In 1979, sculptor John Ahearn began making lifecasts in the display window of Fashion Moda, a celebrated interdisciplinary arts space in the Bronx that operated from 1978 to 1993. Lifecasting is a strange and fascinating artistic process that generates sculptures by putting molds onto live subjects, and Ahearn’s public displays of it quickly caused a stir. “It was a wonderful experience I had with people walking in and taking an interest in the process,” recalled Ahearn.
One of the people who became intrigued by Ahearn’s lifecasting was a taxi driver named Wally, who went home and told his family about what he had seen. Eventually word got around to Wally’s cousin, Rigoberto, who at that time was a 17-year-old who worked at his uncle’s religious statuary factory. When Ahearn met Rigoberto that day, it was the beginning of a lifelong, extraordinarily fruitful artistic collaboration.
