Michael Frassinelli • Artist

Pianista Sailor’s Valentines by Michael Frassinelli, @ The Boathouse

       THERE IS A LONG HISTORY of Sailor’s Valentines on Nantucket. These elaborate artworks, originally made between 1830 and 1890, featured intricate designs of seashells laid out in symmetrical patterns and were designed for sailors to bring back to their sweethearts and wives. They were small (8”to 20”) and generally arranged in an octagon, with highly crafted frames that sometimes featured hinged, glass covers. Although they were sometimes made by the sailors themselves, many (if not most) were made in Barbados and purchased as souvenirs during a stop on a long voyage.

       I have a long history of making things, and for the past 25 years I have been making them out of piano parts, salvaged from instruments that have lived out their useful, musical lives and were destined for the landfill. These objects have developed into a long and complex series called The Legend of the Pianistas, and are often displayed as artifacts from this fictional civilization in the style of an natural history museum. This series has included hundreds of objects, large structures, a boat, tools, weapons, masks, numerous paintings, prints, a documentary film, and fully illustrated catalog (The Pianista Traveling Museum) containing all of the related writings and fictional research that you would expect in a museum catalog, but with more than a dash of humor.

       Over the last few years I have put these two things together, making objects reminiscent of the traditional sailor’s valentines but using piano parts as the material. This came about when I returned to the island after many years away to teach for the last few weeks of summer at the Nantucket Island School of Design and the Arts (NISDA), out in Wauwinet. This seemed like a perfect melding of my work with piano parts and my inspiration from the history and heritage of this beautiful island. As a college grad back in the mid-eighties, I came out to Nantucket and worked at the school, taking courses, teaching after school programs, and meeting many fascinating artists and craftspeople at this artistic community where founder Kathy Kelm (and a long history of dedicated staff) have been providing a home for creativity for over 50 years.    

 The pieces in this catalog and on display (including the custom-made frames) were all made over the past few summers out of the ebony, ivory, felt, steel, copper wire, wooden mechanisms, and other material found in a series of dismantled pianos brought to my Long Shed barn studio. I’d like to thank NISDA for providing me the space and facilities to do my work in between my teaching (including a course on traditional and non-traditional sailor’s valentines, for those interested). Thank you to all those who made this exhibit possible, especially Eileen Kathryn Boyd of Ten Easy Street. Enjoy!            

 — Michael Frassinelli, September 2026

Danforth Annual Juried Exhibition

My painting Pianista Cabinet of Wonders (Remps Replica) will be included in the Danforth Museum Annual Juried Exhibition and part of their 50th Anniversary celebration.

Artist Statement

Pianista Cabinet of Wonders (Remps Replica)

(For Danforth Juried Exhibition 2025)

For the past 20 years I have been making sculpture out of the variety of materials found in salvaged piano parts. These objects have taken various forms, from large-scale structures, wheeled vehicles, and even a small boat, to smaller objects such as weapons, masks, and other things that are hard to classify. Together, these works form the series I have called The Legend of the Pianistas, and are often displayed in the style of a natural history museum, as if they were artifacts from a lost civilization. I describe it as historical fiction with objects.

 The most recent additions to this series have been a number of medium and large-scale paintings of these various objects, arranged in cabinets (also constructed of piano parts) in the tradition of cabinets of curiosities—collections of scientific, historical, and unusual specimens that were popular from the Renaissance through the Victorian era. These paintings are rendered in a hyperrealist trompe l’oeil style, often with dramatic lighting, like in the Dutch still lifes of the 17th century.

 The title of this painting, Pianista Cabinet of Wonders (Remps Replica) refers to the artist Domenico Remps, a German artist working in Italy, whose 1689 painting, Cabinet of Curiosities inspired the style and composition of my painting. The original work contained images of man-made objects such as carved ivory spheres, paintings, and scientific instruments, and natural artifacts such as colorful coral, beetles, and even a human skull. I recreated my own versions of each of these objects, as well as the wooden cabinet itself, using only piano parts. I arranged these new artifacts to replicate the exact placement of objects in the Remps painting, matching the lighting and forced perspective as well. The final painting has the same uncanny realism of the original, but with the underlying feeling that these real, “fictional” artifacts were somehow meaningful in some unknown past.