Of Sculptures and Structures: At MAC Metalworks, art is ironclad

Man of steel.  Iron will. Bold as brass.

Metals equal might in all their shapes and alloy forms. But artist and metal maestro Michael Chiarello perceives more than just the power. There’s beauty in that strength, too, be it in the works he creates for homes and local businesses or the sculptures that spring from his creative mind. 

From his early days working with artist Nova Mihai Popa, the creator of Water Mill’s famed “Ark” sculpture project, to the functional, beautiful steel and iron work he and his team forge through his company MAC Metalworks, to his continued pursuit of steel and iron sculpture work, Chiarello brings together both beauty and brawn. It’s the medium and the calling that’s created over two decades of a career, weaving together the roles of artist and craftsman. 

“We’re being hired to build things that people want to see. So, this isn’t just a piece that is strictly for functionality, like a fire escape,” says Chiarello one afternoon, sitting behind his desk, his white-and-black rescue, Cookie, nuzzling his hand. “If the welds look bad or the paint doesn’t look great, a fire escape is still gonna save somebody, but the thing won’t look like a piece of jewelry or a piece of art when you’re done, right? I push that.”

Alloy Inspiration

Growing up in Northport, Chiarello was an artistic kid. “I was always doing some sort of art. I remember taking comic book drawing classes when I was a little, little kid. I was just always tinkering and always building stuff, drawing stuff,” he says. “And then I went to a school, Northport High School, which was actually very big on the arts. So, it was perfect. They really encouraged [art].” 

After the school day ended, Chiarello would head to the Huntington School of Fine Art, spending evenings in their college-focused arts program, which encouraged and enabled him to explore multiple mediums and disciplines, from oil painting to sculpture to sketching. “You’ve got to be able to do everything; that’s kind of how they taught us,” he says. “[Art] almost became like a sport for me — that’s how much time I spent working on it.”

But it wasn’t until he enrolled at the Maryland Institute College of Art that sculpture became his focus. 

“I always did sculpture but once I got there, the program was small [and] very focused. You had a lot of kids coming in to be painting majors and photography majors. Sculpture was a small department at that time, and it was exactly where I needed to be,” says Chiarello, who lives in Sag Harbor with his wife, Megan, owner of the Hamptons-based athleisure brand Leallo. His instructor was an old-school iron worker, and the more time he spent working in the medium, the more it spoke to him.  

Call for craftsman

By the time his senior year came, Chiarello was bouncing back and forth between school in Baltimore and treks to New York City to check out gallery shows. On one such trip during the end of his senior year, he was flipping through the Village Voice when an ad caught his eye: an artist in the Hamptons was seeking assistants with experience in wood and steel to help with a large-scale project. Those hired would be provided a studio to work on their own art, plus living quarters and a stipend. The artist was Nova Mihai Popa, and answering his call would change the course of Chiarello’s life.

Despite being raised on Long Island, Chiarello’s experiences out east were limited to a few family visits in the summer to Greenport on the North Fork, staying at the old Silver Sands Motel and splashing in the Sound. It was around the time of the Sept. 11 attacks, and the raw, bewildered emotions that spun from the tragic, unsettling events made the young artist yearn to be closer to home. 

The job, helping Popa fabricate the entrancing sculptures that now fill 95 acres of preserved land on Millstone Road in Water Mill, filled the bill on multiple points, getting him back to Long Island — but with a purpose. And a job. 

“All my other friends that graduated art school were forced to get other jobs out of their field to pay the bills. I was able to kind of leave school and basically go straight into the field that I was trying to pursue,” Chiarello says. “And that kind of led to all of these other things.” 

The work was ideal, and it also introduced him to a community that not only valued art but collected it.

“The Richard Serras, the Donald Judds, the [Dan] Flavins, the [Mark di] Suveros — really, the guys that were doing a lot of that large-scale work and installations,” he says. “When I came out here, I was like, ‘Oh wow, there are people that actually own these pieces that I look at in books.’”

Chiarello worked alongside Popa for over 10 years, aiding the artist in fulfilling and building his larger-than-life vision but also creating his own work, showing at galleries on the side and becoming part of the robust East End arts community. 

Additionally, he began to meet people who liked his vision but were also looking for an artistic concept that could be applied to more practical aspects of their homes. 

“A lot of it was like, ‘We have this idea, but we kind of need an artist to look at it.’ Or, ‘We have this weird space in our home and we don’t really know what to do. Do you have any ideas?’” Chiarello recalls. “And then that slowly began to happen more and more.”

Art imitates life 

In 2008, Chiarello took those calls for a consult to heart and formed MAC Metalworks, opening the first incarnation on Stephen Hands Path. The business currently operates out of an ample Kirby building on Washington Avenue in Springs, where Chiarello employs a trio of metalworkers on staff, but plans are deep in the works to build a space that he’ll own outright.  

What started in those early days as the occasional “Can you come look at this space in my home?” request has, over the last couple of decades, grown into relationships with architects, designers and builders who seek out Chiarello’s fine eye and craftsmanship to complete projects that tick the boxes of sound structure and beautiful appearance but that also, when needed, distinctly separate function from form.

“I provide not only the fabrication part of it and the complete execution of the project, but also, if I don’t think it’s going to be feasible, I’ll say, ‘Hey, listen, this looks amazing. This is a great drawing, but I don’t know if this will hold. We might have a problem with wind, or we might have a problem with, you know, a bounce when you’re walking upstairs because we have nothing supporting it.’”

Chiarello and his staff design and create up to 100 pieces a year, give or take, for homes and businesses around the Hamptons. The current workspace is an amalgam of his life, with several of his own sculptures dotting the exterior of the tidy, cream-colored warehouse where sparks fly and heavy metals are molded into usable structures in steel and iron — a place he’s been devoting most of his time lately. 

He still exhibits pieces in shows and on loan to spots like Tripoli Gallery in Wainscott. Just outside his current workshop and offices, there are also several works of his displayed outside, bending, twisting and reaching their long metal pieces high and low, defying their steely solidity. But while the medium to create for work and create for art are the same, the head space is not.

For Chiarello, the sculpture side is incredibly visual and requires time to slow down for him to be open to his surroundings, letting it all soak in. “It’s like, seeing things, seeing space, seeing how things relate to space and light,” he says. “I’ll notice things, and they kind of just get locked back into my head. It’s like getting back into the gym for an athlete. You really have to train your mind to kind of think that way.”

Meanwhile, the day to day he’s carved out is pretty inspiring, too.  

“It’s not cookie-cutter pieces. They’re custom. So, every day is a little different here, and it kind of keeps you on your toes,” he says. “When you complete something and you see it in a magazine or on a website, and you started this thing from zero, yeah? And now somebody is able to use it as something they want, yeah? It’s very rewarding.”