Thursday, September 26, 2024

"A Legacy of Making" at Regis College, Weston, Mass.




Calandra Institute, New York City, A Legacy of Making: 21 Contemporary Italian American Artists

 

Connecticut College, New London, A Legacy of Making: 26 Contemporary Artists Inspired by Their Italian Heritage
A new version of the show, A Legacy of Making: Contemporary Artists Inspired by Their Italian Heritage, Part 1, runs through December 21.
at Regis College in Weston, Massachusetts.  The work of New England artists is featured in this dramatically angled space in the Fine Arts Center. Part 2 opens in February



A panoramic view before we begin our walk-through of the Carney Gallery at Regis College
Here, the work of Jennifer Cecere, suspended from the ceiling, takes the modesty of women's traditional handwork into ambitiously large scale: Doily, printed and laser-cut industrial screening, eight feet in diameter


We are the children and grandchildren of Italian immigrants. We are American by birth, education, and culture, but by heritage and home life we are Italian. We grew up navigating between identities in the languages we spoke or responded to, the foods we ate, the references we understood, and the often vastly different expectations each culture held for us (especially for women). 

Despite the disjunct, we recognized early on the richness of our Italian traditions. While much was passed down along gendered lines—the women sewed and cooked; the men built—there were exceptions. Men were tailors or chefs, just as women made wine or tended businesses. Everyone made things, fixed things, figured out ways to get things done. We observed and learned, often helping out. Filtered through the experience of art school training, we brought many of these skills into our art practice. Our progenitors might be shocked at how we have put our skills to use, but translating is not just for language. In Part One of A Legacy of Making, on view through the end of this semester, we look at these translations of culture in three areas: Immigration, the Natural World, and the Textile Tradition.

Gallery hours are Monday-Saturday, 9:00-4:00. (Scroll to the end for a campus map.) And take note: Part 2 will take place mid-February through mid-May. 



View from the entry. We begin our tour from the left wall






























From left: Charyl (Urbano) Weissbach, Claudia DeMonte, Joanne Mattera, Brian Alterio



Charyl Weissbach
Baroque, celadon, 2017, encaustic, gold leaf, mica pigments, UV resin on Belgian linen on panel, 16 x 16 inches

Etude 8, 2020, encaustic and gold leaf on panel, 24 x 12 inches


Baroque, peacock, 2014, encaustic, mica pigments, and gold leaf on Belgian linen on panel, 12 x 12 inches

Charyl (Urbano) Weissbach is represented by a selection of small, ornate paintings in encaustic. The element of Neapolitan Baroque is strong in her work: dramatic patterns in high relief inflected with gold leaf. If there is a suggestion of wrought iron in the compositions, it may be because her paternal grandfather was a metalsmith, a trade that fascinated the young Weissbach, especially when she watched him cast molten metal into objects. And although it may not be intended by the artist, there is the visual suggestion of brocade, a silk fabric embellished with floral patterns. This richness of design is brought to bear in the medium Weissbach chooses for her painting, neither metal nor fiber, but encaustic paint. Worked when molten, encaustic, which is pigmented wax, can be built up or carved into, making it ideal for the sensuous physicality of the artist’s expression.



Claudia DeMonte
Cose Che Ho Fatto (Things I have Done), embroidery on linen, 49 panels, overall 73.5 x 60 inches

Detail below


Here’s a little of what you will learn from Claudia DeMonte’s installation, Cose Che Ho Fatto (Things I Have Done): She danced with Rudolf Nureyev at a disco, walked on the Great Wall of China with Mohammed Ali, had lunch with the protean sculptor, Louise Nevelson. She sailed on the Ganges, made offerings to the orisha Yemanja on New Year’s Eve in Rio de Janiero, and worked as a model. This is not the life of an Italian American girl who grew up in the Sixties, yet she conveys the anecdotes of a world traveler through the medium of embroidery, which every Italian woman learned at home.



