Sculpture pays tribute to three police officers slain two years ago Monday
Sunday, April 03, 2011 - By Marylynne Pitz, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
James Simon gathered lumps of clay and molded them by hand. Slowly, he fashioned a 6-foot-tall statue of St. Michael the archangel and cast it in concrete.
The new memorial, which honors Pittsburgh police officers Paul Sciullo II, Stephen J. Mayhle and Eric G. Kelly, will be dedicated Monday, exactly two years from the day these men died in the line of duty in Stanton Heights.
St. Michael will be unveiled outside Immaculate Conception-St. Joseph Church on Liberty Avenue in the center of Bloomfield. Set in a small park with trees and a garden, the sculpture stands on a three-tiered base decorated with ceramic tiles that bear the officers' images. Behind the statue is a stainless-steel shield made by Forms+Surfaces, an international company with an office in Etna.
Last July, while the sculpture was in progress, members of the officers' families and the Rev. John Dinello, pastor of the parish, stopped by Mr. Simon's studio.
"I wanted them to have a final look at it while I could still change things," the artist said. "The statue has to be expressive enough to carry these three families' emotions."
This version of St. Michael is a protective warrior with a watchful gaze. His left arm bears a shield and the right hand a sword. There's a cross on his belt. Instead of a coiled snake, decorative scrolls that represent clouds are at his feet. Heightening this ethereal effect are the beautifully formed, textured wings. Besides police officers, St. Michael is the patron saint of people who confront danger daily -- paratroopers, paramedics, fighter pilots and soldiers.
Bill Garrison, a first cousin of Officer Sciullo, recalled that when he grew up in Bloomfield with his extended family, "as long as you had a bike and a baseball glove, you were happy."
Co-founder of the advertising agency Garrison Hughes, Mr. Garrison served on a committee to plan the memorial and was delighted with the sculptor's work.
"He knew the deepness of it and he knew how sensitive it was," he said.
Public memorials are fraught with pitfalls; that pressure can weigh on some artists.
"I felt more privileged that they wanted me to do it," said Mr. Simon, whose relaxed air probably derives from his experience as a world traveler for 30 years, plus long residencies in Australia, England, Mexico and Brazil. Now 56, he returned to Pittsburgh about 11 years ago to help his mother care for his father, who had suffered a stroke.
Initially, Mr. Simon looked at how Renaissance and medieval artists portray St. Michael, who is often shown driving a sword into a snake that symbolizes Satan. He talked with Father Dinello and family members. Then, he worked with recycled clay to make a mold. Next, he made a rubber and plastic mold and packed sticky, architectural concrete into it.
"You pack it into the mold, which is the negative of a sculpture. By packing it instead of pouring it, it's already hollow when you pop it out," the artist said.
Concrete, he added, is suitable because the church's facade is brick and concrete.
"It's affordable. Bronze would be very expensive. They have a small budget and I'm also an expert at casting in concrete. I do everything here," he said.
The statue weighs 300 pounds; if it had been cast in bronze, it would have weighed at least 2,000 pounds.
A Pittsburgh native who grew up in Stanton Heights, Mr. Simon is best known for three, 15-foot-tall sculptures of musicians that stand on Downtown's Liberty Avenue in the city's Cultural District. He credits a high school ceramics teacher, Edward M. Kosewicz, as an inspiration.
At age 18, Mr. Simon was eager for experiential learning and the world became his classroom.
"I didn't know what I wanted to do. I knew that I wanted to travel."
In 1972, the day after he graduated from Peabody High School, he began hitchhiking to Berkeley, Calif., where he lived in a commune with 30 people.
Along the way, he learned to do carpentry and make stained glass. In the 1970s, he traipsed across Europe, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan and India. He also spent a year living on an orange farm near Sydney, Australia.
In the 1980s, he moved to Eugene, Ore., where he worked on large scale sculptures in a studio at the University of Oregon.
"I got along so well at the university that they gave me a great space and just let me do my thing," Mr. Simon said.
Back in California, he met Kato Havas, a child prodigy violinist and teacher who had known Bela Bartok, the famous Hungarian composer. Bewitched by the instrument and its gypsy melodies, Mr. Simon followed Ms. Havas to Oxford, England. She introduced him to Andrew Dipper, an internationally known expert in restoring musical instruments whose workshop was then based in Taynton, Oxfordshire, in the Cotswolds.
Later in the 1980s, "I was learning violin making and sculpture and carving, how to make varnishes and paints. It wasn't an academic environment. It was really an artistic environment. You learned by sweeping the floor and slowly learning how to do stuff," Mr. Simon recalled.
Today, Mr. Dipper lives in Minneapolis, Minn., and restores instruments for museums. He said Mr. Simon's relaxed manner belies a single-minded focus.
"You can't faze him at all. When he has some particular aim in mind, he will continue until the aim is met," he said. "I taught him a lot about casting and sculpting. He has a great facility with clay."
On a visit to see Mr. Dipper in Cremona, Italy, Mr. Simon befriended master violin maker Alvara Escalante, who invited him to move to Tepostlan, Mexico, a mountain village near Cuernevaca. There, Mr. Simon fell under the spell of Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, artist Francisco Toledoe and was inspired by Aztec, Mayan and pre-Columbian sculpture.
"And then I got the burning desire to do sculpture. I always felt that that was something that I loved."
Eventually, he devoted all his energy to sculpting because "sculpting offers more latitude for artistic expression. Violin making follows a strict formula," he said.
The next stop was Sao Paulo, Brazil.
"I went there to study tai chi. There's a big Chinese community there," Mr. Simon said.
When he returned home 11 years ago, he turned a vacant, two-story warehouse in Uptown on Gist Street into his home, using the first floor as a studio.
"James is very talented. We went through several images to get the right St. Michael," said Karla Owens, executive director of the Bloomfield Development Corp.
Father Dinello said family members and volunteers had definite ideas about how the memorial should look.
"We wanted it to be something strong to reflect what our police force was for our community. They are the strength behind the community. We didn't have block watch a few years ago. These officers were helping us get everything established."