A freighter trapped in ice is shown in this aerial photo near Whitefish Bay on Lake Superior northwest of Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario April 7, 2015. The biggest ice cover on the Great Lakes in decades is backing up shipments of everything from Canadian grain to U.S. iron and steel in one of North America's most important economic regions. (Photo by Kenneth Armstrong/Reuters)

A man wearing a “Pinhead” mask walks through the grounds of St Mary's Church, Whitby, during the Whitby Gothic festival taking place this weekend, on April 27, 2014. The twice yearly event attracts Goths from across the UK and beyond to the historic fishing town and is a great boost to the local economy. (Photo by Anna Gowthorpe/PA Wire)

Competitors take part in the annual Mud Madness event at Foymore Lodge on April 22, 2018 in Portadown, Northern Ireland. The adult version of the event includes two laps of an 8km course through 25 obstacles while the kids event is run over 2kms. The race is in it's eleventh year and is sponsored by McVities Jaffa Cakes and event charity partner Marie Curie together with other numerous charities and fundraising groups. (Photo by Charles McQuillan/Getty Images)

American sculptor Michael Alfano has been sculpting for over fifteen years. A native of New York, he now lives and works in Hopkinton, Massachusetts. His major influences are Salvador Dali, Jo Davidson, and Jean-Antoine Houdon, as well as Buddhist, Taoist, Sufi and other eastern philosophy and literature. He first studied at the Art Students League of New York, with an emphasis on life-size sculpture from the model. His formal education continued at Boston University and was augmented by internships with several prominent sculptors.

People sit near a fully loaded in Madama near the border with Lybia on January 1, 2015. French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian paid a surprise visit to northern Niger on January 1, to visit a base being built to combat the growing flow of weapons and jihadists from neighbouring Libya. Le Drian travelled from Chad to Madama, a desert outpost about 100 kilometres from Libya, where he saw in the New Year with troops at a French base. Madama is situated on the route used by jihadists and arms smugglers in southern Libya to reach northern Mali and Niger. (Photo by Dominique Faget/AFP Photo)

Miss Jamaica Kaci Fennell (L) and Miss Colombia Paulina Vega (L) compete during the swimsuit competition at the 2014 Miss Universe Final at the FIU Arena in Miami, USA, 25 January 2015. (Photo by Rhona Wise/EPA)

Nino, a ten-year-old toreador apprentice of the French Tauromachy Centre, nicknamed El Nino, touches a practice bull at the bullring of Garons, near Nimes, September 25, 2013. Since 1983, the French Tauromachy Centre in Nimes has trained some 1,000 youths in the art of bullfighting. Twenty of them have gone on to become professional matadors, facing fighting bulls in the arena. Twice a week, students take courses with a matador to learn the movements and gestures of the bullfighter in the ring, but without an animal present. Students train with calves in the surrounding fields during spring, and regularly participate in beginner's bullfights (becerradas) without killing calves. Solal has been taking courses for three years and Nino, for just a year now. Both are normally enrolled in French public schools, but have one thought in mind – bullfighting. They share a passion linked to the city of Nimes, famous for its ferias and bullring. (Photo by Jean-Paul Pelissier/Reuters)

A man carries a child in a wheelbarrow near a burning tire barricade in the framework of the protests of the last three days due to the increase in fuel prices, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, 09 July 2018. Haiti was today practically paralyzed by a transport strike after three days of violent riots due to an increase in fuel prices, which the Government left without effect shortly after the announcement. The Prime Minister, Jack Guy Lafontant, today heads a meeting with representatives of Parliament to assess the situation created after the violent protests, which have left at least three dead and several injured. (Photo by Jean Marc Hervé Abelard/EPA/EFE)