A Legacy of Making, Part 2 in the Carney Gallery of Regis College in Weston, Mass., through May 10
The artists in this exhibition are Joe Cultrera, Grace DeGennaro, Michaelangelo Giaquinto, Aldo Longo, Robert Maloney, Lloyd Martin, Thomas Micchelli, Wayne Montecalvo, Hugo Rizzoli, Grace Roselli, Roberta Tucci, Mark Wethli, and Carleen Zimbalatti
From left: Lloyd Martin, two by Mark Wethli
Curatorial notes: Thirteen artists, most of whom live, work, or grew up in New England, are featured in the fourth iteration of A Legacy of Making, my curatorial project inspired by Italianità, which I published in 2023 to acknowledge the heritage that informed us as artists. At a time when ethnicity and cultural legacy are topics of discussion in the art world as well as society at large, both A Legacy of Making and Italianità contribute to the conversation with art that expresses the immigrant experience as expressed through Italian American lives.
As you glance around a gallery that features a good deal of abstraction, you may wonder about the Italian connection, so let me share some of the underpinnings of the show. Grace Roselli is represented by photographs of four Italian American women, including herself, who have made contributions to the larger art world; in her drawing, Nonna's Thread, Carleen Zimbalatti remembers the handwork she learned from her Italian grandmother; Grace DeGennaro draws her iconography from the rose windows of the church, as does Aldo Longo, who went on to explore mandala imagery as well; Thomas Micchelli draws his inspiration from a panoply of Italian sculptors and painters from Michelangelo to Morandi; Wayne Montecalvo taps into cinematic history with an image in his mixed-media work of Napoli's most famous figlia, Sophia Loren; and filmmaker Joe Cultrera, tells the story of how an Italian family, his own, recovered from improprieties committed by a priest at St. James church in Salem, Massachusetts. Read on. There's more.
Joe Cultrera, poster for Hand of God
Cultrera's 2007 full-length film,
Hand of God, plays on a loop in the gallery. If you can, take some time to view it. The story of his brother's molestation at the hands of a parish priest, and his family's triumph over the betrayal, is deeply personal while acknowledging the broader scope of a problem that took years to come to light.
Hand of God was featured on PBS's
Frontline and is still viewable
there. We are planning an evening screening of the director's cut followed by a Q&A with Cultrera at a date in April to be announced. I'll post specifics when they are confirmed
Behind Cultrera's poster and along the first wall, we see work by Michaelangelo Giaquinto, Aldo Longo, and Wayne Montecalvo
Michaelangelo Giaquinto, clockwise from top left: Viewing Distance, 2020; Saturn, 2020; Sitting Cross Leg on the Floor, 2021; Night Dreaming, 2020; all mixed media collage on panel, 10 x 8 inches or 8 x 10 inches
Michaelangelo Giaquinto,
Blue Moon, 2020, mixed media on wood panel, 10 x 8 inches
The intimate collages on
view here contain imagined worlds of history, science, and religion with a
sense of the mysterious. “My experience in Italian culture began the day I was
born,” says the artist. “Giaquinto translates to already fifth,
and I was the fifth male child in the family, born on the fifth of May.”
Aldo Longo, Gnostic Vision #1, 2016, oil and collage on canvas,
30 x 24 inches
Longo grew up in an Italian
community in New Haven, Connecticut, where the stained-glass windows of the
church made a profound visual impact on him. When the Navy sent him to Japan, a
new and different culture opened up to him. As an artist, he found himself
integrating the two cultures. Among the many bodies of work he has produced in
seven decades is a series of mandalas that reflect, he says, the rose windows
of churches he attended as a youth and the Japanese temples that affected him so
deeply as an adult.
Wayne Montecalvo, Marie Antoinette, 2022, mixed media, insulation foam, digital images,
charcoal, cardboard, 36 x 23 x 2.5 inches; Frito, 2023, mixed media, digital images, insulation foam, wax, encaustic
paint, Foamcoat, cardboard, powdered graphite, 40 x 36 x 2.5 inches; Sophia, 2024, mixed media, digital images, wax,
powdered graphite, India ink, insulation foam, cardboard, Foamcoat, caulk, 30 x
22 x 2 inches
A closer view of Sophia
Montecalvo's images are drawn from a
variety of sources, but the processes with which he works them are typically of
his own invention. In the series on view here, he gives us three familiar
women: the queen of excess, Marie Antoinette; the painter Frida Kahlo as a
girl; and the glorious Sophia Loren, in an image from her
heyday, on what look to be artifact walls replete with ethnic icons and
decorative tiles. Look closer. These “artifacts” are in fact thoroughly modern—digital
images mounted on Styrofoam with a mix of other materials, like cardboard and
wax.
