Ray
Name: Ray Mantella
Age: 40
Occupation: Contemporary artist/Pilates instructor
From stretching your creative skills to your back, Ray Mantella has managed to fuse his talents in contemporary art and photography and his passion for Pilates into a symbiotic career.
“The art workshops bring out a confidence in people that they couldn’t express before. Very calming and satisfying, and Pilates seems to have the same effect,” explains Mantella, who runs separate art and Pilates classes from two studio spaces in Toronto’s west end.
Meeting Mantella at his Sherway studio is quite the eye-opener. Forget bohemian earth man in sandals: Mantella is decked in designer jeans and runners, sipping a Starbucks. I’m welcomed into a large basement space that is part art gallery, part Pilates workout station and part workshop.
My eyes are immediately drawn to a colourful mix of paintings that decorate the walls. Abstract sculptures, some carved of stone, others twisted with metal, stand before the paintings like guards in a museum.
My eyes then lock onto two Pilates machines situated beside a row of yoga balls. My attention is diverted yet again, this time to pieces which I learn are actually less expensive photographic reprints of his paintings coated in his trademark high gloss finish.
Mantella, the self-described “mad scientist” then ushers me into the back room, the lab where students unleash their creative energies under the direction of their mentor.
Our conversation glides from the wonders of papier maché, to how he picked up Pilates five years ago after incurring a leg injury, to his latest project, body casting. I’m shown the plastered “skin” of a model. “Silence Of The Lambs” accidentally slips from my lips.
Mantella laughs. “You should have seen this place before. I had a whole bunch of these body casts hanging from the ceiling and people were freaked out.”
But finding career fulfillment wasn’t something that came easily.
“I was probably in denial,” Mantella says, recalling his attempt to follow in his Italian family’s footsteps. “An hour in the office seemed like 20 and I couldn’t take it anymore. I had my head on the table and my brother walked by and said, ‘Why don’t you just leave?’”
It took 10 years, but exiting the family’s construction business has manifested in Mantella’s entrance into New York’s Amsterdam Whitney Gallery where his pieces now sell upto $5,000 US.
At 40, Mantella’s life lesson is simple: “Do what you love and success will come from it.” For info on Mantella’s art and Pilates classes, log onto raymantella.com and refreshpilates.com respectively.
An award-winning and multi-faceted media personality, Lawrence’s career spans journalism, television (hosting, acting, producing) and public relations (event management, publicity). Log ontolawrence-chau.comfor more buzz.
