Anthony Mongelluzo
Anthony is a figurative artist attuned to the fleeting moments where life brushes against its own impermanence.
Growing up in the quiet remove of rural Pennsylvania, his early years were marked by a sense of isolation from larger cultural currents. That distance fostered a hunger for stories and images beyond his reach, drawing him toward film and theater: a fascination that continues to animate his practice.
His drawings bear this perspective with unvarnished honesty: figures that arrive mid-breath, suspended in the gravity of reflection and mortality.
A student of Drama at Penn State, Anthony’s background in theater and film informs the staging of his compositions. Each drawing feels like a still from a larger performance — part tableau, part confession— where light and shadow carry the emotional weight of the story. His portraits are not just likenesses but atmospheres, distilling mood, repose, and the subtle tremors of inner life.
Anthony’s drawings exhibit his own sensitivity: faces caught between strength and vulnerability, bodies rendered with the raw immediacy of charcoal, forms that appear to dissolve even as they assert themselves. The work suggests both presence and absence, giving viewers the uncanny sense of witnessing a memory become image.
Alongside his artistic pursuits, Anthony has worked for years as a mixologist and bartender. That same spirit of attentiveness — the pensive listener who absorbs stories, gestures, and the quiet nuances of others — carries into his art. He embodies the best of the Appalachian blue-collar ethos: humility, persistence, and the ability to translate lived experience into honest, unpretentious expression.