Ralph Sirianni, BA '78

"Working artist" 

Ralph Sirianni wears proudly the title of “working artist.” It’s a role to which he’s aspired since his days as an art student at UB.

Sirianni had recently returned from a harrowing tour of duty in Vietnam. After taking classes at another college and a stint working full-time, he took advantage of the GI Bill to enroll in UB. Art wasn’t necessarily on Sirianni’s front burner then, even though it had always been part of his life. His older brother had taught him how to draw. As a young man touring Italy, he communicated through art. In Vietnam, he remembers, people there “didn’t like their pictures taken, but it tickled them when I sketched them.”

UB professor becomes his mentor

A shift started after Sirianni talked to a UB counselor who guided him toward what is now his life’s work. The defining moment came as he worked with art professor and renowned Buffalo artist Walter Prochownik, who became Sirianni’s mentor.

Prochownik, Sirianni says, “was a WWII vet. He recognized the problems I was going through. He took me under his wing. Up until that time, I didn’t know how to release what was inside of me. He showed me. My work became meaningful.” Sirianni had worked primarily in the realistic style, but Prochownik taught him how to express himself in other styles.

“I’ve spoken to so many students who got the same growth from him,” says Sirianni. “He nurtured me at a time when I could have easily put aside my brushes, because I had just come out of a tough place. He saved me and gave me a new life in art.”

Creative art therapy

Sirianni’s new direction carried over into a career in creative art therapy at the Veteran’s Administration Hospital in Buffalo, where he has worked since 1977. Learning to take control of “the horrible things that happened in Vietnam—using them in a way that has helped me express myself,” has helped him connect with hospital patients. He works primarily with people dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder and substance abuse, leading them in hands-on art, music and other creative projects.

The activity, he says, provides “opportunities for patients to express themselves.” Indeed, Sirianni recently submitted a patient’s digital photography to the National Creative Arts Festival for Veterans, and the man’s work took first place.

Art outside of work

Of course Sirianni pursues his art outside of his job. Over the years, he has focused his work on issues he feels the public needs to be aware of – patients in long-term care, the POW/MIA issue, the aftermath of 9/11, rape.

For instance, Sirianni had a show about 18 months ago called Of My Blood, which examined society-sanctioned violence linked to his Italian heritage. His long-ago trips to the Colosseum in Italy had left a lasting impression: “It blows my mind to this day that this civilization created this structure for death for entertainment.” Sirianni went back to the Colosseum, researched its history and produced a series of works on a subject that compels him. “Having been in a combat situation, it’s something that I felt a strong connection to,” he says.

Other work has ranged from commissions for veterans’ memorials to courtroom sketches to a current project doing landscapes, a new subject for him. “I’m trying to learn how to do them without compromising my style,” he says. “Most work I create is powerful and upsetting.”

At 55, Sirianni compares his life in art with martial arts, his other passion. “When you get to the black belt in martial arts, that’s when the work begins. That’s when you really develop. I can correlate that with my art. I’m at that point where I set a goal but also found it’s only the beginning. Now I have to learn more.”

Sirianni’s long-term goal? “Just get up and paint in the studio and paint right through night, if I want to. That’s what I truly want to do. Right now,” he says, laughing, “I’m still looking at that clock.”

To see some of Sirianni’s work, visit his Website at www.sirianniart.com.

Written by Grace Lazzara
November 2004

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