Brown: Powerful sculpture finds home - again

Art is power.

And therein lies the tale of a sculpture that was too controversial for the Nassau County Courthouse. And too depressing for the newly renovated Nassau University Medical Center.

The piece, which depicts death, tenderness and outrage, was conceived more than a decade ago by Michael Alfano, who grew up in a neighborhood that straddles the border between East Meadow and Levittown.

Alfano is 41 years old now and a successful sculptor living near Boston with his wife and two children. For 12 years, he has been tending one particular piece, one of the first big projects of his career.

And there's a reason.

Michael Alfano met a young woman when they were students at the University at Albany. He was a business major. The woman was studying math. They began dating.

Alfano, who was home on summer break after his junior year, returned from working an overnight shift at United Parcel Service one morning to find his mother, Rosalie, sobbing. Alfano said his girlfriend, who lived in New Jersey, had been killed in 1990 by a car while walking across a street. Police would later arrest someone and charge him with drunken driving.

"I cried and I ranted in my room for an entire day," Alfano remembers. "I went back to Albany when summer ended; it was almost like spending my senior year in college as a widower. No one could relate to what I'd gone through."

Six years later, Alfano, who had graduated and traded a short stint as a stockbroker for a career as an artist, would use the photograph on the woman's Albany ID card to help re-create her face. "Digging through that clay was like pulling scabs off the hurt," he said, "digging and digging deep into a wound, cleaning it out so that I could begin to heal."

He dug deep for a sculpture, a piece that Alfano hoped would combine the elements of compassion and strength in the fight against drunken driving. He submitted a proposal to Nassau County, which, along with MADD, SADD and the county's STOP-DWI program, became Alfano's supporters.

Alfano, by then 28, was too poor to hire professional models. So he used mirrors to photograph himself lying on the floor. Kneeling. And standing.

The result would be a work with three figures. One is a man lying on the ground, with a face based on Alfano's. The man, Alfano said, is supposed to represent "destructive decisions," like driving drunk or using drugs.

The woman he met in Albany is represented in the piece, too. But she's very much alive. Her face is on the second figure, a woman, kneeling on the street and cradling the victim's head. That figure represents compassion, Alfano said - the compassion of MADD and others who help support families destroyed by destructive decisions.

There's a hand on the woman's shoulder. It belongs to the third figure, another man, who is standing. His face - which belongs to one of Alfano's friends - is wildly contorted. The figure, Alfano said, represents students, lawmakers, regular people who summon the courage to stand up and demand change.

It was all too much for some Nassau defense attorneys.

In 1998, a group of them demanded that the work be removed from the front of the courthouse - before its formal unveiling.

"They thought it would prejudice jurors," said Thomas Gulotta, who as county executive had supported Alfano's project. "We had wanted it in a place where people could see it, but as a lawyer I understood the objections and so we had it moved to Nassau County Medical Center."

The piece sat for almost a decade outside the then-county-run hospital. Until last year, when officials at the now-corporation-run facility ordered it removed. "The feeling was that a piece depicting death shouldn't be the first thing patients and families see when coming into the main entrance of the hospital," said Shelley Lotenberg, a hospital spokeswoman.

Alfano - forced to use the artist's version of a chain saw to cut the statute into three pieces for the second time since it was completed - did the job himself. But, more than a year later, after MADD appealed to County Executive Edward Mangano, he put it back together on a new concrete slab in Eisenhower Park. It is to be formally dedicated next month.

Finally, the piece has a permanent home.

But, Alfano said, "I'm not finished with it yet."

One day he would like to recast the resin statute in bronze, a project that would cost about $100,000. "It's held up well for two moves and 12 years," Alfano said. "With bronze, it could last almost forever."

Certainly its message does. Stand Up, Speak Out. Against drunken driving. Against the decision to use drugs, especially heroin. Against gangs, who are running through too many local communities.

"It pleases me that Michael's created something so powerful," said the father of Alfano's former girlfriend. "My daughter was a caring, compassionate person. Someone who would fight for what is right," said the father of the woman killed. "Michael's made it so she will live, long after I'm gone."