Mannino's Handiwork
Campus Community Lends a Hand to Artwork
Published in Carnegie Magazine, Spring 1999

Artist Joseph Mannino used people and props to personalize the University Center.
By Ann Curran

You have to hand it to Joseph S. Mannino. In recent years, his artwork has consisted of gigantic hands--seven foot tall. Some in groups, some with one hand up and one down in a classic Buddha pose. Before that, Mannino, an associate professor of art, turned out curvaceous sculptures of colossal heads, large lips or ears, or the occasional group of large eyes.

It took some downsizing then for him to work on a project based on human-size hands.

When Dean Martin Prekop of the College of Fine Arts asked Mannino in 1995 to submit a proposal for adding art to the University Center, Mannino examined the blueprints and models for the building. He chose the facade facing The Cut with its series of 21 niches. His plan: place a line of tiles, 32 inches high, 10 inches wide and 4 to 6 inches deep in the niches. Hands doing a variety of things symbolizing activity within the University Center.

To the artist, the covered walkway with its squared-off pillars was "a long stretch...with a regular movement through it." He wanted "to just quietly break up that movement with more of a human element." Since the building was to become the center of the university community, Mannino also wanted to involve "the people of the university."

Some were obvious choices for inclusion in the hands-on project. Then president Robert Mehrabian, for example. A lefty, Mehrabian extends his right hand to shake the hand of Provost Paul P. Christiano (E'64) in the Mannino tile. Christiano happened by the president's office at just the crucial moment, Mannino recalls, on the day he cast the president's hand.

Carnegie Mellon's resident Nobel laureate Herbert A. Simon, a founder of the field of artificial intelligence, posed his right hand over what Mannino terms "this kind of archaic little robot," in a diagonal juxtaposition reminiscent of Michelangelo's "The Creation of Adam."

Another in the row of ceramic tiles also refers to an artistic antecedent. The husband-wife team of Dean Mark S. Kamlet of the Heinz School and Charlee M. Brodsky, associate professor in the Design School, represent fidelity with their hands assuming the pose of the couple in Jan van Eyck's "Giovanni Arnolfini and His Bride" (1434). But Mannino aimed more at showing "the marriage" that occurs between the tenured faculty member and the university. "It's really a marriage," the sculptor says earnestly. "It really is for better or worse. You're here; you're going to have to make the best of it and work with the individuals, the in-laws, everyone else that you are part of at the university."

David P. Demarest Jr., associate professor, English Department, and former editor of Focus, the freewheeling faculty/staff newspaper, became a must for Mannino. "He was always outside handing out leaflets, talking to people about things going on around campus that I would have no idea about if it weren't for him," says Mannino. He maintains that Demarest provided "an incredible service to the campus as a whole by literally taking time, being out there and handing out leaflets." The artist caught the strong right hand of Demarest thrusting a curved message forward for all to see.

Thistle blooms on campus
Mannino also chose people he'd seen on campus during his 13 years of teaching as well as volunteers who responded to his query in The Tartan. He knew he wanted to include the longtime favorite school flower--the thistle. Roy Beebe, gardener, who is often seen planting flowers around campus, became a clear choice. "He's got a huge hand," Mannino says, and it dwarfs the clay pot holding a tall stand of prickly thistle (see cover). To Mannino, the flower also represents a change he has seen on campus. "When I first came here, the campus was barren. There wasn't much going on in terms of landscape. Within the last eight years," he notes, "it's really changed. And that change has changed my attitude about walking across campus and noticing the seasons. Aesthetically the campus is a lot better looking than it used to be."

Change on campus also led Mannino to Lawrence G. Cartwright (E'76) as a subject for a sculpture. "Huge projects that he does with his classes have really changed the look of campus, have made the campus much more user friendly," says Mannino, citing outdoor classroom areas, benches and tables, and a wood and metal staircase that zigzags down the steep hillside beside Doherty Hall to the deepest part of campus. Since Cartwright played a role in planning the Schatz Dining Room in the University Center, his hand is shown toasting campus with a cup that might pass for a communion vessel.

Mannino would start his sculptures by chatting with participants, seeing how people viewed themselves personally or wanted to be seen. They talked about what sort of props they would use. Then came the blue goo--a human friendly silicon rubber encasing the hands in a predetermined position. The rubber took shape quickly with the whole process over in about an hour. Then Mannino would coat the outside with plaster to hold the shape. Later he would work clay into the mold.

