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| Anthony Visco |
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Nomination: For his role as American Religious Artist --- especially in the field of sculpture
My interest in the arts began at an early age. It was as if I could only experience something if I could draw it. It’s something that has never left. As I grew, drawing extended to painting and painting into sculpture.
So often I am asked why I chose to devote my talent to religious art. I should say it’s the other way around. After years of being rejected from every public art commission possible, it seems religious art chose me. However, as a young artist, I thought of nothing else but to create religious art. But then again, that was through my naiveté as I thought all art was religious. It wasn’t until I entered college that I realized what secular art was. Then my thought was that the Catholic Church was no longer calling on artists, nor were artists making religious art. Then in 1980 the commission to do the Stations of the Cross for Old St. Joseph National Shrine came out of the blue and changed my life.
There’s never been a commission that has not inspired me to do something that I would otherwise not have done. It’s like pulling thread. You don’t know what it will unravel for you as the art work leads you to another. Yes, it seems that one saint leads to another. In doing a model for a sculpture of St. Therese of Lisieux and reading her letters, she makes reference to a certain missionary named Theophane Venard who was beheaded in Hanoi in 1861. Visiting his place in Paris inspired me to translate his letters from prison and to write a play on his life which I hope can be produced one day.
As an artist, I truly feel that my subjects teach us lessons. I think that St. Rita, for example, is a saint for everyone. She was a wife, a mother, a mother who suffered child loss, a widow, and a nun. There’s something for everyone there. St. Rita brought me, personally, to the unexpected, something that I thought was impossible during all the years of civil rejection letters. That is, she is my first life sized bronze statue. She always surprises me. I think she teaches us that it is only through accepting ones circumstances in life, and working with them, that you then become able to model them into something quite unique, something that would have been impossible without those circumstances. Maybe that’s why she’s called the Saint of the Impossible.
Some of the places where Anthony Visco’s original works may be viewed:
Old St. Joseph’s National Shrine
Philadelphia, PA
Cabrini College
Radnor, PA
Church of the Assumption
Atco, NJ
Catherine Pew Memorial Chapel
Bryn Mawr, PA
Our Lady of Mt. Carmel
Berlin, NJ
St. Maria Goretti Church
Hatfield, PA
Holy Family College Chapel
Philadelphia, PA
Cascia Hall
Tulsa, OK
Daylesford Abbey
Paoli, PA
National Shrine of St. Rita of Cascia
Philadephia, PA
To see more of Anthony Visco's art
visit www.anthonyvisco.org
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