Continuing along the wall with Carleen Zimbalatti's Nonna’s
Thread,
2022, acrylic and ink on paper, app. 24 x 24 inches plus frame
Below: A closer view of Nonna's Thread
From a family of stone
carvers—her great grandfather worked on Mount Rushmore—and strivers, many of
whom worked in creative industries, Zimbalatti brings together craft and fine art in her work. Line is her means
of growing geometric shapes: grids or networks that offer a sense of deep space,
or chromatic squares with a symmetry that invites contemplative viewing. “Forms
emerge slowly and hypnotically from its use,” says Zimbalatti of the line. Nonna’s
Thread refers to the handwork practiced by
her grandmother.
As we continue around the gallery, you see the screen where Cultrera's film is playing. To the right of that is the work of Grace DeGennaro, below
Grace DeGennaro, Dawn, Dusk, Night, all 2022, oil and cold wax on linen, 55 x 34 inches
DeGennaro draws inspiration from
her attendance at church, specifically the glowing light of stained-glass
windows and the kinesthetic experience of fingering rosary beads in prayer.
“From an early age, Catholicism gave me a sense of the existence of both the
visible and the invisible,” she says. DeGennaro makes meditative geometric
paintings composed of orderly configurations of dots, which she refers to as
“beads.” Here, three paintings from the Rosette series transcend a
specific religion. “Each of my paintings is offered as both an antidote to the
distractions of our everyday world, and as an entrance to the collective
unconscious,” she says.
DeGennaro, Hugo Rizzoli; on pedestal: Thomas Micchelli
Below: A closer view of DeGennaro's Dawn with more accurate color and the vibrational movement of the black and white lines; 55 x 34 inches
A selection of mixed-media collages by Hugo Rizzoli
Lower Pedestal: Red Temple, 2023, 16 x 12 inches; higher pedestal: Mission Flowers, 2024, 16 x 12 inches; on wall, clockwise from lower left: Flower Diamonds, 2025, 12 x 9 inches; Joyance, 2024, 12 x 12 inches; Untitled (Spirit Points), 2024, 12 x 12; Cardinal North, 2023, 16 x 12; Untitled (Ovals), 2024, 12 x 12; A Flower and a Color and
Away!, 2024, 12 x 15 inches; center: Tamburello, 2024, 12 x 16 inches
After almost two decades as
the owner of a bookstore, Rizzoli now makes art with a
visual narrative suggestive of architecture—buildings, walls, intimate spaces.
His small-scale collages and paintings feature a pared-down geometric style,
playful yet serious, in which he employs papers and fabrics, most with the soft
patina of age. Rizzoli describes his aesthetic as “melding remnants of past
time with present sensibility.” A new element in the work on exhibition here is
Venetian plaster, a material that has been used on walls since Roman times, which
enhances the architectural quality of the work.
Joyance
A Flower, A Color, and Away!
Untitled (Ovals)
To the right of DeGennaro and Rizzoli is Roberta Tucci, with Thomas Micchelli sculp[ure on pedestal in foreground
Below: Micchelli's Two Heads, 2022, clay on painted wood base
Roberta Tucci, Chance of Storms: Likely, 2021, acrylic on three panels, overall dimension 58 x
31 inches
“I paint images that express how I perceive
organic forms and the world of nature,” says Tucci. Her
work bursts with energy, whether in the release of exploding shapes, or the
contained dynamism of meandering lines, or here in a tripartite painting, Chance
of Storms: Likely, which suggests a powerful meteorological event about to
take place. A first visit to Italy as a young adult allowed her to connect with
her Italian culture and family, absorbing, she says, “the essence of a living
ancestry.”
Roberta Tucci, Lloyd Martin, Mark Wethli
Lloyd Martin, Grey Dyad,2024, oil on canvas, 90.5 x 90.5
(two horizontal panels)
Martin makes large-scale
paintings consisting of horizontal color bands punctuated by vertical
demarcations. It is an architectural sensibility rife with rhythm, even
musicality. You could say there is nothing necessarily “Italian” about the work,
but looking at the shallow geometric space articulated in Sienese paintings, made
in the 14th century at the dawn of the Renaissance, you might
reconsider. In any case, it was a strong-willed maternal grandmother and
generous artist uncle who guided Martin to his career choice. They might not
have used the word mentor, but that’s what they were for him. “Much of
what I am today I credit to my grandmother, Filomena Maccarone,” says the artist.
