Watch this interview online here.

An interview with Michael Alfano

Arriving at the home of Hopkinton resident and world-renowned sculptor Michael Alfano is an outside-of-the-box experience. He and his family live off the beaten path of a rural Hopkinton back road. Their driveway is a long stretch from the road leading to a house set back, appearing humble and hidden amidst a quiet surrounding of tall pine trees and a few outdoor sculptures located in the front yard. Alfano arrived at the door casually, in jeans and stocking feet and wearing a baseball cap. The inside of his home was warm and stacked with creative elements including piles of books, many paintings and sculptures and a diverse array of other works of art. The interview took place downstairs where a wood stove was burning and many smaller sculptures were visible amidst other pieces of artwork in various stages of creation. Alfano pointed out a piece of art created by his college roommate and friend Andy Golub and told of his current street-work in New York City where large crowds gather to watch him do body paintings. As we sit down to begin the interview, Alfano hands over a small clay ear explaining it is titled "Hear" because it is intended to represent the importance of listening to one another. What becomes evident throughout this interview is that Michael Alfano as artist and world visionary appears to not only be listening through his art but looking and using all other senses as well as he studies people and the way that they impact the world to determine how to make them come alive and tell their story through his art.

Where and when were you born?
I grew up in Queens Village, a part of New York City, and later moved to East Meadow, Long Island.

What was it like where you grew up? What was it like to be a kid in your days of growing up?
I spent a lot of time reading, playing trumpet and doing a lot of camping with the scouts. I had fun and a nice childhood growing up not too dissimilar to most middle class kids of suburban America. Where I grew up it was a lot different from a town like Hopkinton. The beauty of Hopkinton, I think, is that the houses are all different, some dating back to the 1800s and 1700s, there's wonderful woods and things are I guess built up organically which to me I find interesting driving around. Whereas in Long Island where I spent a good part of my childhood, it was part of the town cookie cutter cut out, stamped-out houses and every house was basically, exactly the same which certainly made houses affordable but one house was exactly like every other house it was sort of very boring driving around and seeing stuff, so I really enjoy Hopkinton for that fact.

And what would you say nurtured your early artistic roots where you grew up?
Probably more than anything else, the library, spending a lot of time reading a tremendous number of books, so I would explore books in the library. I also played chess and I guess I was thinking outside the box in solving chess problems and figuring out how to get an advantage in playing chess.

Did you like school? Did you have a favorite teacher?
School was okay (laughs). There was Mr. Malone who taught social studies and psychology who perhaps got me on my kick of doing psychological sculptures. Mr. O’Sullivan who was an English teacher. Dr. Seiner. They were all very good. You keep asking these questions about growing up and I guess my continual thought of growing up and my school system is that it was this mediocre experience, everyone sort of fitting into this square box and no one having any real push toward excellence, at least that was my perspective on it. When I went to college, I did some study as an exchange student in Denmark where things were taught from the periodicals and tests were always in answer format as opposed to multiple choice questions. So that was sort of my first real taste of thinking real thoughts as opposed to multiple choice answers. And I also did a High Adventure program with the scouts when in my 20s and all that sort of got me thinking more along the lines of excellence and striving to create something amazing and do something amazing which is what I’ve tried to gear my life to after my early school experience.

When did you first start sculpting?
It was mid-sophomore, junior and senior year of college. I was in my 20s.

Did you study sculpture at college?
I was studying finance at SUNY Albany. Concurrently with my business classes, I took English classes. The business side was related to a fear of getting a job you know, my parents saying "You've got to get something to pay the bills" and the English side of it was more the love of it. Because I wasn't an English major, I was a business major, I didn't have to take the required English classes. I could pick and choose whatever I wanted so I had Native American Literature and African American Lit and Women's Studies and Psychology and Literature so I got a wide broad-based background in literature and English in the periphery and not the mainstream required courses. I was writing also. I wrote a play and a number of short stories and a lot of poetry back then.

What else did you study?
I did a little philosophy and actually quite a bit of psychology. And business classes as well as a study abroad program in Denmark, which was wonderful and gave me a chance to travel through Europe quite extensively. This was in 1989 and 1990 when the Berlin Wall came down, so it was a very dramatic time in Europe and I was able to travel in Eastern Europe, which basically had just opened up. I did a lot of hitchhiking through Europe into Yugoslavia, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, West Germany, and went down to Italy. This was for a half year and the following year I returned to Europe to do a scouts’ exchange program in Cypress, Greece. I spent two months there in a scout camp and then I sold my plane ticket going back to London and hitchhiked from Athens to London instead. That was an amazing thing.