Weissbach, DeMonte, Joanne Mattera, Brian Alterio

Joanne Mattera
Silk Road 338, 2016, encaustic on panel, 12 x 12 inches

My own work is suggestive of fabric. In a series I have titled Silk Road, the paintings are first and foremost color fields, reductive in hue and composition. However, a textile influence is apparent in the edge-to-edge swipe of the paint, just as a fabric is woven selvedge to selvedge, and in the visually tactile surfaces whose ridges and slubs are suggestive of douppioni silk. I am the great granddaughter of weavers, the granddaughter of a tailor, and the niece of two women—one a dressmaker, the other an embroiderer and lacemaker—whose handwork has left an undeniable imprint on my expression. The sewing and knitting I did with my aunts opened a creative pathway to art school, and there I became a painter.

Brian Alterio
Garlic Scapes, 2012, photograph

After a long career on the technical side of digital photography, Brian Alterio returned to a view through the lens, as he had in art school. Described in one review as “a digital scientist with a poetic soul,” Alterio photographs nature in all its aspects, from the human form to landscape to plant life, the latter represented in this exhibition by a vividly illuminated black-and-white image. “I think that from my Italian blood was borne a passion for life. That passion spawned my photographic language. My images are about life,” says the artist. With its graceful arabesques, Alterio’s Garlic Scapes connects culturally and horticulturally to one of the most notable elements of Italian cuisine.


Milisa Galazzi, Debra (Messina) Claffey


Milisa Galazzi
Super String Theory,  2015, paper, thread, and encaustic,  93 x 40 x 12 inches

As a child, Milisa Galazzi learned to sew a from her paternal grandmother who dispensed advice like,  “Good girls should always be sewing” and “A lady always mends and fixes.” Galazzi found Grammy’s comments “annoying,” but appreciated learning the skills. Now she makes “lace” that originates as a drawing whose line she stitches by hand. (Grammy would be proud!) After cutting away the negative space of the drawing, Galazzi dips each hand-stitched sheet into a vat of warm wax, which stiffens and transparentizes the paper, and then installs it, with other similarly cut and waxed sheets, into a layered relief sculpture whose shadows are as integral to the work as the cut paper itself. In this installation, her Super String Theory not only dialogs with its own shadows but with the twists and curves of Brian Alterio’s Garlic Scapes, near which it is placed.


Debra Claffey
Turners II, 2017, encaustic monotype in 18 panels, overall, 48 x 96 inches

Although Debra Claffey‘s sole connection to gardening as a child was caring for the family’s backyard tomato plants, she has cultivated a strong relationship to horticulture in her adult life. One might attribute the connection to her Sicilian genes, which are closely aligned with the cycles of planting, cultivating, and harvesting. (She is a Messina on her mother’s side.) A career in garden care—she founded her own company—is intertwined with a studio practice that focuses on plant forms.  “I celebrate plants: their great age and history on the planet, their intelligence and successful adaptations, their beauty of form, shape, and infinite color,” she says. Her Turners II is a large-scale, multipart encaustic monotype dense with layers of ferns, suggestive of a botanical garden.



Claffey, Tracy Spadafora


Tracy Spadafora
Vestige (Part 10), 2012, mixed media on wood boxes, 14 x 10 x 3 inches 
Vestige (Part 11), 2012, mixed media on wood boxes, 14 x 10 x 3 inches


















The maternal side of Tracy Spadafora’s family is from the cool Alpine north while her paternal side is from the hot Mezzogiorno. In Italy this would have been an improbable family union, but in the melting pot of the United States it is not so unusual. Both sides of the family were gardeners, which not only put food on the table but brought color and beauty into their homes. “My own love of gardening and appreciation for the natural environment is one thing from my Italian heritage that has influenced my artwork directly,” says Spadafora, who addresses what she describes as “a complex and shifting relationship between humans, our biological roots, and the shaping of our natural environment.”  Her Vestige (Part 10) and Vestige (Part 11) express her thinking about the environment that sustains us all, right down to the DNA of things.


