Chris pellettieri
founder
Chris Pellettieri grew up at 108th St. and Broadway. In 1972, his parents enrolled him in first grade at the Cathedral School of St. John the Divine. While he was in the seventh grade, Dean James Morton started the stoneyard to resume construction on the Cathedral, an enormous neo-Gothic marvel. The stoneyard caught Chris’s attention, but being only 12 years old, and being focused entirely on intellectual challenges (like all schoolchildren), he did not imagine it in his future.
As a student Chris was successful, and when he graduated he went on to Stuyvesant High School, the most rigorous and selective public high school in New York City. During his four years at Stuy, he became progressively more disenchanted with school, and by extension the whole world of sedentary information-based activities. Although he realized that activities like shaping materials and using them to build things were intensely interesting, he lacked the courage to actually pursue these instincts. Pulled along by other peoples’ expectations of him, Chris joined the herd of his classmates and shuffled into college, hoping to discover a new realm of study or an inspirational professor who would ignite the fire of curiosity and turn homework and studying and paper-writing into a productive activity rather than a pointless chore. Sadly, that never happened at NYU, and after 4 1/2 years he finally graduated.
Chris experimented with various jobs after graduation. He dabbled in photography (his father’s profession). He worked in the rink at Rockefeller Center (where he met his wife Amy), and he also tried construction work, which for the first time gave Chris an outlet for his innate love of tools and materials. The small interior renovation contractor that he worked for employed several skilled carpenters and masons, but there was no system for them to share their knowledge and skills with him, so Chris was relegated to sweeping up and unloading trucks.
A friend named Jack Arbo, who was a nuclear physics professor at Columbia University, and the father of two kids who also went to Cathedral School offered Chris the use of a workshop he had set up in the basement of the building he lived in at 521 West 112th street. It was there that Chris finally allowed himself to explore. He carved a sculpture in wood. He built a simple jewelry box. He attempted a stone carving. Chris’s path in life was becoming clear. He applied for an apprentice position at the Cathedral stoneyard.
Having spent so many years immersed in a world that was wrong for him, Chris entered the ancient traditional world of stone carving with passionate intensity. He learned very quickly and began to develop an expectation that since there was so much work left to be done on the Cathedral, that he would spend the rest of his life happily helping build it. Unfortunately, the leadership of the stoneyard had decided that future prosperity depended on mechanization. They invested in robotic stone-shaping technology which turned Chris’s job into drudgery. If he wanted to continue doing the work he loved (shaping stone by hand), he had no choice but to leave the Cathedral.
Chris found himself a freelance stone carver, with no clear idea how to connect with customers (if there were any). There were certainly no other Cathedrals under construction. Somehow Chris managed to find clients, and each commission, whether a fireplace mantel or stairway railing gave him an opportunity to challenge himself and increase his skills, though often with minimal income. Chris’s expectation was that by putting good work out into the world, he would build a reputation and demand would follow. The process of establishing himself took much longer than he had ever thought it would, but eventually Chris carved decorative sculptures for an entrance archway to Marist College Campus under the supervision of Robert A M Stern (the Dean of the Yale School of Architecture). Shortly after that, Chris was chosen as one of the top “Makers” in New York City by the Museum of Art and Design at Columbus Circle where he was given a workspace. He carved a sculpture in public view which was exhibited in the summer of 2014.
Shortly after arriving at that high-point of his career, Chris started the Pellettieri Stone Carvers’ Academy. Raising money from former clients, he ran a six-week training program for four high school students. This program was a success in the sense that the four apprentices, who had never even been aware of stone carving before joining became quite competent in a very short time. The lasting benefit (given that they would probably not go on to become professional carvers) was the growth of their confidence in their power to learn new skills, particularly tool-using skills, and methodical approaches to materials-based processes. Those are two areas where the modern educational system is very weak, but in which many high school graduates are destined to need preparation. Chris followed this program with a second six-week program in which the participants were older and who, through their individual life experiences had developed a strong desire for a traditional stone carving training. This program was a big success as well, not only for the reasons mentioned above, but also because there was strong reason to expect that the participants would actually use the skills they learned to advance in their careers.
In the summer of 2017, Chris decided to dedicate himself fully to the Stone Carvers’ Academy by expanding to a six-month program. He also decided that by focusing this program on the needs of our veterans, it would be much more powerful. The significant therapy value of shaping stone using hand tools would help heal post-traumatic stress, as would an environment of fellowship and support. The veterans’ program ran in the first half of 2019. It was a success in many ways and it also revealed limitations in the Stone Carvers’ Academy which prompted Chris to reassess and create a new plan for moving forward and expanding.