MERGE featured Tuesday artist: Tony Stanzione

Tony Stanzione (‘83, art) artist and owner of Stanzione Studio LLC, a company he founded in 1990, enjoys the act of building. “Much of my time is spent building and rebuilding residences in New York City,” he explained in his artist’s statement. “This utilitarian work has deeply informed my artistic practice. I pursue the border between functional and non-functional objects.” Most recently he has been building art by assembling manufactured materials and objects, combined with fabricated parts and pieces. “This process forces me to encounter the manufactured environment (concrete, glass, shipping pallets, metal bed frames, pencils, doors, flotsam, river rocks and pillows) in which I live,” he wrote. “I am always searching, or hoping for the meaning of what I create to come bounding towards me.”

Metro State: How would you characterize your art?
Tony Stanzione: I would characterize my work as contemporary. The piece I am showing, "mug Head," is very formal with a combination of found and fabricated materials. There is no story behind the piece other than the parts seemed to find each other in my studio to create this really formal-like, turn of the century sculpture.

Created with flickr slideshow from softsea.
MS: Tell me about your latest work and why you are inspired by it.
TS: My last explorations are balls that are made from pieces of colored rope and sting that I gathered while at the beach. They are titled "Flotsam" and are displayed floating off the wall.

MS: In what ways did your Metro State professors influence your work?
TS: My teachers were superior crafts people. The late Roger Lang was an amazing crafts person and a kind and caring inspiration, as well as a friend after I graduated from MSCD.

MS: How has your work evolved since you graduated?
TS: I have explored many different materials, ideas and processes in the last 20 years. I went onto graduate school have made work using compressed air, glass, ice and now flotsam.

MS: Tell me why you submitted the pieces that you did for MERGE.
TS: The work I submitted were small pieces that I felt represented my interests in the last few years.

MS: How do you feel about this opportunity to present your work for Metro State’s new CVA facility?
TS: I think is wonderful I haven't shown in Colorado for a while.

MS: Is there anything I’m not asking you that you want to share with me?
TS: I have a somewhat large scale Piece called" Entrada Bienvenito" that I fabricated and showed in NYC in 2002 It's about the the Mexican American border Natural Migration. It consists of a series of seven-doors that spin on center pivots if you could find a place to permanently install the piece that would be great!

Read more about Stanzione's business by visiting his Web site.