Connecting Communities of the World Through Art: Michael Pilato at TEDxPSU

[ Music and applause ]

>> Michal Pilato: Thank you.

Thank you so much.

This is truly an honor for me.

My whole life I've been painting murals.

Since I was five years old I was doing artwork

at the Central Pennsylvania Festival

of the Arts with my mother.

The murals were merely a backdrop for the stage of life.

In 1996, I met Yuri Karabosh, who was a friend, a teacher,

and a mentor and we did about ten murals here

in State College and we were working on a mural

on the Deli Restaurant across the street

from where the inspiration mural now is.

I was looking across the street at this big blank wall

and I was drooling, I was going oh my God I would love

to paint that building.

The owner of the Deli Restaurant overheard me and he said,

"Michael what would you paint on that wall?"

I said, "Andy Zangilli you know, could I go home

and think about that."

I went home that night and I thought about my life.

I thought about the community in State College.

I thought about the Broadway shows I went

to at the Eisenhower.

It thought about all my artist friends.

I thought about the musicians

who would entertain us every night.

I thought about the great professors at Penn State

who inspire every day.

I thought about the students who are so energetic

and bring life into our community.

And then I thought of a title.

I said, "Let's call it Inspiration."

I went back and I talked with Andy, he loved the idea

and he said, you know, go across the street

and talk to the Herbovich's

[ assumed spelling ]

who own the building and talk to the student bookstore.

They also liked the idea so Yuri and I went

to different business owners and different people

in the community and everybody that we went

to supported the project.

I knew the piece would be an educational tool.

I also knew that it would help teach.

But a lot of things that I didn't know happened.

This is the mural behind me.

It's 100 feet long.

I'd like to share with you some stories

that happened during that mural process.

I was working on Eugene Lederer,

who was a Penn State renaissance person.

He also donated a park here

in the community called Lederer Park that me

and my twin brother would go and do artwork in many times.

While I was working on him,

I got a phone call from my ex-wife telling me that one

of her students from the Friends School had died and was hit

by a car right in front of Lederer Park.

So I called Andrew Friedman's mother and I said I don't know

where you go when you die

but I think your son would have taken

that walk with Mr. Lederer.

So I painted the two of them together and I put love

on the chalkboard and his family and friends came out

and teachers and they all painted love over and over again

and some of them still come today and paint it.

It's getting thicker and thicker.

I felt the power of art and I felt art in healing.

One of the other stories I'd like to share

with you is Colonel Russell.

Colonel Russell was one of the founders here

of the Special Olympics and the United Way's day of caring

and he's pictured there with his late wife Eileen.

Colonel Russell is looking across the street

at the Deli Restaurant at another small mural

of himself the age he was when he went into Iwo Jima.

He went in with 1200 men and on the fifth day

of battle he had 500 men left.

His good friend was next to him with tears streaming

through the black sand on his face and he goes,

"That's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen."

Colonel Russell turns to see what he's looking at

and it's the guys raising the flag on the side

of Mt. Suribachi so he's right directly across the street

from the mural again at the whales and if you walk up

and you look in the eye of the whale,

you'll see the guys raising the flag from Mt. Suribachi.

[ applause ]

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

There were so many stories; I went to different universities

and did lectures about communities and I was lucky enough

to go to Williamsport, Pennsylvania to Lycoming College.

It's a wonderful community.

You know, I was just so impressed with all their stories

and I also realized very quickly

that their community has stories such as ours.

Through 2010 and the chamber of commerce there,

we received hundreds of letters from people

of their inspirational stories.

We went through those letters and those are

over the 400 people that are on their walls there.

It's the largest outdoor portraiture mural in the world.

Mr. William Schreyer and his wife, I went to them,

we had raised half of the money and we were having trouble

because there were so many different organizations trying

to get money in that community.

And I went there and he could tell that I was nervous.

And you know and he said, "Michael,

I want to teach you one thing.

You just have to ask me what you want

and I'll either say yes or no."

So I asked him to match the money

that we had raised and he says yes.

I was so happy, I walked outside of his office

and I was like, thank you,

God and I had tears rolling down my face.

I went back to Mr. Schreyer a year later and I said,

"Mr. Schreyer, you're going to hate

that you taught me that one thing."

He said, "Michael, what do you need?"

And I asked him for a substantial large amount of money

and he looked at me and he said, "Michael,

I'm going to do this for you but when you walk

out of my office could you please not scream and shout?"

[ laughing ]

And then the terrible day of September 11th came.

On the mural on Williamsport and the mural at State College,

it actually happened before then, excuse me.

I went out with Yuri Karabash

and we painted symbolic images on the wall.

Ten firefighters were honored at Beaver Stadium

at a Nebraska football game right after Penn State.

They came to the mural and they got a tour.

They went across the street to the Deli Restaurant

and they said, "Yo, Mike come over for a beer."

Went over, drew a picture on a napkin very quickly

of a firefighter, put 22 in the helmet

and wrote a poem for them.

One week later Tony Martin sent a photocopy of that back

to me with a picture of his cousin who had died

and they were identical and he was

from fire station number 22.

