BFA Cooper Union
Donald Gialanella studied at The Cooper Union in New York City under Louise

Bourgeois, Jim Dine, Vito Acconci and Hans Haacke.  The school’s traditional

apprenticeship programs exposed him to bronze casting, steel fabrication,

painting, drawing and graphic design, while classes with conceptualists

Vito Acconci and Hans Haacke introduced him to anti-academic and revolutionary aesthetics. 

 

After graduating in 1979 and being awarded the Elliot Lash Prize in recognition

of his monumental wood and steel tripods exhibited in Cooper Park, Gialanella

was asked by Bourgeois to work as her assistant.  Throughout the following

year Gialanella worked directly with Louise, doing everything from assembling

armatures for her sculptures to creating odd portals, which she was fond of

scurrying through from room to room, that he punched through the walls of

her Chelsea brownstone with a pickax.

 

 

 

 

 

Gialanella with Louise Bourgeois at her home in 2006.

 

 

 

ABC Network Television
Seeking new experiences, Gialanella moved to the west coast and worked as an illustrator for the Blade -Tribune newspaper in Oceanside California.  He returned to New York after two years armed with new-found commercial skills and began what was to become a decade-long Emmy-winning career as Graphics Producer for the ABC television network.  He helped pioneer the use of on-air digital graphics on World News Tonight and later for Nightline, 20/20, Good Morning America and a host of news and sports broadcasts.

 

Ankara Turkey                                                                                          

In 1992 Gialanella ventured to Turkey and devoted two years teaching art at Bilkent University. One morning as he wandered through a rural part of the Old City in Istanbul, he was hypnotized by a clanking rhythm.

“My ears led me to the coppersmiths who were creating intricate designs with the simplest of tools, as they have done for centuries.  This inspired me to start working on sculpture again, hammering and bending to shape the steel in an organic way. In this exotic and ancient culture I began to spiritually reconnect with myself and experienced an artistic re-birth. A year later I had my first major one-man show at Ars Gallery Ankara and gained the confidence to devote myself completely to achieving my personal artistic vision.”

                                                                                                                                                                                                      With Peter Jennings on the set

Steel Sculpture
Upon returning to the States, Gialanella began sculpting. Employing a variation of the repousse technique used by the Turkish craftsmen, he developed a flexible and interactive process to construct steel sculpture. The raw cut pieces are dimensionally transformed through bending and hammering in the same way a carver shapes his stone, one blow at a time. Gialanella then welds them together in a random way allowing him complete freedom to add and subtract in order to achieve the desired mass and attitude.

 

Sculpture in the Streets, Albany NY
In his recent work Gialanella explores the phenomenon of the parallax.  These multi-plane sculptures present a static vs. dynamic conundrum.  What the observer sees changes depending on the angle at which the sculpture is approached. If one faces the sculpture head on, it appears as a series of vertical lines. Approached from the side, it takes on a recognizable dimensional perspective and the subject is revealed.  The technique is ideally suited for urban spaces where movement around the sculpture initiates changes in its perception by the viewer.  For more information on Sculpture in the Streets, click here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Uri Geller & Gialanella                                             Howard Stern & Gialanella at KRock         With Dr. Keith Ablow and sculpture Sisyphus

 

 

Affiliations and Collectors
Gialanella has exhibited in sculpture parks, public spaces, museums and galleries. His work is met with enthusiasm and cherished by private collectors who have commissioned and procured pieces for their homes and collections throughout the United States and around the world.  Personalities as diverse as Uri Geller, Howard Stern, Angelina Jolie, Jimmy Buffet, Chairman of U.S. Airways Express Jonathan Ornstein, TV host Dr. Keith Ablow, and Owner ofThe Atlantic Monthly David G. Bradley, own Gialanella sculptures. 

 

Gialanella is recognized by the following organizations:

Member of the Sculptors Guild NYC, Member of National Audubon Artists NYC, National Register’s Who’s Who in Executives and Professionals, Biographical Encyclopedia of American Artists, Who’s Who in American Art, Who’s Who in the East, Men of Achievement, Dictionary of International Biography and Strathmore’s Who’s Who.