"I never let the clay really harden up in that mold because I needed to work it soft to attach it to other objects that I was adding to it and to manipulate it over the slabs to make the poses I wanted," he says. Occasionally he would amputate some fingers and then carefully reattach them. "If they didn't come out just right, I'd go back into the mold with clay and pull out a whole new set of fingers." says Mannino, sounding like a prestidigitator.

He worked with bricklayers, architects and engineers on campus to determine the types of tiles to use for the high-relief pieces. They settled on a four to six-inch thick tile, calculated for in-oven shrinkage. It would hold stainless steel pins at either side to secure the tile in place. The tiles, hand impressions and props all went into the oven together. Mannino added a glaze "to try to make them impervious to the elements."

While he initially experimented with colored tiles, Mannino settled on the natural clay color with a touch of sepia in the background. The University Center with its circular entry tower and strongly defined high walls reminds Mannino of a "medieval fortress. A lot of medieval buildings have facades that incorporated reliefs or objects taken from other, older structures and were just kind of stuck on the sides." Though the University Center contained niches for the tiles, Mannino wanted them to have the feel of "another life" to them.

Fulbright scholar lifts dumbbells
Mannino particularly enjoyed working with the students. He got a kick out of the fact that Gil Alterovits (E'98), a Fulbright scholar, wanted to be shown lifting dumbbells. "He was one of the most brilliant students I've ever come across, and he's doing dumbbells," Mannino says, shaking his head in disbelief. "The University Center was extremely important to Gil because of this access to the weight room."

Kerry L. Hagan (E'96), a fifth year scholar (outstanding students given a "free year" at the university), wanted to be shown at the piano keyboard. Though her degree was in electrical and computer engineering, she enjoyed music composition and wanted to be seen that way.

Several tiles are close to anachronisms. Mark Fichman, an associate professor in the Graduate School of Industrial Administration, works on an ancient computer keyboard. Jill L. Goodall (HS'97), who headed the Activities Board and did a lot of introductions of entertainers and speakers, chose a microphone with a cord. The artist let that cord dance across the tile. And Maureen E. Dawley, art librarian, who spends hours guiding students through the electronic card catalog and to art sites on the Internet, is shown with the most ancient of library tools: an open book.

Then there's your editor up there with her father's huge hands, a Claddagh ring adding an appropriate Celtic note, proofreading with--egad!--a Magic Marker on a blank, slightly dog-eared manuscript. The common pencil proved too thin in context.

For anyone who knows Herbert T. Olds (A'60), Stubnitz professor of art, his pose is so characteristic of the man as to seem a cliché. He holds a piece of chalk pastel in his hand as he proceeds to show, not tell, how to breathe some life into that green pepper or slack figure or whatever his student is working on.

Let there be light
Dean Prekop, who came up with the idea of incorporating art early on in the planning for the University Center holds--what else?--a lightbulb. Campus architect Paul J. Tellers carries an armful of blueprints. James A. Thurman (A'93), who works as a craftsman, holds a hammer, representing labor, Mannino says.

An intriguing tile shows the hand and arm of Justin Greenwald (A'98) tipping a basketball that looks like a globe. Mannino remembers Greenwald "bouncing a basketball all over the place all the time. He loved the center because he could play ball there."

While initially the hands were to be anonymous, when asked if they minded identification, most subjects said not at all. But don't ask about the hand with the literal heart in it. That's Anon., with a long-standing symbol of Tech, a little directional gift from founder Andrew Carnegie, whose heart was in the work.

The tiles won't reveal themselves easily, says Mannino. But he says, that's what research is like. Nothing is revealed all at once. You have to go figure. You have to move around, look around, mix around, talk around. All the sorts of activities carried on in the University Center.

Once you've figured out the tiles, back off and view them from mid-Cut. They have a linear rhythm, too, that breaks up the quiet regularity of the architecture, just as the artist intended. The tiles create a line as unexpected and surprising as those students who eschew perfectly acceptable dining-room-seating in the University Center to hunker down around their trays in carpeted corners of Hoch Commons, the second level lobby.

Ann Curran is editor of Carnegie Mellon Magazine