So I painted this picture of Saint Nick

and I put all the guys who died behind him

and I put his cousin right behind Saint Nick and I gave it

to the firehouse for a Christmas present.

Ever since then, I've been going up and having great meals

with them; I've been on the fire truck with them

and they honored me with two crosses made

out of the steel of the twin towers.

One of them is in the mural in Williamsport

and one of them is in the mural in State College.

80 firefighters buff those crosses for an hour a day

for 80 days straight.

I ground the metal off the back of the crosses

and when we put the crosses up, we put religious symbols.

Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity,

[ inaudible ]

and Taoism and Muslim and we mixed the metal

from the crosses into all the different symbols.

For the last 11 years, I've done a 48 hour vigil.

This is a piece from Williamsport called Never Forget.

I was sharing stories, people, families that thought,

you know, it was the worst day.

A day that they thought they wouldn't smile,

they were smiling.

Again, I felt the power of art and my students

through the Public Art Academy who took part it

in also felt the power of art and art in healing.

One of the stories in Williamsport I'd like to share

with you is about Marshall Post.

Marshall Post was nominated

by so many people for two reasons.

The latter reason mostly.

In World War II he was a gunner on a plane.

He did 150 missions over Suribachi, which was unheard of.

He came out of that war, like a lot of veterans

and said you can never be a winner of a war,

only the better loser.

He had five major heart attacks before he was 40 years old

and he asked God.

"God, why am I still alive?

Why am I so fortunate with my family and successful?"

And he came out of that with,

every person I meet from this day forward,

they're going to have a smile on their face

when they walk away from me.

I told that story at Sheridan Elementary in Williamsport

and 60 children wrote Marshall letters that said Marshall,

we heard you were nominated to be on the wall

because you make people smile, so we want to write to you

about people that make us smile.

Marshall was dying at the time, so I took that painting

into his deathbed and his daughter was reading him the

letters while I was painting him.

He was a fly fisherman so flies are glued to his hat

that he tied, he died the first day of fishing season

so his halo is made of fish doing the infinity symbol.

That's his handprint above his head

and he wrote a poem especially for the mural

that his grandson came in and scribed.

Those are his grandchildren's footprints;

they're also in the lens of the camera

and he's taking a picture across the street

of the other mural of his girlfriend waving at him

and his daughter and his son in law.

Again, I felt the power of art.

Another story is of Kyri Hall.

I was painting the mural and I heard the news

that Kyri Hall had died

of a heart attack during a Williamsport basketball game.

So I came out and I painted Kyri.

Kyri was all about diversity

and unity so he's got the rainbow colored shirt.

His family members' handprints all all through him.

Handprints from children from the center are all around him.

Letters to this day from hundreds of people

as you can see there, his family,

his friends came out and did that.

He loved BB King so I put BB King in front of him and he got

to meet BB King in Williamsport

at the Community Arts Theater.

He also loved the Nutcracker Suite so the Nutcracker lies

down there below him.

That's his coach Allen Taylor

and that's his little brother Altimar.

His mother told me that the night Kyri died,

his little brother went outside and saw a halo

around the moon and he went inside and he said, "Mom,

you've got to come out and see this.

Kyri's an angel."

His little brother Altimar, when he came to the mural

and saw him, he said, "I told you he's an angel.

I told you he's an angel!"

And he was running around the parking lot.

It was amazing.

So in his eye, when you go to the mural and you look

into his eyes, you'll see the moon and the halo

and he wrote this story about the moon and the halo

on the piece below him.

Again, I felt the power of art.

In Williamsport, tons of tour busses would come in.

It was a route from Washington, DC to Niagara Falls

and Williamsport was the halfway point.

And I would explain to international people the stories

of the United States,

also bringing up stories of State College.

And I found out that their stories were like ours

and they were like, oh we would love to have a mural

like this in our country.

So I started to think how wonderful it would be

to take the mural in State College,

stitch it on the internet to the mural in Williamsport,

and from Williamsport, we would stitch murals all

over the world working with artists with different styles

so it would metamorphasize.

I told this at a rotary club in Emporium PA

where we were doing another mural and there was a woman

in the audience by the name of Ann Olivet.

Ann Olivet was getting ready to go to Norway to meet

with her nephew who is a famous comedian, Jan Bach

[ assumed spelling ]

. She said, "Why don't you and Yuri come with us?"

So we took the money that we raised on that project

and we bought plane tickets.

We flew to Norway and we met with him

and we also were amazed by how people just loved the idea.

By the end of that meeting we were in connection

with the crown prince and princess,

we had met with the Prime Minister Bondevic

and it was just amazing.

From there, through Christina Kluger in Sweden,

we opened up into many countries around the world.

But something happened on our way to Moldova

where Yuri was from.

We left to go to the airport,

we were in Frankfurt at the airport,

my board of directors was telling me how scary Moldova was.

They were sending me articles and letters.

They also sent me beautiful articles but I chose to look

at the scary articles.

My friends would say, you know, the guy from Ghostbusters,

the evil guy, he was from Moldova.

[ laughing ]

When we got there, there were 10 gentleman standing there.

