Brittnai of El Paso, Texas, USA, performs in the Professional Division Competition during the 5th Annual US Pole Dance Championship on April 1, 2017 at the Symphony Space Theater in New York City. (Photo by Timothy A. Clary/AFP Photo)

The Cotopaxi volcano, one of the world's highest active volcanoes, spews smoke as seen from El Pedregal, Ecuador, October 22, 2015. Ecuadorian authorities are monitoring activity at Cotopaxi volcano, which prompted Ecuador's President Rafael Correa to maintain a yellow alert for eruptions as bursts of ash keep spewing from the snow-encircled crater of the volcano and falling in gusts on residential communities. (Photo by Guillermo Granja/Reuters)

A Firefighter walks in a evacuated home in flames at El Cariso Village as the Airport Fire burns on September 10, 2024 in Lake Elsinore, California. The fast-moving Airport Fire that started on September 9 in Orange County grew up to more than 10,000 acres by this afternoon, fire officials said. (Photo by Apu Gomes/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.

A child wades through the mud next to a grave inside the flooded cemetery in Los Loros town, April 7, 2015. The death toll from heavy rains and flooding that battered Chile last week has risen to 29, with another 150 still missing, according to authorities. (Photo by Ivan Alvarado/Reuters)

An exhausted and frustated migrant holds his head after he missed to get a place on a train heading to the Serbian border at the train station in Gevgelija, The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, August 13, 2015. From the beginning of the year to mid-June 2015, nearly 160,000 migrants landed in the southern European countries, mainly Greece and Italy, on their way to wealthier countries in Western and Northern Europe, according to estimates by the International Organization for Migration (IOM). (Photo by Georgi Licovski/EPA)

Models take part in the promotion of the Miss Bumbum (buttocks) beauty pageant, along Paulista Avenue in Sao Paulo, Brazil, on August 7, 2017. The annual Bumbum pageant to select the nation' s sexiest female buttocks will be held on November, 6 in Sao Paulo. (Photo by Nelson Almeida/AFP Photo)