He emigrated to the United States, and since 1980, has worked as a freelance medallic artist in Southern California.
Each project Alex Shagin designs is a personal tribute to the freedom and democracy he found since immigrating to America from Russia in the 1980s.
Yuri Barshay and Thomas F. Fitzgerald, with the assistance of Shagin, compiled the following list of his early works issued by the Leningrad Mint:[3] The following medals and coins are compiled from Coin World archives, with Shagin's favorites listed at the top: Obverse shows a stylized wig forming a baroque frame in the upper left; reverse design, three musical cherubs in extremely high relief flying above an organ in the upper right; and a side view showing the depth of the sculpturing in the lower left.
Variation on the subject of mythical and real world was used, combining the theme of the sculptor at work.
The hole in the meda1 corresponds to the sun warming the garden on the obverse and the mouth of the crucible from which molten bronze is poured on the reverse.