Immigration and Traditions from the Old Country
Introduction
Part 2: Inside and Outside the Sphere of Ethnicity
Part 3: Essay: Two Worlds
All images and essays (c) the individual artists unless otherwise noted
Don Porcaro, Talisman installation at the Visual Art Center of New Jersey, Summit, 2016; marble slate, limestone, and brass
Between 1880 and 1980, some 15 million Italians made new homes in North America, primarily the United States; in South America, primarily Argentina; and as far away as Australia. Wherever they settled, Italians maintained strong connections to the Old Country. In the United States, the American-born children and grandchildren wove their two cultures together as Italian Americans. Here in Part 1 we look at the work of artists whose aesthetic expression is inspired by the life and traditions of their Italian American experience.
We start with immigration, family, language, and religion, moving on to the heritage of gardening, farming, cooking, and making. We come from woodworkers and blacksmiths, stonemasons and bricklayers, shoemakers and weavers, tailors and dressmakers, and legions of women whose skill in needlework beautified lives marked by hard work and the privations of The Great Depression. Am I romanticizing our heritage? Yes, surely, because there are also secrets—extramarital affairs, organized crime, betrayal, and the dark underside of the Catholic church—that threaded their way through so many lives. Our art is informed by all of it. Each artist is represented by images of her or his artwork and a personal text. There are many interwoven threads in these stories.
B. Amore
Floating Between Liberty and Vesuvius (Gallegiando fra La Libertà e Vesuvio), 2011; street-made paper, bronzed gloves, found objects [Naples and New York City], and sheet music images; 32.5 x 22.5 x2.25 inches. Images courtesy of the Coppola Familty Trust, John D. Calandra Italian American Institute, Queens College (CUNY)
Following the Thread 11: Giovanna Forte
Giovanna Forte was the artist's great grandmother, who came here in 1901. This is one of 15 panels from Amore's master work, Lifeline, Filo della Vita. The red thread was a Neapolitan tradition in departure, as described below by the native poet Luciano De Crescenzo:
“Many immigrants had brought on board balls of yarn, leaving one end of the line with someone on land. As the ship slowly cleared the dock, the balls unwound amid the farewell shouts of the women, the fluttering of handkerchiefs, and the infants held high. After the yarn ran out, the long strips remained airborne, sustained by the wind long after those on land and those at sea had lost sight of each other.”
Amore: Standing in Two Worlds at the Same Time
My Italian identity is interwoven with who I am as a person,
an artist, a writer. I grew up living with my grandmother and her sister who
always spoke Italian with my mother. I knew that all of the important issues
were discussed in Italian, and made sure, even as a small child, that I
listened carefully and quietly. The women also spoke in English with us.
Italian culture, art, and literature were part of my formative years, strengthened
by a year of study at the University of Rome.
Much of my mature work has involved looking into the theme
of immigration as the quintessential odyssey. Most of us are either immigrants
or progeny of immigrants. When we remember this, it puts us in touch with the
realities of the labor, suffering, and dreams of those who journeyed here with
the hope of a new and different kind of life.
In my work, the immigrant journey becomes the metaphor for
the entire human journey. The presence of two languages and two cultures in my
home of origin awakened early an appreciation of duality–in the unique aspect
of standing in two worlds at the same time. I am interested in the relationship
between human perception and the influences of one’s heritage, both in the near
and distant past. We carry the history of our families and our cultures in our
psyches as well as in our genes. The effects of this are sometimes overtly
acknowledged but they are often subtly present even if they are not recognized.
This life research led me to create a major multi-media
exhibit for the Ellis Island Immigration Museum entitled Lifeline, Filo della
Vita: An Italian American Odyssey, which explored a century of Italian
immigration. It eventually became a bilingual book published by Fordham Press.
My work has evolved from its origins in carved forms and
public sculpture to complex installations involving text, ancestral artifacts,
alternative photo processes, stone, fabric, and the found object transformed.
The installations and assemblages often appear to be meditations on the layered
nature of existence. They are sculptural ruminations, which bridge the past and
the present.
My newest series, Street
Calligraphies, incorporates found gloves that have been cold cast in bronze
which still evoke the mysterious presence of the lost owner. Although the
gloves always retain their original gesture, they are combined with other
enigmatic elements from city streets and transformed through the artistic
process into works of art. Glove Globe speaks to our incontrovertible
interdependence. Each glove has its own
unique history and nature but becomes part of the whole which creates our
intertwined life on this planet. This fact has become abundantly clear as we
navigate the Covid 19 pandemic.
