Shaquille O’Neal’s likeness stands 18 feet tall outside an arena at Louisiana State University. Brian Hanlon always enjoyed the arts, but it wasn’t until his first sculpture class at Monmouth University in the 1980s that the full weight of his passion was realized.
“When I went to school, so many new things opened up for me,” Hanlon said. “Academia is essential for some people to find out who they’re going to be in our society — it was for me.”
Hanlon enrolled in the class as part of an educational route that he thought would culminate in a career as an art teacher. That goal would never be fulfilled, though, because not only did the class awaken a prodigal talent within the young artist, it decidedly sculpted the rest of his life.
The small spark inside Hanlon became a raging flame, and after getting his feet wet in his first class, the amateur sculptor flew through four years of sculpture education in just one semester.
The Denver Broncos Ring of Fame Plaza, featuring 24 statues, was recently unveiled in front of Sports Authority Field at Mile High, Denver. One of Hanlon’s first bronze sculptures, “The Involved Student,” depicts a young woman reading a book as she reclines on the ground with a soccer ball under her leg. It still adorns the campus lawn today. The model for the sculpture, Monmouth alumna and former soccer star Michele Adamkowski, is now married to Hanlon. The couple has five children together and lives in Toms River.
“I had a great experience [at Monmouth,]” Hanlon said. “I met my wife there, I discovered my career there.” Hanlon would spend the remainder of his tenure at Monmouth in a state of fervent creative productivity. His work piqued the interest of the artistic community at Boston University, where he would study on a full scholarship before graduating and getting the ball rolling on what has become a distinguished career.
A typical project requires as much effort from Hanlon’s team of logistics professionals as it does from the artist himself, and usually takes about six to eight months from start to finish, he said. Huge pieces of clay are industriously modeled to create the desired look — a school mascot, an accomplished sports star and a soldier for a memorial site are all within the wide range of possibilities — from which a rubber mold with a fiberglass shell is created.
“You pull apart that shell [from the mold] with hopes that it goes back together perfectly, and you use that in the foundry,” Hanlon said.
At the foundry, a lengthy and laborious process — during which molten bronze is poured into a cast — results in a perfect bronze replica of Hanlon’s original clay model.
“The end result is magnificent,” Hanlon said, lauding the efforts of his logistics team and the workers at the foundry.
Many of Hanlon’s sculptures are commissioned by major civic, religious and educational institutions and are displayed prominently as representations of those institutions’ ideologies. Bronze statues of the Binghamton University Bearcat, the Seton Hall Pirate, a 12-foot-tall Shaquille O’Neal at his alma mater Louisiana State University, several first-responder statues of police and firemen in front of town halls across the nation, and a representation of Jesus’ mother Mary clutching the rosary at a church in San Juan, Puerto Rico, all personify the values and worth of the institutions they adorn.
Confident in his skills and comfortable with his customer base, Hanlon has in recent years taken it upon himself to create landmarks that sing the praises of personalities he believes have been obscured by historians.
“I’m trying to sculpt Earl Lloyd, the first black player signed in the NBA,” Hanlon said. “I’m doing that because nobody knows who he is. Everyone knows Jackie Robinson, but not Earl Lloyd. It’s kind of important.”
Hanlon also has his sights set on creating a sculpture of C. Vivian Stringer, the African American head coach of the Rutgers women’s basketball team. “In a man’s world and at a man’s college, where all the money is filtered toward the football team, Vivian deserves it,” he said.
Next week, Hanlon & Co. will unveil a sculpture called “Jesuits in Science” in Syracuse, N.Y.
“It’s a sculpture of Jesuit priests who helped develop science as we know it today. The invention of the microscope, telescope, and profound contributions to language, psychology and science all came on behalf of the Jesuits, one of the most influential religious groups in history,” Hanlon said.
Hanlon, much like the pioneers and public figures he memorializes, is shaping history in his own way.
“Sometimes what is real and what has been written in pop culture are two different things. Those kinds of injustices bother me, and I’m trying to right them by making good, beautiful, academically fit historical markers,” Hanlon said. In doing so, “I’m aware that … in a lot of ways you are writing your own history. It’s a big responsibility.”
Hanlon has earned numerous accolades, including the Distinguished Alumni Award from Monmouth University.
The diligent sculptor, who has completed more than 300 masterpiece works since 1986, has no plans to pump the brakes on his esteemed career just yet. After all, he said, there are still plenty of inconspicuous historical figures to be immortalized in bronze.