A guide to personal power: Approaching knowledge, awareness, and power
Joseph Carlisi was born and raised in New York City. Summers were spent at a rural country retreat owned by his parents. His mother, a highly trained painter and weaver, worked as a restoration specialist of Renaissance paintings and tapestries at the New York Museum of Metropolitan Art. Her tutelage and that of another New York artist shaped his future as a painter. Joseph's father was a tailor involved in New York’s garment industry. His uncle owned a prominent photography studio where he absorbed all he could of the art of photography. He earned BA and MA degrees in Philosophy at Hunter College in New York and then continued his graduate studies in Philosophy and Artificial Intelligence at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After ten years as a university lecturer, researcher and administrator, he returned to his deepest interests: painting (www.josephcarlisi.com) and writing. He traveled extensively and worked as a writer, photographer, and artist. He started and managed an advertising / public relations firm that handled a wide range of commercial accounts. On the academic side, he published a series of seven articles on animal behavior for Harvard Magazine and two books: “A Guide to Personal Power” and most recently “Playing God on the Eve of Extinction”. ( http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=node%3D154606011&field-keywords=playing+god+on+the+eve+of+extinction ) In 1994, Carlisi was invited into an intense, close association / apprenticeship with noted shamanic philosopher / anthropologist / author, Carlos Castaneda. He lived in Los Angeles until Castaneda died in 1998. This relationship significantly expanded and enriched the scope of Joseph's awareness and of his artistic expression. " My intent is to transport the the viewer's / reader’s perception into very real, alternative perspectives without limits or boundaries. Modern culture has systematically sealed shut the
doors of perception and awareness with a world that that is dominated by fictional beliefs, routine, predictability, conformity, tension and fear".