Glove Globe, 2017; found gloves cold cast in bronze, papier maché, acrylic, wood; 37 x 31 x 7 inches
Nancy Azara
Leaf Altar for Nunzia (1913-2004), 2007, carved and painted wood with aluminum leaf, 80 x 53 x 17 inches
Azara's monumental altar works engage with generational rites of transition, incorporating references to her mother (Nunzia, above) and her granddaughter (Maxi, below). These works demonstrate Azara's wide range of spiritual influences and interests, from the death masks of the ancient Etruscans to totems of the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest to Eastern burial treasures. They reflect Azara's continuing interest in lifecycles, shamanism, and ritual, and their relevance to contemporary life in a female-focused spiritual practice.
Below:
Maxi's Wall, 2006, carved and painted wood with gold, silver, palladium leaf and encaustic, 10 x 12 x 3 feet
Azara: Balancing Acts
Although I was born in the United States I was brought up
according to many of the folk and religious traditions of Southern Italy. 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.
Kindergarten and first grade in the school around the corner, PS 201, were very
difficult for me. Everything was so strange. I did not feel safe. I did not
feel comfortable. I did not feel as if I belonged. It was the first time that I
was around many girls and boys who were not Italian. And the teachers were not
Italian. We never said Italian American in those days.
I do remember something that I had amnesia about for many
years. In the first grade I spoke a combination of Italian and English. It was
that my English was interspersed with Italian (Sicilian) words. The kids in the
class laughed at me and said that I didn't speak right.
I felt in school that I was confined. I couldn't spend so
much time in the garden at my house anymore. It was a difficult adjustment. For
instance the songs that we were supposed to sing frightened me. Imagine being
frightened by Row, Row, Row Your Boat. But I was. A whole assembly of kids
singing these songs that I had never heard before—was so strange to my little
girl's ears—I who had heard the Italian music station that my grandmother always
had on at her house.
In school nobody could use
their hands to speak. We were told to sit on our hands. We couldn't speak with
raised voices either. This was considered very bad in school. It was impolite,
not proper. So every day I went home to gesticulating and loud laughter, and
painfully loud expressions of frustration or joy or whatever, or the crooning
of Frank Sinatra, and every morning I left this to go to an alien
ground and to learn a different way to be.
When challenged in even a very small way, my parents would puff themselves up and declare that they were American. But we all knew that deep down we were really Italian. How this group of people managed to function in the world with these balancing acts of identity is a mystery to me. I know that when I got old enough to understand what this quasi-slippery identity represented, I didn't know how to place myself.
Dawn/Light, 2009, carved and painted wood with aluminum leaf and encaustic, 10 x 6 x 2 feet
Nancy Azara
Photo: Francesco Capponi at the Civitella Ranieri Foundation Residency, Umbria
. . . . . . . . . . .
John Avelluto
Due Facc' [Two Faces], 2020, acrylic on panel, 25.5 x 21.5 inches
Avelluto: The Profound and the Whimsical
My recent work engages my background as both an Italian American and native
Brooklynite. This engagement via the lens of painting examines the tropes, both
linguistic and visual, of these identities. Reflecting the qualities of the
acrylic medium I explore the plasticity of these phenomena. As shifts in
language occur during displacement or rubbing up against new cultural entities,
so do the possibilities within abstraction.
Drawing from disparate art historical traditions in tandem with pop culture
references, I set out to play with, undermine, and confound Italian-American
culture, toying with the existing linguistic and visual repertoire of
vernacular references that all too often have gone underappreciated and
unexamined in painting.
“His artwork can be seen as the ludic antics of the mythic
circum-Mediterranean trickster Giufà, the hero/fool of oral narratives who,
despite his simplicity, often overcomes quotidian adversities and in doing so
imparts a critical life lesson,” notes Dr. Joseph Sciorra, director for
Academic and Cultural Programs at the John D. Calandra institute at Queens
College of the City University of New York. “Avelluto positions his art at a
crossroads of what in Italian is referred to as contaminazione, those hybrid
moments and places where ideas and idioms collide across ever-shifting borders
to create innovative articulations. He revels in mash-ups of transliterated
sounds, images, products, and ideas where Italy and the United States converge.
Avelluto’s artistic renderings referencing Italian American iterations of
cultural touchstones such as galama (calamari) and maloik (mal’occhio, evil
eye)—deliberately spelled phonetically in nonstandard Italian—capture flashes
of transcultural encounters to highlight the profound and the whimsical.”
Whatsamatta U, 2019, acrylic on panel, 27.5 x 21.5 inches
Maloik, 2017, acrylic paint films, 9 x 7 inches unframed
. . . . . . . . . .
