Ann Rosow-Lucchesi met Bruno Lucchesi, whose work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Gallery, when he taught a workshop at the University of Hartford in the summer of 1989.

Rosow-Lucchesi had a degree in business and was running a women's accessories store called Looking Good while earning a night degree in art from the University of Hartford. She had signed up for a six-week course in the sculptor's haven of Pietrasanta, Italy for that summer just before Lucchesi arrived to teach the special workshop. Her regular instructor, Lloyd Glasson, told her that she should get to know him, since she would be going to Pietrasanta and he lived there for part of the year.

After the course, she remembered, she drove him around Hartford to show him sites such as the Mark Twain House and the Wadsworth Atheneum. He told her to call him when she got to Pietrasanta, and he would make her spaghetti.
They married in the summer of 1997.

Now Lucchesi's humanist, figural work dots Hartford and could itself be part of a tour of the city, with a bust of Frederick Law Olmsted for The Institute of Living at Hartford Hospital and a sculpture of Abraham Lincoln meeting Harriet Beecher Stowe at the Riverfront Plaza.
She has a bas relief sculpture on the Stackpole, Moore and Tryon clothing store building.

Often addressed as 'Maestro,' or the Master, in Italy, Bruno Lucchesi's work, Rosow-Lucchesi said, shows "people of everyday life doing everyday things, and you feel the spirit in it. He is able to express that in his work very well, and it is very pleasant to look at and to live with."
Rosow-Lucchesi is an artist in her own right, with a career teaching art and making sculpture, often out of clay ("With clay, I like the flexibility of the adding and the taking away," she said).

"They have wonderful pieces that are just exquisitely carved," said West Hartford Art League Executive Director Roxanne Stachelek. "There's great attention to detail."
Rosow-Lucchesi says that she and her husband, who split their time between New York and Italy, often work separately, though she will model a hand or the folds of a jacket for him if he needs it, and she will sometimes seek his advice.

"If I need any criticism or guidance, then I am thrilled when he gives me his thoughts, because he is the master," she said.

Bruno Lucchesi started out as a farmer and shepherd in a rural Italian village of 200 people and got his first commissions as an artist from his town's church, where he still donates work.

"It is a tremendous thing for a native artist to show work in his own town," he said.

Their exhibit "Him and Her," a mixture of about 35 pieces including wall hangings, terra cotta sculptures, and bronzes, will be on view through Oct. 25.