Michelle Gagliano

Interview with Michelle Gagliano August, 2008

Let’s go back to your beginning. (Laughs) I was born in Jamestown, New York, on December 26, 1964. I am the youngest of four children. My family lived in Cassadaga, New York, a rural area outside of Jamestown. My father was of Sicilian descent, and my mother was of Swedish descent. My mother was a homemaker, and my father restored vintage automobiles. Up the hill was my grandparents’ home. My grandfather had a huge dairy farm. Incidentally, Cassadaga is on a hill; down the hill on one side is Lily Dale, a gated Spiritualist community that Houdini used to frequent. On the other side is an Amish community. I maintain contact with my Amish friends to this day.

And now? I am married, my husband’s name is David. He is a PhD in Clinical Psychology. We live in Virginia with our three children, David (eighteen years), Christopher (sixteen), and William (thirteen months). David and Christopher are interested in filmmaking; David had a film exhibited at the Los Angeles Film Festival recently.

Did your parents influence your artistic future? Actually, one of my earliest memories was lining up with my sisters to help wet-sand an automobile finish for my father. My father was a perfectionist, very dedicated to his craftsmanship, and I think that affected my own sense of workmanship.

When did you decide on art as a vocation? Oh, I intended to be an artist even before I had a clear idea of what that meant. I remember one day in kindergarten when I stood on a table to demonstrate to the other children how to hold a paint brush! I can’t really say where I got the idea, but it always seemed to be there. Possibly it came from seeing the paintings by my aunt that hung all over my grandmother’s house.

Our family moved to Austin, Texas, when I was twelve. I was determined to go to art school, so I worked my way through high school in three years so I could get to study art at the University of Texas as soon as I could. When I was a teenager, my uncle in Buffalo, New York, who was an excellent artist, instilled in me the conviction that to be an artist, one must work at it every day. I found that very appealing.

What did you find so appealing about making art? My view of art is a lot like that of James Elkins in his book, What Painting Is. The materials of art, “sticky oils and crushed rocks,” are magically transformed into art works in a kind of alchemy through the experimental efforts of artists. We are working with these things, and we transform them into something beautiful!