (2005) Passionate about Rome, Catholic history and arts education, Dessicino synthesizes his interests in his artworks and career. 

From 2007-2009 he led tours of the Vatican Museums, with special permissions to tour St. Peter’s Basilica from Cardinal Comastri. He has taught at several institutions, including the University of the Arts, University of Delaware, Stockton University, and Fleisher Art Memorial. Since 2018, he has been Program Director for Rome Art Residencies and recently developed the Artist in Residence Program for  Save Ellis Island. He was recently a guest on the Bowery Boys Podcast, Greetings from the Garden State Podcast, and Talking Catholic Podcast.

As a sculptor, Dessicino received the Faith in Form Award from the AIA Interfaith Forum on Religion, Art and Architecture in 2016, recognizing his contributions to religious art and architecture. He has created and restored multiple pieces of art in the Diocese of Camden. 

Dessicino has also been an artist in residence at La Chateau de La Napoule in France and the Philadelphia Sculpture Gym, Philadelphia, both 2015.

As the founder and director of the Atelier for the Sacred Arts, Maestro Anthony Visco offers his expertise in designing and fabrication of liturgical art as well offering his classes and workshops to both groups and to individuals. Upon graduation from the University of the Arts, he received Fulbright–Hayes Grant to travel and study in Florence Italy, where he began his studies of the Florentine school of art and architecture and their study of the classical. In 1975, he was awarded the Elizabeth T. Greenshields Grant for figurative sculpture and has received the coveted Arthur Ross Award in both 1984 and again in 1996 for sculpture within a classical architectural setting. In 2014, National Sculpture society awarded him the Henry Hering Memorial Medal.

His many commissions include The Stations of the Cross at St. Joseph Church in Philadelphia. At the request of His Eminence, Raymond Cardinal Burke he did the Via Crucis in bronze relief for the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in La Crosse, WI where he also made the large bronze Guardian Angel of the Unborn in the shrine’s memorial to the unborn there. Visco’s sculptures, murals, and reliefs adorn the National Shrine of Saint Rita of Cascia also in Philadelphia. His triptych reliefs at the Catherine Pew Memorial Chapel in Bryn Mawr, PA along with his bronze doors for the Church of Saint Stephen Martyr in Washington, D.C. are heralded as having resurrected the art of pictorial relief both in the United States and Europe. In 2012 he completed the bronze doors for Saint Stephen Martyr Church in Washington, DC.

His studio courses in both sculpture and mural painting evolve from experience and knowledge of having studied classical art and architecture. Visco’s understanding of the relationship of art and architecture serve the greater community is evident in all his commissions as well as in his teaching methods of teaching classical figure composition,mural painting, sculpture and relief. At the request of Madame Ambassador Callista Gingrich, Visco’s work is currently on display at the Embassy of the United States to the Holy See in Rome Italy.