Spadafora, Jeanne Brasile, John Avelluto


Jeanne Brasile
Mixed Messages, 2021, blended and shredded card catalogs, 15 x 8 x 8 inches

Language is a challenge for non-English-speaking arrivals to this country. Italians typically spoke four languages at home: the dialect of their paese, or village; standard Italian by those sufficiently educated; heavily accented English (usually ungrammatical) laden with Italian syntax, which we referred to as Broken English; and standard English, which was spoken by the younger, American-schooled members of the family. A multigenerational family dinner might have all of these languages going at once. Jeanne Brasile’s shredded text in a blender, Mixed Messages, is a wonderful metaphor for this mescolanza, this mix.


“Though I studied the Italian language, I am far from fluent,” says Brasile. Like many of us, she heard dialect at home but was not encouraged to speak it. When she took an Italian class, she was surprised to learn that the “sharp-sounding” language she grew up hearing bore little resemblance to what she describes as the “mellifluous, even poetic” language she was learning in school. “I felt cheated,” she says, “as if somehow my home experience was not quite authentic.” She needn’t have worried. Italian dialects, as well as the creole and patois of other languages, are increasingly recognized by linguists for their own richness of syntax and expression.


Brasile, Avelluto, Cianne Fragione

John Avelluto
Above: Johnny Cakes, 2023, acrylic on panel, 12 x 9 inches

John Avelluto draws from Southern Italian and Sicilian tropes to create art that depicts our foods, customs, and expressions. His trompe l’oeil relief paintings of pastry look tempting enough to taste. But don’t. They are fashioned with acrylic paint. His drawings depict the mal’occhio (evil eye)—maloik in dialect—and the way to protect against it. To Southern Italians, the mal’occhio is a curse cast upon you by someone who is jealous of who you are or what you have. One way to fight off the curse is with the mano cornuto, or horned hand. The index finger and pinkie make horns of the hand, a little deal with the devil to keep evil away. In the 21st-century this may seem laughable, but Southern Italians—those from Naples and farther south—hold fast to their beliefs. Hey, a little protection can’t hurt, right? 


Below
Maloik, 2017, acrylic paint films, 13 x 11 inches framed
Cornuto 2, 2017, acrylic paint films, 13 x 11 inches framed



Cianne Fragione
Heaven and Earth Are Dressed in Their Summer Wear, 2007-2009, oil and fabric on canvas, each  90 x 30 inches; from left: Flapper Dress, Red Dress Curtain, Pink Jacket with Blue Ribbon

There are many influences in any artist’s life. One in particular for Cianne Fragione was a Sicilian nonna who ran a dressmaking business out of the front room of her family’s Hartford, Connecticut, home. “With only a door to separate us, I saw my grandmother all the time. She made me dresses, coats, and hats, which reinforced the integrity of the crafted object for me and at the same time contributed to my sense of composition and form,” she says. Fragione’s long-running, mixed-media series, Heaven and Earth Dressed in Their Summer Wear incorporates clothing into her paintings. The three panels presented here are but a few of many that stretch across a wall, offering a visual connection between the artist’s childhood and her present as a contemporary artist. A “clothesline” is thus her metaphor for time.



Fragione, Amore, back view of  Jennifer Cecere's Doily

 “Until a generation ago, almost everyone practiced handwork,” says Jennifer Cecere. “Women, especially, knitted, crocheted, and embroidered, and girls learned by example. All of us then had a connection to these traditions. Not so much anymore, but what does endure from my own experience, in addition to a love of needlework, is how intent my Italian grandparents were in weaving their traditions into the experience of their children and grandchildren in this new country.”  

Cecere makes public art: large-scale renditions of lace in materials as diverse as ripstop nylon and brushed aluminum, which she has laser cut, bringing together the modesty of handwork with the ambition of a professional artist. She is represented here with an outsize doily printed on screening that stretches across the gallery.

