What is His Involvement with Rat Fink?

Who Made up the Artist Steve Fiorilla?

Born January 12, 1961, Steve Fiorilla was an American artist born in New Jersey but who worked most of his life in Buffalo, New York. His career was made through his love of grotesque and bizarre illustrations that brought the surreal to reality in his fine art and sculptures. His sculptures often depicted malformed creatures and were featured in TV and films under the pseudonym Jacques Cordedor.

Not only was he involved in creating sculptures but he also illustrated designs for many books and magazines such as Video Games and Computer Entertainment,High Times and Heavy Metal. He also did artwork for small press journals such as Moody Street Irregulars, Magick Theatre and Eegah!, some of his designs finding their way on T-shirts.

Steve Fiorilla was a talented illustrator that was sought out for fanzines, catalog covers and mini-comics such as City Scenes. He created sculpture in 1985 that was then featured 12 years later on the cover of a magazine called Bloodsongs in 1997.

Steve Fiorilla became part of the Rat Fink family when he created various drawings and illustrations for Ed “Big Daddy” Roth. Some of those designs included a belt buckle, caps, ads, t-shirts and catalogue illustrations. He often worked in tandem with another artist, Jim McDermott in which he helped design The Complete Stephen King Encyclopedia for Stephen J. Spignesi.

Fiorilla was highly successful in the film industry creating sculptures for Boston Olive Jar Animation. MTV gave Fiorilla’s sculptures multiple showings during the 80′s and 90′s. He also had his hand in special effects makeup for videos such as Tennie Komar and the Silencers and films such as Winterbeast. He also designed bizarre masks for Death Studios and many horror films such as Saturday the 14th and Till Death Do We Scare.

Steve Fiorilla was the mind behind the sculpted horror of MTV’s animated logo the “Guillotine.” He created a customized skeleton guitar that writhed in a video called Dokken on MTV.

Bill Gaines, the EC Comics publisher a creation of Fiorilla in the form of a latex mask which depicted EC’s Old Witch. The Old Witch mask was also seen in Tales from the Crypt during it’s second season where it was used as a prop in an episode called Korman’s Kalamity.

Many people were inspirsed by Steve Fiorilla throughout his career and based whole exhibitions off of his work. The Buffalo’s Low Down Dirty Low Brow Art Showwas one such example featured in 2002 that had been inspired by his artwork. Flickhead published many articles and reviews of Fiorilla and had many film reviews under his pseudonym Jacques Coredor.

Although Steve died in 2009 his artwork lives on through all the people who loved his illustrations and sculptures. Many of his sculptures can still be seen in exhibitions and in movies so although the genius behind the art is gone, his work lives on.