Donald Gialanella originally from Maplewood, NJ, now works out of his art studio in St Petersburg, Florida. Donald apprenticed with world-renown sculptor Louise Bourgeois after earning a BFA from The Cooper Union in New York. He worked as a graphics producer at ABC-TV in New York in the 1980’s and received an Emmy for his work on Monday Night Football in 1990. Add an international teaching appointment at Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey and a host of public sculpture commissions, Gialanella’s career has been prolific and wide-ranging.
Artist’s Statement
My current artistic practice is concerned with the life-cycle of mass produced consumer objects in our culture. I work with a wide range of unconventional materials incorporating “green” salvaged and reclaimed objects into the amalgam of my sculptural matrix, ranging from plastic to steel, toys to pots and pans.
The work deals with ecology, economy, and community in intent and execution. The midden installations will serve as time-capsules that symbolize how mass produced objects are changing our world. These encapsulated objects from the local culture are “frozen” in time to be explored and contemplated in a new context. They bring up issues of our consumer-based culture and what that means for our society and for the environment.
Appreciating these common objects recombined in a new form as art, fosters a dialogue and calls for different forms of exposure, exchange of ideas and creativity. In this regard, the work generates provocative insight in several areas, from the promotion of a cultural socioeconomic dialogue, to the manifestation of artistic innovation and new creative use of available materials.
