http://www.thespec.com/article/552526
Every face tells a great story
Picture at link: Ron Albertson, the Hamilton Spectator Sculptor Gino Cavicchioli in his studio surrounded by some of his work.
Jeff Mahoney
The Hamilton Spectator
(Apr 22, 2009)
Last week I sat in Gordon Lightfoot's chair, the one he sat in at Gino Cavicchioli's house in east Hamilton when songsmith met sculptor.
Cavicchioli had Lightfoot over to talk about sculpting his face and head. (Cavicchioli's licence plates read Bust Man.) Before Lightfoot modelled for Cavicchioli in the studio at the back of his house, the two became acquainted at the dining room table.
"He sat right there, where you're sitting now," Cavicchioli told me, as we talked across that same table.
I grabbed the arms of the chair as though to steady myself. Wow. Gordon Lightfoot. You know that feeling you get when someone has warmed up a seat for you? Well, it wasn't that feeling, because Lightfoot used the chair in September.
But there was some kind of energy transfer because when I came back to the office everything I wrote came out in the meter and cadence of The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.
"The public works shed never gives up its dead, and the budget increase will come early."
Cavicchioli is not doing my bust. Just the opposite. I was there to turn the table on him, so to speak, taking the measure of his head. And heart.
Born in Melbourne, Australia, he moved with his family to Rome when he was a boy, until his father, an engineer (and so much more), took a job in Canada and fell in love with the country.
Cavicchioli served Mass as an altar boy at the Vatican. And his father, who was an artist before he was an engineer, would take him around the city to see firsthand the great art that is everywhere in it.
"He would say, 'This weekend, Gino, we are going to the Villa Borghese to see Bernini's masterpieces.' And when we got there he would say, pointing to a sculpture, 'Look at that face. Why is it that way? What makes it work?'"
Cavicchioli could speak no English when he came to Canada. He hated it. He had, after all, come from Rome. He was a teenager in Burlington and he'd get into fights at school.
He was on track to fail Grade 9. One day his father told him, "Gino, you can do Grade 9 until you're 40 but you're going to pass." You didn't defy his father. In a matter of months, Cavicchioli astounded his teachers, learning English, bringing up his marks.
Art was his saving grace. When he sought a source of confidence in his troubles he had only to look as far as the products of his own hands. There is a bust of a girl on Cavicchioli's mantel. Exquisite. He did it when he was 15.
In time, Cavicchioli became a pipefitter, working 10-hour shifts at Dofasco, sleeping, getting up at midnight, working till 6 a.m. on his art, mostly painting, then starting his next shift. In the late '90s he switched to sculpture and before long his commissions enabled him to retire from pipefitting.
Cavicchioli does the busts for the CFL Hall of Fame. He did Lincoln Alexander's bust. And he did full-figure sculptures of the Juravinskis for the Ontario Cancer Centre lobby.
His work, rooted in classical values, is technically virtuosic. Again, his father.
"He was my best critic," says Cavicchioli. "'Yes, yes, nice nose and mouth,' he would say, 'but can it breathe?' Or 'does it have a pulse?' Or 'can it walk?'" His father would spur him on.
Cavicchioli's busts do breathe. He does get blood out of a stone, to put a new twist on that phrase. They have a pulse. He has put a living joy into Pinball Clemens' famous smile.
"When Pinball came to my door for his sitting, I went to shake his hand and he said, 'Gimme a hug.' And when I hugged him he said, 'Can you feel the love?'" That's Pinball.
Gordon Lightfoot is one of his latest and he has practically written the Canadian music legend's biography with every line and contour of his craggy bust. But perhaps the most telling highlight is the cascade of hair.
"I wanted to make it flow like the water of the Great Lakes," says Cavicchioli.
He sums up eloquently what he attempts to capture, to achieve in his busts, especially of older subjects.
"I'm interested in the faces they've earned, more than the faces they've been given."
Cavicchioli's father died in 2003, at the age of 81. His name was Amadeo.
"Those are his," Cavicchioli says, pointing to several beautiful urns with Grecian friezes in a glass display case by the dining room table.
He learned another thing from his father. How to fly. Amadeo did aerobatics. And now, says Cavicchioli, one of his great comforts is recalling their moments together in their glider, son flying, catching the thermals, turning around, seeing his father's face behind him.
(To learn more about Cavicchioli and his work, check out his website at ginocavicchioli.com.)
Re: Lightfoot in Hamilton
. The frog theme has really caught on and it's just all over the place. Seemed a tad lame for me to be taking a pic of Gord's tie 
...for my cousins who live in town there.
. It's about time for a new camera...the one I have got busted when I had to slam on my brakes while driving on the QEW on my way to Massey '08. I managed to fix the toggle -don't know how but just took it apart figuring it's busted anyway...but have had to duct tape the battery cover closed all this time.