Sheila Pepe
American Bardo, 2020
Collection of the Portland Museum of Art, Maine
Pepe: The Italian Problem
In September of 2019,
I visited Naples for the very first time. The first work I made after my return
home from an autumn in Italy was named precisely as the object came to mind: American
Bardo. It’s a personal kneeler (or prie
dieu) and a provocation to/from me as a Roman Catholic atheist. I know it to
be the first in a series made to bring forward interlaced ideas that construct
epistemologies concerning race and gender, culture, taste.
These ideas have been driving the work for
years, even though the many fiber installations used feminism, class, and
ethnicity as outward-facing issues. For years crocheting abstractions in space was
my way to blend the Italian with the American. Some were ephemeral, cannibalized
for new work, with a few made to be lasting, and shapeshifting. All worked only
when attached to larger, existing structures. A feminist drive to honor the
mother also meant a reveal of the assimilationist knots she tied in my head,
least was claiming fictitious Northern-Italian roots or giving her three
children names with Irish roots, thinking they were more Anglo. Her launch cast
a trajectory she couldn’t imagine. I fell far from the apple, ambivalent about
my roots, and trained to be highly adaptive to sites of pure Americanness.
In recent years I’ve immersed myself in Mediterranean
histories, religions, and religious states. I see my own frightening Neapolitan
roots more closely and their impact on my own learning and living. But the fact
is, I am/not Italian.
I was invited to Italy as an artist for the first time in
2013 because of the photographer and documentarian, Paola Ferrario. Paola is
Italian; her artist friends run the cultural center called Asilo Bianco in
Piemonte. She made the invitation possible. She also took the photographs of
work I made there, giving it a real Italian history, as if my mother’s northern
dream came true. Paola lives here in the
States and is married to an American woman. She made her own latter 20th
century break from Italy, as an independent woman. But she is no assimilationist. She is
complex, yet straightforward. She sees the world extremely well, and is one of
the best photographers I know. The work and the woman are not nearly as well
known as should be.
As Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Isabel Wilkerson. says in Caste:
The Origins of Our Discontents, it only took one generation for Italian
Americans to become white. She’s right when it comes to the history lived by my
family–I’m proof. But what about recent arrivals? Americans still don’t know
what to do with immigrants in general, unless they accept the race roles, the
capitalist norms, terms of U.S. politics and religious hierarchies and, say,
rules of the market-driven art world. No matter what country you come from and
what continent it’s on, the first step on this ground means we bow to the
newest, and perhaps most dangerous kids on this earth: USA.
91 BCE, Not So Good for Emperors, 2017, foreground, and Second Vatican Council Wrap, 2013
Collection of the DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Lincoln, Massachusetts
Put Me Down Gently, 2914/18 (partial view)
Installation at Bemis Center, Omaha, Nebraska, for the traveling exhibition, Hot Mess Formalism
Collection of the Everson Museum, Syracuse, New York
Sheila Pepe
. . . . . . . . . .
Jennifer Cecere
Double Doily, 2016, powder-coated aluminum, 60 x 60 x 60 inches
At Greenstreets/MoMA PS1, New York City
Cecere: The Flavor of Domestic Handwork
I was born in Richmond, Indiana, to Italian American parents.
After studying at Cornell University in the school of Art, Architecture, and
Planning, I moved to an industrial loft in lower Manhattan where I live and
work today.
My public art aims to integrate the flavor of domestic
handwork into the built environment. My grandparents (both sides) emigrated
from Southern Italy insisting on something better for their children. They
brought with them cherished traditions, love of family, lacemaking, needlework,
recipes, and stories. Their influence continues to inform my life and work
today.
When I was growing up in a small Midwestern town, Italian Americans
were the “other.” Dark hair and eyes, different food, and grandparents who
spoke another language. I loved visiting my aunts, uncles, and cousins in
Pittsburgh. The big dinners, full of people, constant chatter, and laughter. As a special after-dinner treat, the cousins were given
change to spend at the Meadow Street Bakery. How to choose? I had never seen
anything like this before. Grandma also always gave me something she crocheted
or embroidered to bring home with me. Seems like this combination of lush icing
and needlework stuck.
For over 40 years, I have expanded and experimented with the
mapping qualities of needlework as a readymade overlay for organic design in
both urban and rural settings.
Roca, 2011, installation of laser-cut rip[stop nylon whose segments were sewn by hand
at Rockland Center for the Arts, West Nyack, New York, curated by Amy Lipton
Chandelier, 2015, traditional crochet pattern fabricated in water jet steel
Installed at the Little Italy-University Circle station of the Greater Cleveland Regional Transportation Authority
Jennifer Cecere
. . . . . . . . . .
