3 minute read
Thoughts from the Man Cave
The Art of Fam
Creating through a gamut of emotions . . .
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by Mike Savicki | photography by Afterburner Communications
Anthony Famiglietti’s breakthrough art moment came in sixth grade. While many of his fellow students were struggling to brainstorm a solution to their teacher’s assignment, Fam, as he has pretty much always been known, was already hard at work molding his vision into a reality. Not only did his sculpture—a pyramid complete with a spider-legged camel and a tourist with a flowered t-shirt taking a picture of all of it— seem to take immediate shape, his teacher ultimately chose to display it in the main hallway, visible to everyone at school. Fam felt proud and happy. Surprised. Validated. Grateful.
But then something happened. Running to be more specific. First, through a state track championship title in high school, a scholarship to Appalachian State then the University of Tennessee, Fam ran and ran. Faster and faster. Longer and longer. He escalated quickly from NCAA championships to USA Indoor and Outdoor Championships. He earned a World University Games gold medal, a Pan Am Games bronze medal, set Penn Relays records, and finally crescendoed with a US Olympic Trials win. He competed in both the 2004 Athens Summer Olympic Games and the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympic Games. Fam had become one of the world’s top steeplechase athletes. Needing to maintain a laser focus on training, his painting took a back seat to athletic excellence for almost twenty years.
It’s funny how so many things from our childhood stay with us.
“Sure, we remember winning races and playing sports, but how about art?” Fam, now 42, tells me. “I was a wrestler first, a skateboarder, too, then a coach told me I needed to run so I did. It wasn’t until I began doing research years later that I learned that art was important to many of my family members. It was like art was in my DNA.”
As July turned to August, on one of those perfectly calm and clear summer evenings, Fam recently welcomed nearly two hundred guests to the first art show since his early college days. “Truth Decay” seemed an appropriate title for the evening. In as much as Fam’s works were a draw, they weren’t the only draw.
location, an abandoned, crumbling, overgrown former powerhouse building behind Mooresville’s Merino Mill, was as much a part of the evening as the art itself. Think open air, 50-foot ceilings, graffiti covered cement beams and rusted supports, a dirt and gravel floor, enough overgrowth to camouflage the ever present poison ivy and oak. Fam spent weeks cleaning and prepping the space. He spent days and nights painting there, too. Like pure running, creative art can (and should) happen anywhere. And everywhere.
“This building is like the cathedral to the bygone American worker,” he shares. “It is a symbol of change, a reminder that while still maintaining strength, everything is decaying to one degree or another.
“Change,“ he adds, “is uncomfortable but it is necessary.“
Art has helped him through tough personal challenges, too. Fam lost his best friend when they were both 21. His friend was hit by a car while walking his dog. That friend’s father, and Fam’s, too, both passed away during this time of Covid. So, in his works he questions these truths and more. He looks to the subconscious. Nothing he paints is identifiable. A lot of people have been angry and upset these last few years. He paints through it all. He paints for what he gets out of the process.
We can learn from Anthony Famiglietti and his art. Resilience. Strength. Fortitude. Truth. Uneasiness. Hope. Promise. Persistence.
Keep running, Fam. And keep painting, too.
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