Continuing around: B. Amore, Timothy McDowell (Macellari)



Added to the exhibitions on October 24, 2024: Claudia DeMonte




Claudia DeMonte
Il Corno, 2013, pewter and gold leave on painted wood, 14 x 14 x 3 inches

DeMonte taps into Italian folklore with her Corno sculpture. The corno, or horn, is typically rendered in gold, silver, or coral as a small talisman worn on a chain around the neck. It is meant to ward off the mal’occhio, or Evil Eye, a curse leveled at you by someone who is angry with you or jealous of what you have. In the 21st-century this may seem laughable, but Southern Italians—those from Naples and farther south—hold fast to their beliefs. Hey, a little protection can’t hurt, right? 












B. Amore
Following the Thread II: Giovannina,. 2000, mixed media assemblage, 24 x 48 inches
Below: Giovannina’s handwoven linen sheet with her initials 


"We carry the history of out families and our cultures in our psyches as well as our genes," says 
B. Amore.  
Through a long career, she has researched and documented seven generations of her Italian family, maternal and paternal, a journey that culminated in 2000 in the brilliant installation of photographs, objects, and papers exhibited at the Ellis Island Immigration Museum in New York City. Life Line, Filo Della Vita: An Italian American Odyssey then traveled to museums in San Francisco and Boston, Rome, and finally to Napoli, where her family’s journey began. 

A framed assemblage from that show, Following the Thread II: Giovannina Forte, is included here. This work depicts Amore’s maternal great grandmother who came to America at the age of 54, a reluctant immigrant, with her husband and three children, one of whom was Amore’s grandmother, Concettina.

The filo rosso--the red thread—that runs through the work represents a Neapolitan tradition of departure. The person boarding ship carried a ball of yarn, while the person at the dock held fast to the unfurled loose end. As the ship pulled away, the ball unwound in an attenuated goodbye.

Also on view is a linen bed sheet that Giovannina wove on her domestic handloom and the iron used to press it flat after washing. You’ll note the iron is not electric. Even into the early years of the 20th century, heavy irons like these were heated on the top of a coal or gas stove and then placed on a fabric to flatten it, a process repeated over and over until the ironing was finished. Domestic chores, carried out almost exclusively by women, were physically demanding.




Timothy McDowell
Dream Park, 2023, oil on panel, 30 x 24 inches
Siren’s Call, Lampedusa, 2023, oil on panel,  25 x 20 inches


Despite his Scottish surname, Timothy McDowell has had a lifetime of extended periods in Italy among the members of his mother’s family, the Macellari. His history is not one of Southern Italians fleeing poverty but of educated Northerners remaining on their ancestral land. His is a lineage of accomplished musicians, designers, architects, publishers, and painters. 

McDowell’s images, while often drawn from art history, also depict our contemporary culture. In Dream Park, a Renaissance figure hovers ever so faintly above a Vespa, the motorized scooter that replaced the bicycle in post-World War II Italy and remains a chic and handy means of transportation. In Siren’s Call, Lampedusa, McDowell looks at a different kind of immigration—not away from Italy but to it. North Africans are making the treacherous journey by boat to Southern Italy, often to the Sicilian Island of Lampedusa, which is closer to the coast of Africa than it is to the boot of Italy, for the same reasons our Italian forebears left for America: to make a better life.


If you plan to visit
The Carney Gallery is located in the Fine Arts Center. You can park on the side of the access road opposite the Fine Arts Center or in the lot behind the building. Click image to expand the map.

Gallery hours are Monday-Saturday, 9:00-4:00.


The Fine Arts Center




Monday, September 2, 2024

"A Legacy of Making" at Connecticut College, New London




Interior entrance to A Legacy of Making: 26 Contemporary Artists Inspired by Their Italian Heritage


A Legacy of Making has legs! The exhibition that took place at the Calandra Institute in New York City has greatly expanded and moved to Connecticut College in New London. In the translation it lost one curator (the estimable Joseph Sciorra) and added five more artists. I flew solo for this effort. With an enormous two-level, three-gallery space, I have been able to show more and larger work by each artist. It's up through October 19.

