Ralph Brancaccio

"[1] He graduated from East Catholic High School, Manchester, Connecticut, United States, in 1979 and attended Annhurst College in 1979 and was president of his freshman class.

The note-worthy print-maker Ralph Brancaccio a conceptual artist from New York, began a body of work known as "A Visual Travel Dairy" in 1990.

The pivotal act that cemented this decision was a series of five manhole cover prints titled, " Mandela : a man and his Freedom" from Basel, Switzerland.

Here are quite simply artists whose idiom changes the way we see our day-today environment: Dan Flavin's neon tubes, David Hockney's swimming pools and Daniel Buren's stripes have long since exerted such an impact.

Brancaccio is represented by Saatchi Gallery in New York City and his provocative conceptual works challenge social paradigms including faith and conscience.

Site-specific installations were produced using shoes belonging to people living with HIV, AIDS and of those who had lost their life to the disease.

He placed his works in Grand Central Terminal and other public spaces in New York City, and stood with a sign stating “AIDS Makes No Choices, You Do”.

Y steel sculptures stand ten feet tall and sport an engraved word running vertically down the letters base.

Brancaccio asks, “Why do we live so comfortably with an imbalance of human equality and irresponsibility?” With its bold sculptures, the "Y" Project halts us in our tracks and is symbolic of the challenge of getting beyond the negativity to find the life-affirming positives in the world.

[13] "Y AIDS" was placed in Providence, Rhode Island at Washington Plaza through Convergence 11 an international celebration of the arts in June 1998.

The City Of Providence, Vincent A. Cianci, Jr., Mayor, and Nancy L. Derrig, Superintendent of the Department of Public Parks and Bob Rizzo, Director of the Office of Cultural Affairs, produced it.

A collaborative effort with artists Ed and Linda Calhoun, the piece celebrates the life and spirit of Lima, a zebra that escaped from the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus on February 18, 2010 and stopped traffic in Atlanta and later euthanized.

While working towards authorization from the city to place ten Y sculptures, he collaborated with the Samuel S. Fleisher Art Memorial and the Rosenbach Museum & Library.

He also taught his printing technique to adjudicated youth at ArtScape, a Mural Arts Program, and lectured at Central High School.

Simultaneously the United States engaged in war with Iraq and due to a reduction in arts funding "The Y Project" for Philadelphia was put on hold.

Some of the participants included celebrities such as actors James Earl Jones, Anjelica Huston along with designer Jean Paul Gaultier and director Pedro Almodóvar.