Storyteller · Visual Artist · Filmmaker · Learning Experience Designer
Lazzaro Marco Ferrari is a multidisciplinary storyteller whose work bridges myth, imagination, and immersive world-building. “Lazzaro” is the name he chose for the journey; “Marco” the name he was given; and “Ferrari” the lineage carried forward through generations. Together, they form the foundation of an artist devoted to exploring the epic, the timeless, and the unseen.
Often described as a stitcher of songs, Lazzaro crafts resonant narratives by weaving together scattered legends, archetypes, and personal histories. His creative practice spans over three decades and draws on a mythic imagination, boundless inspiration, and a lifelong commitment to artistic independence.
Lazzaro’s journey began in the realm he calls Wonder—sketching dreams in the margins of school notebooks, building sculptures from forgotten materials in junkyards, and absorbing the electric culture of Venice Beach during the era of iMac G3s and MiniDV tapes. His path has carried him through filmmaking, digital arts, the Metaverse, and ultimately into the exploration of the Imaginal: the inner landscape where stories become portals.
Guided by this vision, Lazzaro works to dissolve limiting narratives and replace them with new mythologies—living, breathing story-worlds that invite others to rediscover their own creative origin.
To be an artist is to live an archetypal life—to embody a powerful, recurring pattern or image drawn from the depths of human experience. While the work of aligning with one’s image, pattern, or destiny is part of the lifelong path of individuation open to all people, the artist/creator/maker holds a unique responsibility to the collective beyond the personal journey.
_ Dr. Mary Antonia Wood _ Kosmos Institute
Zero, like the Arché, constitutes the origin of things, that from which everything comes, and their destination, that to which everything returns.
A life filled with zeros
It all began with a deep breath in a dusty shop.
At that time, I had just arrived in Los Angeles, eager to showcase my artistic abilities to the world. I chose to stay connected to the very project that had first brought me to the United States: Squame and their newly filed patent.
Even though I was strongly tempted to return to sculpture, installations, and performance art, I knew that surviving in Venice would require a steady income. So I turned to mosaics in polychrome terracotta—a technique I had perfected during my time with Tarsie and later refined in my own way, working out of the garage on Machado Drive. This allowed me to give visibility to the Squame project while also creating mosaic works for the elegant houses scattered throughout the city.
For a year, it worked beautifully—until something suddenly went wrong. I never fully understood what took place. Within a few weeks, I found myself out of work. After a short period of reflection, I decided to leave terracotta behind and look for a job.
One morning, I stepped into a workshop on Sepulveda Boulevard, completely covered in sawdust—a little corrugated-metal shack with a tin roof and heavy sliding iron doors. From behind one of the dusty machines emerged a man small in stature but a giant in personality. I had just walked into Adrian’s carpentry shop. He swiftly hired me after I promised him I could do anything. 😁
Within a few months, my path would change course forever.
One morning, Adrian—the carpenter of Pontius Avenue—took me to the massive Best Buy on Santa Monica Boulevard and bought me a brand-new iMac G3, fresh from Cupertino. “One for me… and one for you, my friend. You are an artist; you need fresh toys.” he said with a captivating smile.
I repaid him by creating his website composing, editing, and coding Macromedia Flash and HTML, which I manage to learned in a few weeks thanks to the support of my friend Fabio (Tractor Vision).
That site became my very first digital creation—marking the birth of Element-Zero.
One Thousand and One dreams
In the autumn of 1998, I created the very first front page of Element-Zero.com from a mixed-media artwork that combined scanned acrylic paintings, prints, and collage. The design depicted the blueprint of a medieval underground alchemy lab, setting the tone for the site’s experimental and symbolic identity.
The animated homepage menu was built around the lab’s “rooms,” each representing a creative discipline tied to the Element-Zero acronym. For example, AI (Adobe Illustrator) stood for Illustration/Digital Art, HTML for Web Design, JPEG for Photography, and so on.
Element-Zero v.2 (1999)
By the time The Matrix hit theaters, I had already launched the second version of the Element-Zero homepage, which quickly began to attract attention. This version was fully dedicated to the fusion of cutting-edge technology and my unique “digital sculptor” approach.
“Art has nothing to do with the squalid repetition of the Goddess Nature,” I whisper in the site’s new intro soundtrack.