I

With its mix of narrative and abstract painting, installation, textile, and sculpture, A Legacy of Making: 26 Contemporary Artists Inspired by Their Italian Heritage might have you wondering, “What exactly is the common aesthetic thread here?” If you are from a big family, you understand that like any gathering with the relatives, an exhibition such as this brings an entire famiglia to the table, each with different ideas and ways of expressing them. Drawing from all of Italian culture and tradition, we continue the legacy in our studios, reinventing it as American art.

The 26 artists in the show are: B. Amore, John Avelluto, the late Nancy Azara, Angelica Bergamini, Gianluca Bianchino, Jennifer Cecere, Chris Costan, Elisa D’Arrigo, Claudia DeMonte, Paul Fabozzi, Milisa Galazzi, Diana González Gandolfi, D. Dominick Lombardi, Lloyd Martin (Maccarone), Joanne Mattera, Timothy McDowell (Macellari), Patricia Miranda, John Monti, Laura Moriarty (Roccio/Policella), Carolanna Parlato, Anna Patalano, Don Porcaro, Mary Schiliro, Karen Schifano, Denise Sfraga, and Lisa Zukowski. 
Scroll to the end for hours, directions, and information on two public receptions.




Entrance to the exhibition from the campus green. This ground-level space, entered both from here and from an interior staircase (opening image), extends to a skylighted upper level, the Atrium Gallery.  Each level is partially visible from the other, affording you a dramatic view of the installation. Additionally, a small gallery off this main space holds an installation by Gianluca Bianchino.

Here, work by John Avelluto, left and center; Lloyd Martin, and  Carolanna Parlato




John Avelluto
Fresco Flex, 2023, acrylic on panel, 12 x 9 inches

Impasta Impasto, 2023, sculpted acrylic paint on panel

Detail





"I grew up in food. There were Sunday dinners at 3:00 in the afternoon downstairs at my maternal grandparents. My father worked at Il Cortile in Little Italy and then had his own restaurant in Port Chester. I worked there as a waiter to earn enough for grad school. Then I opened a small 20-person wine bar in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, which I had for nine years."




Abstraction may not seem initially to be "Italian" or "Italian American," but the artists are informed by their culture, and sometimes there is a direct connection, whether architecture or nature, handwork, food, or the legacy of making things and making do

From left: Paul Fabozzi, Lloyd Martin, Carolanna Parlato




Paul Fabozzi
Above: CL (Rome, Ivo #2), 2018, oil on canvas, 48 x 32 inches
Below: Corviale #1, 2012, colored pencil and ink on Mylar mounted on paper, 35 x 27 inches framed

"Fueled by my decades-long engagement with Italy, my approach to painting and drawing has made me feel more deeply the extent to which spatial experience is the basis of perception." 
































Lloyd Martin
Large Carbon Riff, 2019, oil on canvas, 68 x 92 inches

"Much of what I am today I credit to my grandmother, Filomena Maccarone."




Don Porcaro, Carolanna Parlato



Carolanna Parlato
Juggler 
Swipe Up, both 2022, acrylic on canvas, 42 x 36 inches

"My grandparents from both sides of the family brought Italy into my life."

 




Don Porcaro
Everybody Knows #29, 2023, marble, 13 x 14 x 7.5 inches on pedestal, 30 x 16 x 11 inches

"One of my earliest memories is of visiting my mother's uncle . .  who opened a stone yard in Connecticut. Seeing all the stones, mostly monuments and gravestones, stacked up made a deep impression on me. . .
I can say that from the first time I cut a piece of stone, I knew that it felt right. It fed a driving need to work with a material that speaks to tradition, and I new that that tradition belonged to my culture."




Anna Patalano
Top: Demolished D, 2022, oil on linen panel, 18 x 18 inches
Bottom: Clashing Cs, 2022, oil on linen, 30 x 30 inches

"Perhaps because I was conceived in one country and born in another, I have always felt that I exist in a transitional limbo. The clashing of two sets of different value systems was, and still is, under constant negotiation. It's probably why I needed to make art early on. It became the only language I understand with which to express that negotiation."