Mark Wethli
Above: Ca Plane Pour Moi, 2022, flashe on wood, 12 x 9 x 2 inches
Below: Kindness, I Suppose, 2017, flashe on canvas, 48 x 36 inches
Formerly a realist
painter of exquisitely serene interiors, Wethli turned his attention to geometric abstraction some 25 years ago. It was a big
change, but he carried with him the same compositional sense of balance and
harmony. “I try to paint geometry the way that Giorgio Morandi painted
bottles—using something as humble as the rectangle,” he says. Wethli is
represented in this exhibition by two works: a small constructed piece that could be seen as a flat sculpture or a bas relief painting, and a painting, shown together below. The
conversation between the two works is lively. To listen in you need only to
spend some time looking.
Left wall: Mark Wethli; far wall: Robert Maloney, Grace Roselli; pedestal: Thomas Micchelli
Thomas Micchelli, Four
Heads,
2022, wax on painted wood base, 10.5 x 12 x 12 inches
“Italian art and culture
form the double helix defining my life and work,” says Micchelli, who is represented in this exhibition by two
multi-element sculptures. Working in wax, clay, or other malleable materials,
he carves or builds figures—here, heads—that speak to the human condition. Micchelli
depicts a range of human emotion, from consternation to surprise, serenity to
anger. While not conventionally handsome, the figures are compelling—present
and powerful despite their relatively small size.
Robert Maloney, Innerstate Gold, 2021, relief print on Masa
paper with black and metallic inks, 44 x 36 inches
Maloney is taken with the structure
of the urban landscape. Italian on his mother’s side (Steriti), he was deeply
affected by “the passage of time and layers of history” he encountered
throughout his travels in Italy. Reflecting those layers, the distinctly
American work included in this exhibition is a woodblock print comprised of multiple inkings that
results in an impossibly dense metropolitan vision. The work, printed from
a 44-by-36-inch plywood plate, carries the marks of the carving process.
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Grace Roselli
Above: Claudia DeMonte
Below: Nancy Azara
Both are archival ink prints, 20 x 24 inches, part of the
Pandora's BoxX Project that chronicles the intersectional identities and cultural impact of women artists and art practitioners active since the 1960s.
Read more here
Grace Roselli
Above: Joanne Mattera
Below: Self-Portrait
Both are archival ink prints, 20 x 24 inches, part of the Pandora's BoxX Project
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Roselli is a painter and
photographer. Here we focus on her work as a photographer with four images from
her ongoing project, Pandora’s BoxX, which chronicles the intersectional identities and cultural impact of women artists and art practitioners active since the 1960s. In this ambitious undertaking,
Roselli is photographing 360 influential art world women, as well as non-binary and transwomen—artists, writers,
curators, critics—for what will soon be a book and a series of exhibitions. The four images here depict
Italian American women, including the late sculptor Nancy Azara, mixed-media
artist Claudia DeMonte, your curator, and Roselli herself
behind the lens. The four of us have been part of the Italianità
project that has served as inspiration for this and other exhibitions.
Some of us at the opening
From left: Grace Roselli, Carleen Zimbalatti, Grace DeGennaro (whose work we are standing in front of), me, Mark Wethli, Joe Cultrera
A look back before you leave. And don't forget to check back for the date of the screening of Joe Cultrera's film, Hand of God. He will be present for a Q&A afterward; additional guests may be announced
Acknowledgements
Big thanks to all the participating artists for your great work. A shout out to Kelly Blasberg, gallery director, for her bravura installation abilities. Her measurement skills are spot on, and she is fearless on the 15-foot ladder. And a special thanks to professor Julia Lisella who, back in June, surmised that A Legacy of Making would be a good fit for the college.
. The exhibition is on view through May 10
. Gallery hours: 9:00 to 4:00 Monday-Friday; 12:00-4:00 Saturday; closed Sunday
. The Carney Gallery is located in the Fine Arts Center. See it in the lower right quadrant of the map below
. There is plenty of parking. You may park on the college access road opposite the entrance to the Fine Arts Center or in the visitor lot behind the building
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