A Copper Alliance Member
Copper in the Arts
Love of Human Form Basis of Sculptor’s Career
Angelo in his workshop. Photograph courtesy of Angelo Di Maria
“We would play with that clay all day long,” he says, resulting in making small figures and animals. These early clay creations would later mold his career as an artist, shaping his future, and solidifying his passion for the arts. It was Michelangelo who would later serve as Di Maria’s primary inspiration to focus on the human form.
“I love realism. I look at everything and I get inspired from everything I see,” Di Maria says.
He was eleven years of age in 1958 when his family emigrated from Sicily to Reading, PA in the United States, where he still resides.
“There is a vein of artistry in the family,” Di Maria says, noting his father, Giuseppa, was artistically inclined and three of his cousins became artists.
At the age of seventeen, the self-taught artist sold his first sculpture of a bust.
Vicky. Bronze sculpture by Angelo Di Maria. Photograph courtesy of Angelo Di Maria
“I get very little time to do my own creative work,” he says. Playing guitar and photography are his other passions that consume his free time.
Di Maria has done extensive work for Penn State University’s donor appreciation program over the years. One such commission included a life-size sculpture of the late Joe Paterno, which was the recent subject of national news due its removal from outside Beaver Stadium, where it had stood for many years.
“That is in hiding,” he says of the sculpture. “Nobody knows where it is -- I don’t think they destroyed it.”
Di Maria’s life-size statues take approximately one year to complete between the time he begins to the six to eight months needed by the foundry. Di Maria usually sends his work to Laran Bronze or ART Research Enterprises, two nearby PA-based foundries.
“What I do first is create an 18 or 24 inch model in clay,” he says. Next, he presents it to the family for approval.
Afterwards he has the model enlarged at the foundry which becomes the basis for the mold.
“I put the face on” at that time, he says, adding on occasion, depending on his workload, he has a team who assists him in the process as was the case of the Joe Paterno sculpture.
Regardless of those involved, Di Maria discusses how he is the one who always creates the face and personal details on his sculptures.
“The finishing touches – the details is where most of the work is involved,” he says. “Something very magical or spiritual happens at that time -- energy you can’t express in words. Once you learn the technical aspects, you put your own, personal creativity in it.”
Resources:
Angelo Di Maria, Reading, PA, (610) 779-6945
The Bronze Touch: Classic to Contemporary Sculpture by Michael Alfano
Infinite Mind bronze sculpture by Michael Alfano. Photograph courtesy of Michael Alfano
A life-size bronze statue of sports great George V. Brown is one of his most well-known sculptures. Every year, it draws thousands of runners from around the world to pose for photos with The Starter at the Boston Marathon. From 1905-1937, Brown fired the pistol that kicked off the race so depicting him in that stance seemed natural. The sculpture also entices people to get closer, linking today's participants to the event's history.
This lure is also experienced in his contemporary work. For Peace Offering, a popular bench on the Harborwalk in Newburyport, MA, Alfano uses oversized hands that no one can resist sitting on. "Once there, they notice the hands are wings of a dove, then discover the tail transforms into a hawk,” he says. “The functional sculpture fosters reflection about the struggle to attain both personal and world peace."
Alfano's sculpting roots are in classic realism, which he first studied at the Art Students League in New York City twenty years ago. He has always enjoyed taking the figure beyond the literal in surreal compositions to express philosophic ideas.
"I begin with a small-scale model (maquette) to work out the design, then sculpt the full-size artwork in clay," he says. Then, he makes a mold and casts the sculpture in the final material.
Bronze is his medium of choice.
"The bright light and beautiful dark tones of bronze create wonderful variations of color,” he explains. “Its durability guarantees I can create a work of art that will be around forever.”
Typically, Alfano works with the New England Sculpture Service foundry for casting.
George V. Brown bronze sculpture. Photograph courtesy of Michael Alfano
That was the case for a 9/11 memorial, One World United for Peace, which features thirteen figures sculpted into a tower that surrounds a globe and depicts different reactions to the attacks. At the time of installation, it was made in cold-cast copper. For the tenth anniversary, the 7-foot monument was recast in bronze.
Alfano's most controversial piece is probably Stand up, Speak Out, his sculpture for the organization Mothers Against Drunk Driving. His figures are 120% life size in cold-cast copper and represent the victims, caretakers and activists. First installed at the Nassau County Courthouse in 1997, defense attorneys feared the artwork might promote jury bias so they forced it to be moved. Today, it is with other public monuments at nearby Eisenhower Park.
Cubed, a clever ten-times-life-size puzzle made of resin, consists of nine double-sided pieces (male/female) that viewers can assemble. "This involves the public in the design process,” he says. “The maquette is a sculpture in its own right and I cast it for collectors in resin or bronze. People like to rework the puzzle in different ways."
Alfano offers many smaller pieces for collectors in a choice of materials. "Not everyone can afford a bronze sculpture they like, but nearly anyone can own it in cold-cast copper,” he says. “I sign and number these limited editions of my work.”
Alfano has won prestigious awards, received numerous grants and created portraits of Anwar Sadat, Ted Kennedy and other notables including Walt Whitman at the East Meadow Public Library in NY, near the poet's birthplace. His artwork can be found in public venues, museums, galleries and private collections around the world.