Below: Closer view of Demolished D






Entrance to the gallery from inside the building
From left: Work by Claudia DeMonte, B. Amore; on far wall: Diana Gonzalez Gandolfi




B. Amore
Following the Thread IV: Concettina De Iorio, 1999; copper, wood, photo, fabric, thread, 24 x 48 x 3 inches

"We carry the history of out families and our cultures in our psyches as well as our genes."



Claudia DeMonte
Il Corno, 2013, pewter and gold leaf on wood, 14 x 3 x 3 inches

"It would be hard to be raised Italian American and not be influenced by the richness of Italian culture."




Diana Gonzalez Gandolfi

Above: Mapped Waters (Traced Homeland Series), 2021, mixed media on paper, app. 20 x 14 inches
Below: Forgotten and Now Remembered: 1985 Argentina, 2014, encaustic collagraph, pigmented wax, and pigment stick on panel; diptych, 40 x 60 inches





Now We Know Where We Are: 2008 Buenos Aires (Memory Terrain Series), 2017, encaustic monotype, pigmented wax, and oil on panel; diptych, 12 x 18 inches

"Growing up between continents and cultures has given me a sense of identity caught between worlds . . . I focus on themes connected to place, dislocation, exile, identity, and memory, These are some of the same issues my bisnonno experienced when he left Italy."




Claudie De Monte, foreground, with Diana Gonzalez Gandolfi, left, and Timothy McDowell




Timothy McDowell
La Befana, left, and Spaghetti Western, both 2024, oil on panel, 48 x 48 inches

"What links me to my Italian roots is a sense of familiarity with certain places. My grandfather, Francesco, is buried in the mountains northeast of Genoa near the house where he as prior generations of family were born going back hundreds of years."



Installation view: Laura Moriarty, foreground; clockwise around: Diana Gonzalez Gandolfi, Timothy McDowell, Nancy Azara

Below: McDowell, Azara, Schifano, with Moriarty sculpture in foreground






Laura Moriarty
Clockwise up from bottom: Hammerstone 3, Hammerstone 2, Hammerstone 5, Hammerstone 4, Hammerstone 1; all 2024, wax, various dimensions under 12 inches

"My grandmother, Anna Policella, taught me things about grace that are so deeply instinctive I cannot even put them into words, but I know her influence is indelible."



Installation view: Nancy Azara, Karen Schifano

Nancy Azara
From the Greve Series, 2015: Central Leaves with Blue, Seven Central Leaves with Blue,  and Red Hand with Four Panels, all mixed media on Mylar

"I can tell you that I feel a creative bond to Italy, its countryside, its people, and its art. After all, my ancestors lived there for thousands of years, and I feel this history still within myself."

This exhibition is dedicated to Nancy Azara, who died on June 27, shortly after we selected this work. Ave atque vale, dear friend 




Karen Schifano
Top: Hard Won, 2022
Below: Night Visitors, 2023; both flashe on canvas, 28 x 36 inches

"My paintings employs shapes that read as figure and ground, and sometimes windows, doorways, theater spaces (Italian opera!). They are imbued with an emotional narrative from my own life and times as I try to push abstraction into new territory."




Orienting you from the second level
Clockwise: Diana Gonzalez Gandolfi, Timothy McDowell, Nancy Azara on standing panel, Karen Schifano, Paul Fabozzi; sculpture: Laura Moriarty, Don Porcaro


Looking toward the campus entrance
John Monti on standing panel and back wall; Denise Sfraga; Don Porcaro and Laura Moriarty sculpture



Looking into the center of the gallery
Foreground: Laura Moriarty, Don Porcaro; on wall: Lloyd Martin, Carolanna Parlato, Anna Patalano; right: John Monti



Looking from the back of Don Porcaro sculpture toward the opposite wall with a grouping of framed work on paper by Angelica Bergamini




Angelica Bergamini
Long horizontal work: Solo Journey 2, monotype and paper sculpture on paper, 14 x 29 inches

"I have been thinking about how water connects my two lands: Italy, site of my origins, and New York City, where I have chosen to live." 

