Vishnu Diety larger than Statue of Liberty

[Guest guest]

Corning native wants to spread culture of India Artist would like to open center

to feature art, literature, music. September 22, 2005By RAY FINGERStar-Gazette

Corning

Bureaurfinger (AT) stargazette (DOT) comhttp://www.stargazettenews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050922/NEWS01/509220309

 

CORNING - Artist, sculptor, architect and author Alfred Valerio has a dream as

big as two cities - one of them involving his native Corning.He just started

work on designing a city of 25,000 residents to be built in India, south of

Delhi on the banks of the Yamuna River. The city also will accommodate 75,000

visitors a day - a total of 30 million visitors a year - who are on a

pilgrimage to the birthplace of Krishna, who is worshiped as an incarnation of

Vishnu, the principal Hindu deity.Valerio, 65, also has a vision for the

Corning area: to build a cultural center to help spread knowledge from sacred

Indian texts that he has studied for the past 30 years. The 5,000-year-old

science of self-realization is still relevant today, he said." Collins

was exploring outer space. We're going inside," Valerio said, referring to the

Elmira native who was commander of the recent Discovery space shuttle

mission.He expects work on the city's design will be on the drawing board for

about two years before ground is broken. Composed of smaller villages and

forest areas, the city will incorporate alternative construction techniques and

western technology as well as sculpture, painting and architecture.Known as the

Vrindavan Vedic City, it will feature a statue of Vishnu that will be twice the

size of the Statue of Liberty. The interior of the statue will have

Disneyland-style multimedia exhibits of Indian scientific and philosophical

thought, he said.Meanwhile, Valerio - who is also known as Bhaktisiddhanta -

has explored sites in Coopers Plains and the towns of Campbell, Corning, South

Corning, Erwin, Lindley and Thurston as possible locations for a

multimillion-dollar cultural center. It would introduce people to Indian drama,

music, literature, architecture and art."I'm talking about bringing enough

artwork here from India which will be like a Metropolitan Museum of Art," said

Valerio, who left Corning in 1973 and has lived in India since 1977. "That's

what this is all about - basically the culture of India and what it means to

the world. It's not something that's dried up and evaporated."He also sees the

cultural center as a potential boon to the area's economy. "I'm speaking about

something that would do a lot of good for Corning," he said. "Let's bring in

another industry - more education, more culture, more museums."While Valerio is

in the very early stages of getting the project together, it sounds like it has

possibilities, said Jack Benjamin, president of Three Rivers Development Corp

in Corning."We'll have to wait and see. Obviously, it all comes down to putting

the business model together," Benjamin said. "He's going to have to do some

market analysis and develop things you normally have to do to put a project

together. But he's got an interesting concept, and I'm looking forward to

seeing what the next piece is."During his current month-long visit to Corning,

Valerio has also offered free workshops and lectures on art and philosophy at

the ARTS of the Southern Finger Lakes and 171 Cedar Arts Center.