In 2016, sculptor Joseph Reginella was riding the Staten Island Ferry with his nephew. After fielding one too many questions about how many sharks live in the waters of the Upper New York Bay, Reginella had a burst of inspiration. «Have you ever heard of the Staten Island Ferry Octopus Disaster?», he asked his nephew. Having enraptured his nephew with the story, Joe decided to see if he could convince other people. He created a monument out of bronze-painted Styrofoam, depicting a ferry snarled with tentacles, and installed it in Battery Park. He followed it up with a few more memorials: to the Brooklyn Bridge Elephant Stampede, the NYC UFO Tugboat Abduction, and the Ed Koch Wolf Foundation. Some things are beyond even his imagination. Half a decade later, as a pandemic swept the globe, Fabrikzeitung caught up with Joe, who was working on his latest project while sheltering in place on Staten Island.
Cara Giaimo: How are you doing?
You know. I got a couple weeks’ worth of food, booze, a project that I’m working on that’s due in June. Hopefully they’re still going to want it. I got enough to keep me going so I guess I’m thankful for that.
How did you get into sculpting fake monuments?
I grew up in the late 70s early 80s. Monster movies and horror movies, slasher films, that’s kind of what inspired me to be an artist. When «Friday the 13th» came out I was probably like 10. I wanted to learn about special effects, and I was obsessed with this magazine «Fangoria». I learned through books and magazines that in order to do that stuff you had to know how to sculpt. Here I am 35, 30 years later – has it been that long, jeez. And that’s what I do for a living. About five or six years ago, I made my nephew a crib. It was a scene from the end of the movie «Jaws», where the shark comes up with the boat and swallows what’s his name, Robert Shaw. I just thought it would be a hilarious photo op. It went viral and people were like, «Those horrible parents!» And I was like, people believe that the kid’s actually sleeping in this thing? That was the basis of the monuments.
How do you achieve that effect – getting people to think it’s real?
With the monument series, basically, I make a statue, and it’s dedicated to an event. And then I back it up with all sorts of facts. I make websites. Brochures that we put in an information kiosk. People are like, «How the hell did I never hear about this?» But it always falls on a date where news would have trumped it. Like the octopus [attack] happened the day that JFK got assassinated. So people just pause and are like «Oh yeah, I guess that’s why we never heard about it.» Even after people found out it was fake, they were still coming to look for it, taking selfies with it.
So then I decided to do a series. I did the one with the elephants, and that one went really well. And then I did another one. In the 1970s in July, there was a blackout. The city went into turmoil. And on that night, a tugboat had claimed to see what it thought was a private aircraft crash into the harbor. And they went to investigate, and they called the Coast Guard, and when the Coast Guard showed up, the tugboat was gone. And then it’s this myth that the UFO took them. So I made this statue of a longshoreman, and it’s next to an alien body. That one, I was actually getting mad, because people thought it was real. I was like, you’ve got to be kidding me.
What was the latest one?
I just did another one last year. [New York’s Mayor] in the 70s, Ed Koch, in order to deter people from going to tag up the trains with graffiti, had this wild idea to put wolves in the train cars to stop them. And you know, it didn’t happen. But in my universe, it did happen. And what happened was, these wolves, they migrated underground. For decades, they’ve been living in the tunnels of the city. And they come out at night into the parks to feed. And that’s one of the reasons why the parks close at dusk. So the plaque says, «Dedicated to the many tourists that go missing every year in New York City. And a reminder as to why the parks close at dusk.» And it’s dedicated by the Ed Koch Wolf Foundation. I don’t know if you’ve seen the statue – it’s a tourist being mauled by wolves.
What are you working on right now?
I’m working on a series of monuments that are dedicated to everyday heroes. Like for instance, one guy that I’m working on now, about 10 years ago, this guy, his name is Wesley Autrey, you can look him up. He was standing on the subway platform and someone had a seizure and they rolled onto the train tracks and the train was coming. And this guy jumped onto the train tracks, and within seconds rolled the both of them into the middle of the tracks, held the guy down because he was flailing. And he saved the guy’s life. So I’m working with this organization where it’s kind of like a worldwide thing. Doing these life-sized statues of these people. They’re going to be displayed at the United Nations for a little bit. And then in Union Square, and I don’t know, Nashville. So it’s kind of a cool project, and actually that was a result of my hoax monuments, now I’m making real monuments. I’m actually working on this project with somebody else from a different studio. I’m doing the bodies and he’s doing the heads. I’m waiting for him to come over now to drop a head off. He’s coming in right now, and we’re supposed to be under quarantine, and now he’s going to freaking spend some time with me. And I hope he doesn’t have the cooties!
You grew up on Staten Island, right?
I did.
What was that like?
We had horses! The city’s literally a stone’s throw away, but Staten Island was all farms and stuff like that. I was born in ’71. Once they built the Verrazano Bridge in the late 60s, like everybody from Brooklyn and Queens, they came to Staten Island. Now it’s like a fourteen-by-seven mile freakin‘ little postage stamp, there’s a million people on it. So there’s no more stables. In the mid 80s, I moved to New Jersey, because my family liked horses and we had a stable there. But then I hated it. I hated Jersey. So I came back to Staten Island in like 1993. And I’ve been in the same place ever since.
What made you come back and what has kept you here?
Well, I can see the New York, the Manhattan skyline from my window. So I’m like really close. It’s cheap, because it’s rent-stabilized. And I have three thousand square feet of open space. They rent it out to me and I’ve just been using it as my studio for the past 20 years. I don’t even have to leave my house to go to work.
Is there a good artist’s community in Staten Island?
It’s a good artist’s community but I keep to myself. I don’t bother with anybody. I do commercial art for a living. Their art community is more like painting, craftsy. I do different stuff.
Do you think living on island has influenced your work?
For the monument series, NYC is definitely my canvas. But I think the themes I came up with for those monuments – the octopus, the bridge, the tugboat UFO – all those actually revolve around water. I guess subconsciously that’s an inspiration.
Where else do you find your inspiration?
They just kind of pop. The last one that I did, I had these little clay maquettes. I just made some wolves and I set them up, and it looked hilarious to me. I was like «Ok, now I’ve got to come up with a story for this.» What happened was, I came up with the exact same story I told you about the wolves. And I was at my doctor’s office. And he was like, So what have you got going this year? And I told him. And he goes, «I think Ed Koch tried doing that once.» So I looked it up and I was like, son of a bitch, he did!
What about this pandemic? Did you ever predict something like this would happen, as someone with a horror-inflected imagination?
When I was a little kid, watching «Dawn of the Dead», I fantasized about hunkering down and having enough food. I guess this is the freakin‘ equivalent of it.
For more about Joseph’s work, visit nycurbanlegends.com. This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.