Below I Will Meet You There #11, 2021, monotype and collage on paper




Installation view: Laura Moriarty, foreground; John Monti sculpture and oval painting;  a glimpse of Denise Sfraga paintings




John Monti
Detail of Black Frost, 2021, urethane resin, pigments, glitter, 40 c 19 x 14 inches
Below: Big Vine, 2021, reclaimed foam, eco resin, urethane resin, Kandy pigments, glitter, 38 x 29 x 3 inches

"Although I am not practicing, I consider myself a cultural Catholic. I love the function of ornament, the embellishments, the reliquaries, the rituals, and the organized design principles."




Installation view: John Monti, Denise Sfraga




Denise Sfraga

"My grandfather lived a few blocks away from Green-Wood Cemetery, The Italian Catholic beliefs about death and rebirth have always resonated with me, and in some subliminal way my work has attempted to explore this duality."



Sick Sweet 1, 2024, colored pencil on paper mounted on wood panel, 14 x 11 inches



Gohone, 2023, flashe, acrylic, watercolor, photograph on paper mounted on wood panel, 24 x 18 inches



Petrichor, 2024, flashe, acrylic, oil pastel, photograph on wood panel, 48 x 36 inches



View up one level to the Atrium Gallery
Nancy Azara on lower level; Patricia Miranda above


Installation view in the Atrium Gallery

From left: Patricia Miranda; far end (barely visible; installation shot coming): three by Mary Schiliro; back wall: Elisa D'Arrigo, Lisa Zukowski; right wall: Jennifer Cecere, Milisa Galazzi




Elisa D'Arrigo
On wall: Reconstructed 1, 2008, handmade paper, cloth, pigments, thread, actulic medium, 15 x 11 x 5 inches and Reconstructed 5, 2009, handmade paper, thread, acrylic paint, marble dust, 18 x 8 x 8 inches; on pedestal, On a Limb, 2017, hand built and glazed ceramic, 6 x 12 x 8.5 inches

"Growing up first-generation Sicilian-Italian American, there was a pervasive do-it-yourself ethos, but also an express-yourself atmosphere, Everyone made things, repaired things, jerry-rigged things. That had a powerful effect on my sensibility and it is with me still."

Below: Closer view of On a Limb



Continuing around the Atrium Gallery: Lisa Zukowski, Jennifer Cecere



Lisa Zukowski
On wall: Sotto Bosco, 2022, oil on canvas, 48 x 36 inches
Sculptures, identified below, all 2018, terra cotta, encaustic, string

"The heritage of being blue-collar working class created a condition of secrecy that offered protection from the world outside the family. This has manifested strongly in my art. I almost always hide things in my work: secret meanings, hidden objects . . . they are wrapped up in string as a kind of safekeeping." 


Things Fall Apart , 12 x 9.5 x 8 inches



Things Fall Apart II, 7 x 7.5 x 6 inches


Things Fall Apart VI, 7.5 x 7 x 6 inches




Jennifer Cecere
Rose Window, 36 inches diameter; Green Rose, 24 inches diameter; Red Star, 36 inches diameter; all 2011, acrylic on ripstop nylon

Below: closer view of Rose Window




Milisa Galazzi
A conversation in thread between the artist and her grandmother about the value of sewing; all 2010, thread and encaustic on linen handkerchief with embroidery hoop. The artist is in white thread; Grammy in black

"I found her comments annoying, yet I appreciated learning the sewing skills."



hi, grammy



r u doing any handwork, dear?




b/c good girls should always be sewing





b/c a lady always mends and fixes



UGH





Installation view: Milisa Galazzi, Chris Costan



Chris Costan
Glow Worm, 2016, fabrics and sewing notions on paper 
Below: I Believe 4, 2023, textile pieces and mixed media on paper, both 17 x 21.5 inches framed

"My birth certificate liste me as Costantino, but when I was 5 years old and beginning public school, my mother shortened the name. She felt it would be easier for me if my origins were not clear. The extended family was disappointed. Once I reached graduate school, I thought about changing it back but felt it was too late. I suppose this is called assimilation."







