Untitled
Mixed-media
varied size 9" - 12"

Italian folk artist, Frank Gregorio, who was born in Laurino, Italy in 1885. He immigrated to Chicago in 1907 with his family and lived there until his death in 1980. Even as a young teen in Italy he whittled whistles and flutes while tending a herd of cattle for his farmer parents. When he first arrived in Chicago he got the job of laying railroad track for the Union Pacific. He married and reared a family of three and continued working in the construction trade in the Loop until he retired at age 71. Frank Gregorio continued carving figures and making simple collages of owls and butterflies from yarn and colored stone. Frank Gregorio recieved no formal art training, but out of poverty and the desire to create art, he used whatever materials were available to form his art pieces. He carved clothes pins, broom handles, used any wood that was available and modelled his figures after people he knew in his home town of Laurino, as well as saints and storybook characters. He depicted farmers, young and old people, policemen , sailors, musicians, priest, and children, and even dogs, cats, and horses with riders.