Zaccheo family ‘conveys the idea of freedom’ with new Greenfield mural
Published: 06-13-2023 6:06 PM |
GREENFIELD — When real estate developer Mark Zaccheo bought the Greenfield Recorder’s 14 Hope St. building last spring, he expressed a commitment to taking it to new heights.
Now, having invited a flock of metal birds to roost upon the building’s exterior, Zaccheo has affirmed that the sky is the limit. “Flight of Fancy,” a mural that features nine aluminum bird silhouettes strewn across the south-facing wall, was installed over the course of 12 hours Saturday.
The installation was conceptualized and fabricated by Zaccheo’s father, Tom Zaccheo, who has been working artistically for about 40 years as a ceramicist and has been engaged in related studies for 15 years at Central Connecticut State University. The work was an “intergenerational project,” Tom Zaccheo said, noting that he received help from his other sons David and Scott, as well as his grandchildren Maya and Gabe. It is part of the Hidden Canvas Mural Project, an initiative founded by Gabe and Mark Zaccheo in summer 2021 that has previously commissioned four murals across Greenfield and plans to initiate more.
“When Gabe asked me to take part in this Hidden Canvas project that he and his father started,” Tom Zaccheo said, “I was really thrilled to just design something and fashion it.”
The elder Zaccheo said the fabrication process entailed about 300 hours of “grinding, shaping and bending” ¼-inch-thick aluminum sheets to form each bird, the largest of which spans 5 feet. The results are not merely two-dimensional outlines, but figures with “feathery” texture; a reflective sheen that manipulates sunlight and shadow differently as the day goes by; and wings bent in “a configuration that resembles flight.”
“It conveys the idea of freedom and flight for me,” Tom Zaccheo said. “I think that that’s important. I see birds and how free and easy they traverse the universe, and it’s nice to feel that we can do the same thing.”
Although the mural had only been up for the public to enjoy for about a day, the Zaccheos said Sunday that it was already turning heads.
“One person wanted to take one of the birds home,” Mark Zaccheo noted with a laugh.
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To see people go outside and feel excited by the world around them, Tom Zaccheo said, makes such works of public art essential.
“It’s an important part of life, I think,” he said. “We’re trying to foster that idea.”
Reach Julian Mendoza at 413-930-4231 or jmendoza@recorder.com.