Installation view: D. Dominick Lombardi


 D. Dominick Lombardi
CCWS-53, 2020, mixed media, 18.25 x 25 x 5.25 inches



CCWS-25, 2018, mixed media, 21 x 14 x 12 inches; CCWS 53; CCWS 26, mixed media, 22 x 12 x 12 inches

"Like his father, my father was also a master carpenter with tremendous skills. Both taught me the correct way to use a variety of tools . . . skills that are at the core of my sculptural practice to this day. In addition, my grandfather's and father's obsession with salvaging materials made a great impression on me."



Installation view: D. Dominick Lombardi, Joanne Mattera






Joanne Mattera
From left: Silk Road 201, Silk Road 207, Silk Road 205, all 2014, encaustic on panel, 18 x 18 inches

"My maternal  bisnonne in Italy wove household linens on looms in their homes. My maternal grandfather, who immigrated here, was a tailor, and his daughter, Lena, was a dressmaker. Lena and her sister Antonette, my beloved aunts, taught me to sew, embroider, knit, and crochet. I learned to weave on my own. I make color field paintings that have an unmistakable visual relationship to fabric. It's in my DNA."

Below: Closer view of Silk Road 2014



Installation view: Chris Costan, Patricia Miranda



Chris Costan
Watermelon Sugar, 2016, textile and mixed media, inframed view: 6 x 20 inches



Patricia Miranda
Lamentation for a Reasoned History, 2022, donated vintage lace,  hand dyed with cochineal, ex-votos in plaster and paper clay, thread 

"The immigrant experience for us, the descendants, holds commonalities shared by many. The homeland is a complex mix of familiarity and strangeness, of longing and connection, and of loss. The art, the land, the buildings, the bells of Italy speak deeply to my artistic heart."

Detail view



Patricia Miranda, Mary Schiliro






Mary Schiliro
Slice, Punch, Dip 1, 2018, acrylic paint on paper, 12 x 8 inches, as are the following two

"I finally made it to Sicily. I had been dreaming of going for many years. I wanted to feel totally immersed in the culture and spent three weeks traveling there. I had a feeling of coming full circle, imagining my grandparents, what their life was like there, and how they made the decision to leave for America."



Above: Slice, Punch, Dip 2
Below: Slice, Punch, Dip 3 






Gianluca Bianchino
Installation: An Attempt to Communicate with Two Worlds at Once, 2024, video projectors, lights, light stands, tripods, photo umbrellas, electrical cord, acrylic paint

Above: the artist in the environment he created
Below:  Immerse yourself in the space



"My oldest memory is of a powerful earthquake that devastated my native province of Avellino in November 1980. I was 3 years old. My family and I lived close to the epicenter. We survived and shortly moved to Paterson, New Jersey. I was a spectator in the early part of this journey, which often kept our small family divided on separate continents for long periods. I struggled to find continuity in the process of relocating several times between Italy and here."

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Photos: Timothy McDowell, Joanne Mattera
Deepest gratitude to Marcia Wood for her invaluable assistance with the installation, and to Timothy McDowell, a fine arts professor at the college, who was instrumental in bringing the exhibition there and who worked with me on all aspects of exhibition preparation.


Directions and hours
Connecticut College is at 270 Mohegan Avenue, New London. Once you enter the campus, take a left at the gatehouse. You will pass The Cummings Art Center on your right; slightly ahead, take a left to park in the South lot. Walk back to the Art Center building. You will climb exterior stairs to the plaza, with the entrance straight ahead on your right. (The gatehouse is open 24/7 if you need directional assistance.)

Gallery hours are Monday-Friday, 9:00-5:00; Saturday and Sunday, 1:00-4:00.

 More info here