Resources:
Matthew Albright: Nature’s Beauty Swimming in Copper
Magnolia tree sculpture.Photograph courtesy of Matthew Albright
“I try to take pictures of plants wherever I go,” he admits. Stockpiling inspiration is a resourceful way to keep the assets of the natural world close-at-hand in his home of Euclid, OH.
“In the beauty of recreating plant life, you can take something that’s common and already enjoyed, recapturing and reposturing it so that everybody can appreciate it,” Albright says in describing what he finds so fascinating in emulating ingredients from the outside world and garden-swept environments.
A copper magnolia tree Albright built last year is now a part of the landscape at the Shaker Historical Society in Shaker Heights, OH.
“In time, I’d like to get into building life-size trees,” he adds. His magnolia tree is close in size to a youthful one, standing about eight feet in height at the historical society’s garden.
Albright appreciates coppers innate ability to evolve with time.
Over size coffee bean sculpture welded by Matthew Albright.Photograph courtesy of Matthew Albright
Albright’s artistry is far from accidental in the aspect of how he finds his materials.
He specifically searches for whatever he can that’s used but has some sense of history and connection to the region around him and is working on building relationships with contractors to keep these ideas flowing. With this in mind, he intends to bring a strong foundation of local ties and community integrity into his sustainably built pieces.
In the past, he’s used old electrical wiring from his garage to help him keep recycling well in line with his values as an artist.
With a love of coffee, Albright has shaped over-sized coffee beans in sculpture form. A latest sculpture from the chilly winter months is a cala lily.
Another in the works, as a tribute to mentor David Burns of Copper Gardens in Rough and Ready, CA, is a stalk of bamboo formed from copper.
Inspired by Burns’ approach with the captivating non-native plant, Albright says he wanted to show his appreciation of the unparalleled guidance and encouragement through the completion of this piece and nodes finished in a style somewhat like Burns’ but still his own.
“It’s great to take something you love and to put it into a form that isn’t going to change,” Albright says.
Resources:
Copper in the Arts: NEWS
Metal Fiber Art by Ted Hallman On View in the Pfundt Gallery of the Michener Art Museum - January 12, 2013
Ted Hallman (b.1933), Installation piece for the Michener Art
Museum (detail). Polyurethane, polyester, iron wire, copper, and
magnesite, Collection of the artist. Photograph courtesy of the Michener Art Museum
Hallman has been a leading figure in modern textile design as an art form since the late 1950s. He influenced an entire generation in the emerging fiber art movement he had helped to raise in stature.
"The installation at the Michener is a brand new exploration of synthetic materials such as plastic tapes woven into vertical armatures creating tree-like forms," says Michener Director and CEO Lisa Tremper Hanover, who curated two Ted Hallman exhibits before joining the Michener. "He plays with wire and colored streamers of cords and tape to create floating clouds and plant canopies. Visitors, themselves, weave through the installation."
Most of the components for this installation were created in summer 2012 in Santa Fe, New Mexico. "There's a certain joie de vivre in everything Ted Hallman creates," writes Jessica Shaykett in American Craft Magazine. "The exuberant fiber artist is a master at combining parts into a greater whole, whether arranging compositions for the pipe organ, spinning lively narratives about his life, or crafting exquisitely woven wall hangings. For five decades, his fiber works – with carefully concocted color and multi-dimensional texture – have sung of harmony and wonder."
Born in 1933 in Bucks County, Hallman's father, H. Theodore Hallman, was a painter of regional renown – his paintings are in the permanent collection of the Michener. His mother was a school principal and an art teacher who made her own clothes and taught him to make garments when he was 4.
"As a child there was so much encouragement for me to develop my own creativity," says Hallman. "Both of my parents had attended art school, and the house was full of works in progress." Hallman Sr. had studied with N.C. Wyeth, and was head of the art department at West Chester University. He offered painting classes for the community on Saturday mornings, and Ted, who started painting at age 3, attended. He created his first weaving, a small tapestry, as a Cub Scout, and in fourth grade created a fiber rendition of the nervous system and built a floor loom in his last year of high school, on which he made fabric for clothing and coverlets. Hallman earned a bachelor's degree in painting from Tyler School of Art at Temple University in 1955. At Cranbrook Academy of Art, he earned MFAs in both painting and textiles. In the 1960s, he reinvented Moore College of Art's textile department. In 1975 he became Head of Textiles at the Ontario College of Art and Design in Toronto, where he developed summer programs for students in Florence, Paris and Kyoto.
Hallman's interest in education led him to earn a doctorate in educational psychology from the University of California, Berkeley. Elected to the American Craft Council College of Fellows in 1988, Hallman has traveled the globe, teaching college students, researching textiles and meeting textile artists. He continues to research and teach today.
"I thought of myself as a weaver, and here they wanted me in an art museum," Hallman said as the Philadelphia Museum of Art sought to include several of his works in their permanent collection. Hallman's work is in the permanent collections at the Metropolitan Museum, Smithsonian Institution, the Art Institute of Chicago, the American Craft Museum, and the Victoria and Albert in London, among others.