White faces, dark under their eyes, no teeth, tattoos,

short hair and they were all looking at me mean.

They were from Moldova

and I was like oh my God where am I going?

We got on the plane, we, you know,

we were diverted because there was fog

over Moldova to Romania.

We spent the night in Romania;

I came down and there they were.

They said, "Hey American, come over,

the plane's been delayed a little bit more."

I went over and it turned out that they were all

in different countries working for their families,

their stories were beautiful.

I was a victim of sensationalism.

I told them, you know, "Why were you looking at me mean?"

And they said, "Because you were looking at us mean."

[ laughter ]

One of my board members alerted me of a wonderful woman

by the name of Stella Rotaru who saved people from all

over the globe on sex trafficking in Moldova.

So I got on Facebook and I Facebooked

over 300 Stella Rotarus.

It was the day before we were leaving Moldova

and she got a hold of me.

I met with Stella and now she's a part

of the world mural project and Stella told me,

you know the papers come in, the news comes in,

you know they dig up nine year old stories.

They sometimes put people in harm's way.

They're not showing the incredible work that she's doing

and the country's doing to eradicate that problem.

And we decided to make that a major part of the world mural

in Moldova, to help sway the opinions of people.

At this time I also heard terrible news

in my own personal life of my daughter.

My daughter was raped

and it was just a really hard time in my life.

And then the terrible day that we all felt.

I was in Williamsport when I heard the news

about Jerry Sandusky and what happened with him.

You know, it's hard for me to talk about this.

You know, I read the Grand Jury report;

a mother of one of the victims emailed me

and said can you please take Jerry Sandusky off of the wall.

I drove up to State College thinking I was going

to do this very quickly, I hadn't shaven,

I come by the mural and there's hundreds of news cameras,

satellite dishes, I thought

that somebody had vandalized the mural.

I got out of my car and it was like a movie.

People were rushing me with microphones.

I was petrified and I was not happy about what I had to do.

This news soon went to millions of people of what I did.

Yuri Karabosh designed a painting.

That day there's a lion on the mural, a mountain lion,

which is our Nittany Lion and the Native Americans

that I met in Williamsport would say

that the mountain lion represents courage,

strength and dignity.

And that's exactly what it took those young men to come

and speak out so Yuri designed this which is now a mural.

At the opening of this, my daughter came and she spoke out.

She talked about what happened to her.

After she spoke out, a woman who was 70 years old came

up to my daughter and said,

"I was raped like you when I was your age and I never spoke

out about it and never seeked help.

Listening to you, I am now going to get help."

I have never been so proud in my life.

Joe Paterno passed away and I came up like I did

so many times to so many people on my murals,

and I painted a halo over his head.

The halos represented, to me,

as soon as the people would walk by,

I wanted them to see that we have a short time here

on Earth, as all the halos appeared to do the great things

like the people on the mural behind me.

But it was taken as sanctification all over the world

and it should have been because that what that symbol means.

So I decided to remove all the halos from the mural

and simply put rest in peace

with a birth date and the death.

The controversy was unbelievable but also I realized,

as a public artist, that's exactly our job.

The 48 hours this year was of Michael Murphy.

We all know Michael Murphy.

He was a great man, he was a vet

or he got the Congressional Medal

of Honor saving one of his Navy Seals.

His father came out and put, and mother,

and put their handprint in the mural.

When they put their handprint in the mural, his father said,

"The first phone call I got after my boy died was

from Hillary Clinton and the second phone call was

from the Paternos," and this really helped in the healing.

So I, and they also sent us white roses.

So I put a white rose with Michael,

I had put a white rose with Joe

and also one with Sue Paterno.

The real healing started when I painted Dora McQuaid

in the seat where Jerry Sandusky was.

I removed the blue ribbon that was on his seat

and I put it in her hair.

Dora McQuaid is a Penn State grad, she taught at Penn State

and she also, for the last 11 years,

has helped thousands of victims become survivors.

She, herself, was a victim.

She's coming up next month and she's working

with my daughter and other survivors and victims

of sexual violence and they're going to do a poem together

and through the blue ribbon in her hair,

you're going to see that poem and when you're there

with your iPhone and your iPad thanks to the 367 students

at Penn State, you're going

to hear them speaking a positive message

and also the resources that are available.

My favorite part of all the murals are handprints.

Yuri and I have done thousands of them so right now I'd

like to ask Sean to come up on stage

and Yuri Karabosh to come out.

Sean organized this event and is the director of this event

[ applause ]

and I found out last night

[ applause ]

and I found out last night from Sean's father

that when he was a little boy,

he came out and he put his handprint on the mural

so this is full circle.

This is a piece for the world mural

which will actually be here in State College

which all the artists on the world mural will be doing.

Sean, what you're looking at within the murals are people

from the past and the present

and your handprint is the future.

Everybody that Yuri and I meet, the inspirational people

around the world the people that we paint,

they have one thing in common.

They're passionate about what they do

and they surround themselves with passionate people.

So if you find this, you can do anything

in life, anything at all.

And maybe one day we will paint you on our murals.

Thank you.

[ Applause ]

>> Thank you.

[ Applause ]