The Walker Art Center gave Moroni exposure in a group show when fresh out of MCAD, the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. An article on his tile work for the Federal Reserve noted that he arrived by train in 1972 from Chicago to attend the school. He’d been part of the artist community at a building called the skunkhouse immediately behind the Fed building.
In a 1982 article in the St. Paul Dispatch, Moroni is pictured “balancing a son, a cigarette and a palette knife. “The sculpture, in wax at that time, was “The Tower of Babel,” its pedestal three boxes of empty Leinenkugel bottles.
By the mid-1980s Moroni was able to make a living solely through his art and even gave one-third of the proceeds from one show to the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation. “Art is often a completely closed and self-serving world,” he told Mary Abbe Martin in 1985. “I think it is time to bring a new humanitarianism to the arts… people just have to take action. There’s a tradition of alienation in the arts that’s 200 years old, but there’s a bigger 4,000 year-old tradition of artists being involved in society. That’s what I think should be revived.”
Aldo’s been part of the Eastside and Northeast Minneapolis arts scene for a large portion of his 45-year career. His first studio after having to leave downtown was in 1986 in the Olson Building (which is now Q.arma, then an “industrial hovel”) on Quincy Street, living in a Northeast apartment, in a relationship, having his first two kids.
He was working for Wilensky Arts in what is now North Loop, when he won several big foundation awards and moved out to Avon, Minnesota for a year. “My wife [Sarah] got fed up, so here I was packing my stuff up and back to Northeast. His studio ended up in the St. Anthony Main area, “an empty building almost to myself.” A second marriage [Kim], a daughter, three more sons, and a home in Audubon neighborhood… eventually divorce.
Aldo stayed involved in Northeast managing a gallery space at the California Building and working on his Babylon project. Growing up, his family was in restaurants, so “that was always the fallback,” at any time there weren’t enough public or private commissions, theater set projects or teaching gigs. “I could always tend bar. And my friends would come drink at my bar.”
Aldo now lives at the A-Mill lofts where The Journal writer Susan Schaefer dubbed him its “undisputed dean.”
“It’s my dream version of Minneapolis, really, all the way up the river; it’s way cooler than the lakes,” Moroni said. In 2016, shortly after the building opened, he organized a handful of other artists to join him in opening their residences to the Minneapolis & Saint Paul Home Tour. The location topped the attendance charts. Anytime he’s around, he’ll happily give tours. Part of his joy at A-Mill is having his youngest, his twin adult sons with him.
In the early 2000s, Marcy Holmes neighborhood commissioned Moroni’s series of 23 bronze sculptures, the 6th Avenue Stroll from University Avenue to Main Street, a project that took longer and a bit more money than originally budgeted. A Southeast Angle article quipped that the delay just made them more historic.
His “Mill City Dance” at the Cedar Riverside Light Rail Station was at first rejected and eventually installed in 2004 after a dispute over fabrication agreements was resolved. For approximately half of the artists commissioned for light rail projects, the process did not go as planned.
In 2017, Aldo received a Northeast Minneapolis Arts District Vision Award. Moroni reflected to his friends Nov. 1: “For me to be a part of this community, what a joy. It’s a real community… you build it, and if you don’t buy my art, buy somebody else’s art.” In classic Aldo, he admonished, “but buy mine first.”
In his Northeaster interview, Moroni had this to say, talking mostly about the sentiment building for establishing an arts center, “To my neighbors in Northeast: take a chill pill, lighten up, move in one direction. If everyone were in a conversation, you could manage your own town. Don’t get yuppified beyond recognition. The opportunity is on the plate in front of us.
“What a gas, to be here. It’s been a good ride.”