Art and optimism and a sprinkle of humor are what Michael D'Ambrosi is all about. Born in Los Angeles to a school teacher mother and oil painter-sculptor father, little Mikey took his first his breath in September 1954. His proud parents took him to their new eleven thousand dollar Manhatten Beach home -a double lot, no less. Michael went on to develop his intellectual interests such as sand boarding, skim boarding, and surfing, which helped hone his offbeat approach to life.

From his whimsical yet bizarrely realistic dinosaurs to his heroic size Native American monuments, Michael shows a love of life and nature in his sculpture. Such is a D'Ambrosi tradition. His late father, Jasper, embraced life with an Italian gusto that infected nearly everyone near him. This visual and spiritual environment lent itself as a springboard for Michael's creativity. A no-holds-barred approach to sculpture and with such a unique background, it's no wonder Michael was doing bronze monument commissions in his thirties. Michael developed skills of craft from steel armatures to clay modeling to rubber molds to all phases of the lost wax process.

In 1977 Michael and his family opened Arizona Bronze, a fine art foundry. For the next twenty years owning and operating his own foundry, Michael feasted on all he could absorb from fellow sculptors, but it was his imagination back in his early twenties that won him his first award Best Sculpture in his home town.

Michael's first commission was shared with his brother Marc. With the death of their father they were commissioned to enlarge Jasper's Jacobs Ladder, a twenty-foot memorial honoring the Merchant Marines of World War II. It is on public display at Los Angeles Harbor in San Pedro. In 1989 the U.S. Air Force commissioned Michael to create The Falcon now on display at Luke Air Force Base near Phoenix.

In 1990 he completed The Guardian a life-sized Apache bronze for the Cochise-Geronimo Golf Course at Desert Mountain properties in North Scottsdale, Arizona. In 1994 he completed yet another life size Native American he called The Nomad. This monument is available and can also be seen at Desert Mountain's Renegade Course. Michael's five-foot Gargoyle and Dragon completed in 1995 belong to private collectors.

In 1997 Michael and his brother Marc sold Arizona Bronze. Michael now devotes his full-time attention creating new works of art in his Cave Creek Studio.