So you had a lot of adventures in your college and post-college years?
A lot of adventures yes. Nothing dangerous, I did some hiking in the Alps, and would just meet some people and hang out, which was the wonderful thing about hitchhiking as opposed to doing the Euro-rail train system, which the college students were doing at that time. When you ride the rail with basically a bunch of Americans and college students you might as well be home. For instance, I met up with some people who had a farm in Wales and I went to work on their sheep farm for a week at their 400 year old farmhouse in the Welsh Hills and it was just amazing riding around fixing the fences and helping the herd and shearing the sheep. You don’t usually get that experience, at least in this part of the country. So it provided a lot more connection with the locals and gave a sense of the real life that people were living there.

You know it all comes down to people and it comes down to culture. People can be different but the human structure is basically all the same, anywhere you go the love of life and sharing and hospitality and just enjoying things in life. I was in Poland and some people there met me and basically took me back to their apartment and gave me this huge party because "the American was here" and these were people who didn't have a lot, but everything they had, they put out for this huge party/shindig and although I could hardly communicate and got by with hand gestures and a few words we knew it was a wonderful experience for all of us. It was absolutely incredible.

So you returned to the States and then what?
I graduated from business school and got work as a stockbroker on Wall Street and Long Island. Then at some point, I just decided that it wasn't for me and I guess the biggest thing was the disconnect in what I was doing from 9:00-5:00 and what was going on in my head every day. You know, go to work and do the business thing and go home and sculpt and study at the New York City Art Students League and be doing some wonderful creative things or going camping on the weekends and then back to the office again. It seemed it was the difference between your life and your work and for me it had to be more that the work you were doing had to connect with your life better. If your work is so far segmented from your life, it wouldn't feel very good and so I quit that job in 1992 and went on a white water canoe trip in Canada with a scouting group and then essentially hitchhiked across the country from there in Canada through the United States, about 10,000 miles or so.

So you've been quite a hitchhiker?
Absolutely. I'd say it's a good metaphor for life. So I spent a lot of time going from national park to national park and hiking and camping through the parks. I'd go through the Grand Canyon and spend 10 days hiking the trails. I'd go off the tourist areas for 4 or 5 days without seeing anyone else and everything I had was on my back, water and food ... so it was an incredible experience, sleeping out under the sky in the Grand Canyon and seeing this vast array of stars and the multilayered stones that would show a time-travel of how stones were created over millions and millions of years and each layer from lowest to highest is another thousand years, it was an amazing place.

Did this experience point your life to a new direction?
After two months of hiking around the country and seeing many national parks, it was sometime in Moab, Utah I decided I was going to be a sculptor. So I came back to NY City and studied more at the Art Students League and signed up for two internships as a sculpture assistant and went at it! That was January 1993 and I haven't turned back since.

Did you have any mentors?
Meryl Taradash who does modern kinetic wind driven sculpture and Ann Messner who was well known for found material, big iron type sculptures, and I helped them both in their studios creating these pieces. Also Alan Cottrill who I helped in California, Pennsylvania do a very large sculpture project which was 15 twice life-size figures going up on the side of a world cultures building and each of the figures was charting the progress of humanity beginning with Cro-Magnon man and the last figure was a female astronaut cresting the top of the building. It was a very big project and I learned a tremendous amount there.

So in 1993 you made sculpting your full time job?
Well I had to earn some other money as well and so I got work in different ways from delivering pizzas to doing taxes to different things you have to do to make ends meet to survive until I was selling regularly enough. But that was my major life direction from that point on.

How did your sculptures evolve? Did you start with sculptures of people?
I have always been doing figures and faces and people. One time I was in this class where we were supposed to be drawing horses in the field and I ended up drawing the people who were drawing the horses because that was more interesting to me. So I have always really been obsessed by the human face and human figure and all the emotions and psychology that plays through the human face. That has been the focus in my artwork. I am always sculpting the face and the figure. To be able to capture these things is powerful ... showing the psychological power of the human face I try to get a little piece of this and tell the story. So as you work with the faces and get the nuances, you can create some wonderful artwork that really speaks to people.

You have created many sculptures local to Hopkinton and to other countries and your work is all over the world. Can you start with Hopkinton and tell about a few sculptures you are especially fond of or that have particular importance or meaning to you?
One of the largest pieces that is known in Hopkinton is the George Brown sculpture. He started the Boston Marathon, so this sculpture is the story of his life. I generally start out by reading and learning about the person I am sculpting. I learned that George Brown was an amazing person. He grew up in Hopkinton on a farm but he also ran the Boston Garden and Arena and did a lot of amazing things bringing sports to people, and through his family and legacy, created some things we love as Bostonians. He also started the Boston Marathon here in Hopkinton. He was involved in the Marathon since 1898 and in 1905 he was the official starter and started the race for the next 33 years until his death. Brown went through the Depression and First World War and, through some hard financial times, brought sports to everyday people and got them to enjoy it, and brought a wonderful sensibility to sporting and the Boston Marathon.

