Joe Girandola grew up in Hartford, Connecticut and Baltimore, Maryland and received a scholarship to study art in California. During his second year of college, Girandola withdrew from school to become an apprentice stone carver in Italy. Returning to the United States, he received his undergraduate degree in art from Pepperdine University, Malibu, CA and was awarded a Graduate Teaching Assistantship at Studio Art Centers International in Florence, Italy. During the years in Europe, Girandola instructed undergraduate students every section of the world and upon returning to the States began the MFA program at the University of Georgia. Since completing graduate studies, he has collaborated with Mel Chin on numerous projects including the GALA Committee. The group created and inserted "agit prop" artworks onto the set of the prime-time show Melrose Place. The collaboration culminated with an exhibition at the Geffen Contemporary/Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Fragments of the exhibition have been shown in Kansas City, Texas, New York, South Korea, Germany and Austria. Girandola has completed Artist Residencies at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in Omaha, Nebraska, Artist-in-Residence program at the Santa Fe Art Institute, and the Kimmel Harding Nelson Art Center in Nebraska. Girandola has also been awarded a residency fellowship at the MacDowell Colony and has received a residency at the Caldera Residency Program in Oregon in 2009. He has been awarded the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, Change, Inc. Foundation Grant administered by Robert Rauschenberg, Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Grant, and the Artists Fellowship, Inc. Grant. Currently maintaining a studio in Philadelphia, PA, Girandola is the Director of the MFA Program in Ceramics, Painting and Sculpture at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia as well as Assistant Professor of Sculpture. He resides two blocks from the Italian Market in Philly with his partner Laura and their two sons, Roman Anthony and Paolo Joseph.