Great Uncle Rocky Was Gay in 1940s East Utica 2020. Acrylic on paper, 16 x 20"
Rocky Rizzo was gay but wasn’t allowed to be publicly. I painted him in an alternate universe. One without the crudity of 1940s East Utica.
One of Rocky’s siblings was Keitha, my mother. Like my patronym, she also has a line of family descent going all the way back to 300,000 B.C.E. Central Africa. Her parents surnames were Williams (mother) from Atlanta Georgia, and Rizzo (father) from Utica N.Y. I researched the Rizzo line and found a link to Laurenzana, Italy going back to the mid-1700s. My great grandparents, Frank and Assunta Rizzo, arrived to New York in 1912, and moved to Utica. Through census data, I know that Frank was illiterate in 1920, but very prolific at baby-making. By 1940, the Rizzo family had nine children, but one less mother. Assunta died during childbirth in the 1930s. The boy survived and Frank sent him to an orphanage. Their second child, John my grandfather, was born in 1914. He became a successful restaurateur. I swear the business is in my blood, but I know it can kill you. John died young at age 51.
My mother tells me how she and her siblings had to enter grandfather Rizzo’s house through the back way, so other Italian families wouldn’t notice Frank fraternizing with the “Americane”, my grandmother Keitha and her offspring (my mother, aunt and uncle). His son dared marry a non-Italian red head, which put an impure stain on the neighborhood fabric. By this time (late 40s, early 50s), Frank had no love for this new land. He was an illiterate widower working his back bent in a shoe factory. Hell, I’d hate the “Americane” too, riding around in their studebakers all pleasant-faced on Sunday. How did he fail so hard in a land with so much promise? Sure, he had a hard knock life, like nearly every Italian immigrant of the time. Unlike others, Frank’s big payoff in America never materialized. But he didn’t have to be such a prick about it. What kind of man would be ashamed of his own grandchildren? Just goes to show, there isn’t always romance in the past. Even a humble shoemaker from Italy can grow up to be a selfish ass in America.