I also created the Anwar Sadat sculpture that was for the Sadat family. I was working with his daughter Camilla Sadat. I listened to all of her stories about him and meeting the American Presidents Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford and other world leaders and all this literally brought to life the portrait of Anwar Sadat it's really the stories I hear and read about as I am sculpting these pieces that bring them to life.

I have also read that you have affected political reaction a bit and have gotten people to think about important and sometimes controversial matters in our society like the sculpture that had to be removed from the courthouse. Can you tell a little about that?
Yes that particular piece is called "Stand up, Speak Out" and was created with Mothers Against Drunk Driving in New York. It includes three over-life-size figures, with a person that is on the ground as if hit by a car, a young woman who is a caregiver and an African American striding forward with hand outstretched as if calling for help. I won a grant to create the piece and it was originally placed at the Nassau County Courthouse in New York, and everything was approved and signed. Shortly after installation, there was a big blow up and the defense attorneys sued for its removal because they felt it would affect their clients as drunk drivers and influence the jurors to decide against their defendants. A few weeks later, I was there with a chain saw and sledgehammer having to break up and remove the sculpture. This was after big news coverage saying how absurd this was that we were removing something from a place that is important and gets young people and people of all ages thinking about the importance of driving in a sober and thoughtful manner. Shortly thereafter, it was placed at the Nassau County Medical Center.

Can you talk about the Holocaust sculpture you were commissioned to create and the significance of why you created room between the life-size figures?
I think it's important to view and also have physical contact with sculptures. That piece is called "The Children's Holocaust Monument." It's in New York and it shows three children in period dress leaving on the transport trains to the concentration camps. Across from them is a young girl in modern day clothes with a candle reaching out to them. There is space between the two as if between the past and the future where a real child can hold both hands and be a physical link between the historical and the contemporary and in a physical way, see our place in the world, in not letting this happen again and what our responsibilities are as a society and as a culture. Hopefully this sculpture might get us to think life doesn't end with us but we hope we are able to preserve the world and preserve our culture in a way we can pass along over time.

And you push us again to think about things like that with your September 11th sculpture?
Right. That is called "One World United for Peace." It is in the town of Norfolk, MA and shows 13 figures sculpted onto a form similar to one of the towers of the World Trade Center, with a globe on top. The figures show children and adults of all ethnicities because everyone was affected by this tragedy, not just at the World Trade Center, but in the outcome afterward and the responses to it.

I have a lot more questions I’d love to ask but I can refer to your website (michaelalfano.com) for people who want to learn more about your sculptures and where they are in the world. And in drawing to a close, you are now married and have two children, ages 10 and 7, and living in Hopkinton and involved in the community. And not long ago, I saw you dressed as a clown helping out at the Timlin Race to raise funds for Lou Gehrig's disease and I know you are involved with the local art scene as well. So I was wondering if you can say a few words of why you believe it is important to promote the arts in our town and in our world?
Our town has a very vibrant art scene with the CAA and ESL and HCAM all doing good things in the arts. It's really important for artists to go and connect. We all like to make art or many of us do but unfortunately, it becomes a lonely process in your home or studio by yourself doing a painting or sculpture or poetry or whatever you do when on your own, not feeling any outside connection maybe feeling like you are a bit insane having all these "nutty thoughts" and thinking "what am I going to do with these nutty thoughts?" Having an art center helps to focus that with a community where you can share ideas and talk about ideas and art and put them on display for the community and world to see as a first step of bringing it out into the world and feeling comfortable with the art in public. It's important to have a center where art can be displayed where someone can maybe have their first exhibition, feel confident, and then go to bigger venues or just show here in Hopkinton, which is really a wonderful place for the arts.

Hopkinton is a fortunate place to have you advocating for the arts and showing us where our sometimes "nutty thoughts" can take us if we listen to them and express them artistically. In closing, I'm wondering if you have any visionary hope for our world? You have so many messages in your artwork how about you... where do you want to see our world heading what do you wish for our future world and generation?
Dialogue and talking and coming together as people as opposed to having war and aggressive nature whether that be between community members, two political parties talking or different countries in the world. Dialogue is always a better thing than fighting.

In closing, Michael Alfano ended the interview by offering to show a few sculpture projects located in the outside studio and quietly handed over a few poems that he had previously written. To Alfano, it seems whether a sculpture is a huge poem or a poem is a small sculpture, what is important in his art is to emphasize the importance of seeing the unique beauty of people and things in the world and then sharing the story that each of these subjects has to tell.

Diamond

The Diamond you can hold
is only a stone, valued but not priceless.
Inside all of us is a diamond,
a key to limitless wealth
that pierces the soul
and opens layers
of perception.

-Michael Alfano