Inside the Industrial Art of David LoPresti

Some artists look to the heavens or the horizon for inspiration. Not David LoPresti. His focus is down, where the sparks of his creativity rest on mundane, functional, and often historic manhole covers. When he finds a potential subject—often in the middle of a street—he overlays a piece of canvas for a rubbing and then takes the canvas back to his studio to create wall hangings that are replicas of the manhole cover.

His unusual art stems from his exploration of industrial arts and his career in the aeronautical industry, where the LoPresti family made airplane parts for some 30 years in Vero Beach and Sebastian. When they sold the business in 2019, this son of the founder turned his energies to making his unique style of art.

Today he is a frequent exhibitor at local art shows and strolls, and his canvases, prints, and photographs of manhole covers decorate homes and offices in Vero Beach and beyond.

“My wife, Leah, and I travel around the country looking for what I deem are interesting manholes,” LoPresti says. “A good example is this one,” he says, pointing to a favorite in his studio/gallery on 7th Avenue in Vero Beach, “with a beautiful image of a sailfish. We found it in front of a popular Latin restaurant in Fort Pierce.”

The covers are often rusty and filled with dirt, so LoPresti travels with a whisk broom and a chisel to brush away or knock out dirt imbedded in the design and wording. With their car lights flashing, Leah, who is also an artist, directs traffic around him when necessary. “I try to search out manholes that are on a sidewalk to avoid this,” he smiles.

LoPresti’s technique for making the finished art is constantly evolving, but he currently prefers two methods. Each involves crouching over the manhole cover on his hands and knees on-site for a period of time.

“Both methods start with a loose canvas positioned on top of the manhole cover,” he explains. “My original method would be to put acrylic paint on the canvas and then scrape the canvas with a palette knife. This removes the paint from the high spots of the manhole cover and leaves the paint color on the low areas.

“My newer method is to again start with a loose canvas positioned on top of the manhole cover, but instead of wet acrylic paint I use a brick of encaustic paint—it is like a big crayon—and rub this brick on just the high spots, leaving the low spots unpainted.”

He photographs the original manhole covers at the site for use as a reference when he is back in his studio, or to market on his website.

The couple has traveled throughout Florida and along the East Coast of the  United States looking for manhole covers that would make intriguing pieces—selecting some for their intricate designs and municipality logos and others for their historical significance.

A cover in Tallahassee features the city’s logo, that of the old capitol building superimposed over the new building. Another, a bestseller, in Norfolk, Virginia admonishes: “No Dumping—Drains to Waterway.” LoPresti found a cover in New York’s Central Park dated 1862, which is his oldest. He liked it so much he not only sold the artistic replica but had it silk-screened onto a T-shirt that he often wears.

Closer to home are several Vero Beach manhole covers, including one with just the date, 1925, that he found behind the beachside post office. On the back of each canvas he adds the location of the manhole cover.

LoPresti was born in New York and moved to Vero Beach as a toddler in 1963, so his father, Roy, an aeronautical engineer, could work in the Apollo lunar landing program. “We were the first family to move to Florida for the Apollo program,” he says. There were no homes in Cocoa for this rather large clan, parents and five children, so they settled in the Melbourne/Indialantic area. “My dad felt that we should live on the water, so my parents bought and renovated the old Eau Gallie Yacht Club into our home. Then he convinced my mom to put everything in the house in storage so we could live on a boat—all seven of us, plus a Saint Bernard. My parents were always very adventurous.”

That same adventurous spirit might explain the artist’s choice of his unconventional subject matter.

LoPresti’s father had a distinguished career following the Apollo program and eventually was recruited by the Piper Aircraft company in Vero Beach. He left Piper to establish the family business to include his wife and all four sons, who were working in the aeronautical field in different parts of the country at the time.

“When we first started, we took older airplanes and made them perform better and faster, basically by adding new designs that would reduce the drag and make them operate more efficiently and economically. My father had a worldwide reputation for doing that for other manufacturers besides Piper.”

The business evolved over the years, he continues. “By the time we sold it, we had pivoted into aeronautical lighting. We were designing supercharged HID [high-intensity discharge] lighting, which revolutionized the industry.” David LoPresti holds a patent for one such lighting system.

They sold the business to their major competition, Whelen Aerospace Technologies, which still operates in the former LoPresti plant in Sebastian.

LoPresti’s artistic journey began with his first project following the sale. “When cleaning out the hangar to sell the company, we had pieces of airplanes that we needed to dispose of. One was the last 4 feet of a plane’s tail. Part of the tail had no skin and you could see the rivet lines inside the bulkhead. So I polished it up, put an acrylic top on it, and made it into a bar table. I liked it a lot. Here was this family relic that I made into something, and then I thought, what else could I do?”

He noticed a manhole at the end of his street that piqued his interest because of its design of cogs and gears and repetitive hexagon shapes. “I tried making a rubbing of it on paper but soon realized that paper wouldn’t last, so I switched to canvas.” You could say the rest is history.

LoPresti’s manufacturing background accounts for his appreciation of structures and repetitive lines. “I always considered them to be pretty, and it surprised me that the whole world didn’t see them the same way,” he quips. “Then I started thinking that there are things people pass every day and never think about their lines and designs, and the steps it took to make them.”

He adds, “For example, I wonder how many times someone passed the manhole cover in Fort Pierce and never noticed it had a really cool fish on it.”

Now, besides making his art, LoPresti is on a mission to educate people to recognize the genesis of industrial art that is all around them. “I want people to not just enjoy my art but for it to be a sea change in their life. To understand the art hanging on the wall is indicative of what is everywhere, and to appreciate industrial design and not take it for granted.”