Statement
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I have spent 25 years working in classical and experimental theater in Italy. I was born in Umbria and raised in Rome where I was formally trained in literature and theater history. In 1981, I opened my own theater company, La Brace, through which over 100 productions were realized. Here, I directed, stage designed, conceptualized and created costuming, designed and built installations for theatrical productions in museums, libraries, castles, churches, in public parks and on the street. I also wrote and adapted texts for these both traditional and environmental and found spaces. Since 1983, I have taught scenography, directing, acting, art history, and studio art to professionals and novices of all ages through various positions at the Ministry of Culture and the Teatro di Roma, the Ministry of Education and for cultural and social centers and organizations locally, in Rome and nationally. My work focused on ideas of liminality/marginality and spaces of transformation and process in avant-garde interpretations of both classical and new material. For my thesis, I wrote on the topic of mysticism and symbolism in the work of Maurice Maeterlinck, the late 19th/early 20th century Belgian playwright, poet and philosopher. Greatly influencing my approach to this day is his focus on the line between what is known and what is unknown, what is expressible and inexpressible, and the way in which communication occurs, often silently, within and between species. As an artist, I am self-trained. The theater was my training ground. The experimental nature of my work there drove me to create in any and all media at hand. When I turned to painting and sculpture, the same vision of the liminal space, the epiphany and the theatrical creation of threshold environments, manifested itself. My works are overwhelmingly meditations on the ritual of process and transformation. In my paintings, I use strong blocks of color in patterns and dynamics that speak about these tensions of becoming, of passage. They also speak to the concentration of waiting: the full sensory excitation of anticipation and observation, created in the instant before transformation takes place. Working in undiluted oils -- most often with spatulas – I layer the surfaces of my paintings to show the processes of building up and scraping away the density of the material's richness. They produce thick palettes of color gradations and juxtapositions framed, most often, in linear stacks. My collages are intimate, staged spaces of observation. I use acrylics, pastels and oils in various combinations that sometimes also incorporate bits of plastic or metal. My collage work typically stays small in scale in order to heighten this sense of quiet. While some compositions in my painting may push forward and toward the viewer, my collages tend to draw the viewer in and closer. The comparatively more extroverted dynamic of the paintings cools here to a level of intense introspection. My sculptures, both large and small, are abstract and minimalist in their aesthetic. Only a very small amount of what I do is abstractly figurative. In Italy, I worked extensively in stone and marble and will continue to do so -- but I am presently focused on the unexpected and often startling beauty of found objects and the more contemporary materials of concrete and industrial metal. I often group different found and sculpted pieces together in compelling relationships to one another. The interplay of materials and scales create miniature installations that bring me back to my theater days. My sculptures are getting bigger and so the challenge of 'siting' the pieces becomes even more interesting. My installations are, naturally, closely tied to my sculptures and directly cite my theater experience. The line between them is constantly blurred and may eventually, perhaps, no longer exist. In addition to the scale, the question or invitation extended to the viewer differs. The installations are larger and more expectant. They await the viewer and anticipate the gaze in a markedly different way. They also seek to engage the body in a more urgent manner – much as the demands of environmental and experimental theater often engage the actors, spaces and audiences alike, in an urgent and more immediate way. In my three dimensional work, the gaze of the maker and the viewer are co-mingled and implicated in one another. All are present together at the threshold of the experience unfolding in these spaces made almost sacred by our attentions to them. In this manner, I think of my art as a metaphysical kind of exercise. My work is, ultimately, about the aesthetic complicities and communications that can occur so dynamically in experimental theater – expressed in spaces both two and three dimensional. It is very much about the simple complexities of color and form, observed and silently communicated as epiphany. |