Soon after, the interactive world of Element-Zero expanded with Khoreia: The Choral Dance—a Festival of Digital Arts that debuted in Chinatown, Los Angeles—and Wild Children, an ambitious initiative born from the Element-Zero Creative Community.
Element-Zero v.3 (2001)
The success of the Khoreia Digital Art Fest, along with a Flash animation I created for Burning Man 2K, propelled Element-Zero.com to unexpected levels of popularity.
By early 2001, it had grown into one of the first true “online communities.” This momentum was fueled by the unwavering support of the Los Angeles tribes, positive reviews in LA Weekly, and—most memorably—the endorsement of Burning Man’s Mistress of Communications, who published my work.
Five years before the rise of social media, I was already engaging with my audience in real time. My digital creations often inspired external contributions—music, poems, images, and photographs—that enriched and expanded the vibrant universe of Element-Zero.
Element-Zero v.4 (2003)
“I am, you are in charge of speaking.”
In 2001, the collapse of the Twin Towers shook some of my deepest certainties, which soon began to surface in my digital work. This period took on a dark and shadowy tone, culminating in The Wild Children project. The initiative brought together the works of numerous local artists, placing them on a surreal plane in dialogue with the “great masters” who had long inspired my art. The project achieved moderate success and was presented during an evening co-produced by Element-Zero, organized for the launch of the Watch the Mayor campaign of Francis Della Vecchia, then a young candidate for mayor of Los Angeles.
Snake Skin
This work came with a double challenge. First, because Lazzaro is an eclectic artist — he has explored every corner of art: painting, sculpture, digital art, cinema, theatre, and more. And second, because whatever medium he chooses, what inevitably surfaces is his unconscious.
So, in most of his works, something “hidden” emerges — fragments that at first seem disconnected from one another but are, in fact, part of a single path. A path that begins obscure and gradually becomes clearer, pointing toward evolution and a deeper self-knowledge.
As a photographer, I felt like an archaeologist — searching for signs and traces that could answer my questions, collecting clues that might reveal the extraordinary sensitivity that, to me, defines Lazzaro as an artist.
Almost everything he creates — and even his life itself — is filled with symbols, codes, and signs. I tried to distill all of that into a barcode. A visual metaphor, yes, but also a reference to a kind of binary code — the structure that seems to underlie all things. Within it, I embedded the number 19 in Roman numerals: one of the keys to reading his world. From this barcode, the artist’s own profile can be glimpsed — appearing here and there, just as he does across all his works, sometimes clearly, only hinted at.
The composition itself consists of three photographs: two square ones on the sides and a rectangular one in the center. In Morse code, this sequence corresponds to the letter Ra, interpreted here as the phrase “You are.” It’s a nod to Lazzaro’s distinctive nature — or better, to his unique way of communicating. A code within a code.
The inverted crucifix, meanwhile, is a kind of poetic license. It hints at Lazzaro’s sensibility toward certain themes, but it also represents a point of connection between his vision and mine. On a visceral level, it carries something rebellious — a refusal to accept ready-made truths, a break from fixed patterns. It ties into the whole numerological thread that runs through his work — from the Mayan 19 to the number 7 — expressing both rejection and fascination toward the religious dimension, a process of inner evolution that’s still ongoing.
There’s something powerful about reflection and inversion: they create tension, a push and pull between attraction and refusal, intimacy and distance, involvement and detachment. Sometimes reflection and reversal can reveal more than the direct image itself. At that time, Lazzaro happened to be writing a screenplay centered on the crucifix — something he told me only after seeing the photo. That coincidence convinced me it belonged in the triptych.
The third image is perhaps the one that most closely touches Lazzaro’s inner world — it dives deeper into the unconscious. It speaks of voiceless figures, of the invisible and the excluded. Of submerged worlds and people who exist without leaving a trace — those the world never really sees, whose lives will never be under the spotlight. A handprint left on glass, slowly fading until it disappears — just a fleeting moment, a trace that can’t be traced back to anyone. Real, but unidentifiable. Like background noise.
Snake Skin — that’s the title — is the essence of perpetual metamorphosis.
Mauro Gilioli, ReFoto, 2011
To be continued…