Patricia Miranda
Lamentations for Ermenegilda, 2020; vintage lace and silk thread hand-dyed with cochineal, and cast-plaster objects, 126 x 180 x 2 inches (dimensions variable). Photo courtesy of ODETTA, New York City
Miranda: Growing
a Memory
My
Italian American connection is first through family and food, the kind with
long Sunday dinners that start at 1:00 p.m. and last until bedtime, listening
to the grownups tell stories around the table, cracking walnuts into piles of
shells to be swept away later.
My
great grandparents on both sides came to New York City at the end of the
1800s. My father’s family, from Trentino Alto Adige in the North, lived in Greenwich
Village on Carmine Street and went to Our Lady of Pompeii Church. His
grandmother ran a boarding house in the Village and made wine during Prohibition.
His father and uncle had a restaurant, Antica Roma, on Baxter Street in Little
Italy, now Chinatown. My mother, Patricia DeSpagna, grew up in Flushing Queens,
her father of Southern Italian descent, her mother from County Cork in Ireland.
The Irish-Italian connection in New York City is common; as marginalized
Catholics of the time, they found common ground.
I
am the middle of seven children, with five sisters. We grew up—first in New
York City, then Rockland County—surrounded by music. My father, Victor, was a
musician and singer, with an enormous eclectic record collection, from Frank
Sinatra to Ella Fitzgerald, Louie Armstrong to Janis Joplin, opera to Mexican
folk music. Shelves of records in our family room, floor to ceiling, stacks
facing out, meant a room full of pictures I examined closely, magical doorways
to sound and stories. We sat at the foot of Dad’s base fiddle while he played. He
was a Frank Sinatra singer and performer. His greatest joy was when the Chairman
himself complimented his recording.
My
father wallpapered the family bathroom entirely from pictures cut from art
history books; I grew up bathing surrounded by paintings. I would dissolve into
the landscapes, escape the family chaos into secret worlds and stories. Perhaps
it made me an artist, although it didn’t affect anyone else in the family in
this way.
Growing
up, I always answered the question, “Where are you from?” with “Italy.” My first trip to Italy after college made me acutely
aware that I was not, in fact, Italian but Italian American, a wholly different
breed. So much was familiar, the way of communicating, the meals, the voices, all
felt like family, but not speaking the language, and not knowing Italian
customs, meant not having a place there. My language skills have improved
somewhat, and I have been back multiple times, including living there for a
semester of teaching, but Italy is not Italian America. I suppose this aspect
of the immigrant experience is universal, the home left is a complex mix of
familiarity and strangeness, of longing and connection, and of loss.
Still,
the place, the art, the buildings, the bells, spoke deeply to my artistic
heart. One of my solo trips to Italy was to be in Assisi on St. Francis Day, to
visit the Porziuncula and the frescos (and tombs) of Francis and Clare; another
was to investigate reliquaries and paintings made between 1200 and 1500. I saw these
as art and soul pilgrimages.
Resonance
of this history continually informs my work, as I make connections encircling
ancient works with contemporary thought. These are wells of thinking that open
up in surprising ways. In my studio I draw from materials and methods with long
cultural histories. This includes using textiles, lace, and deaccessioned religious
books, all dyed with ancient color sources such as oak gall, cochineal insects,
indigo, and clay—the same materials used in historic painting and book
production.
My recent installations began with vintage
linens from my Italian and Irish grandmothers, Ermenegilda Eugenia Glorinda
Fungaroli Miranda and Rebecca Cogan, and grew from donations from friends and
strangers. The textiles are sewn into large shroud-like works. I add objects of
lamentation akin to votives, reliquaries, and other ritualized body forms from
hair, pearls, bone beads, milagros, and cast plaster.
My
mending and sewing grows a memory that fans out from my Italian heritage. It is
an act of alchemy and community, through the familial and historical, and the transformation
of rocks, bugs, and flowers into color. There’s no way to know what person I
would be with a different background, as I would not be me. The tentacles of a
complex history are wound through everything I do. I am unable to detangle them, as the
entanglement itself is a neural network, an intertwined chain of lines that
thread through me to my family, my community, my country, my ancestors.
Detail of Lamentations for Rebecca with full view inset, 2020; vintage lace and silk thread hand-dyed with cochineal, and cast-plaster objects, 126 x 180 x 2 inches (dimensions variable). Photo courtesy of ODETTA, New York City
Dreaming Awake, 2020; vintage Italian nightdress, lace, and silk thread hand-dyed with cochineal, and cast-plaster objects. Photo: Joanne Mattera Art Blog
Patricia Miranda
. . . . . . . . . .
Milisa Galazzi
String Theory. M.101.102.103, 2020; paper, thread, encaustic, 36 x 13 x 6 inches
Photo: Dan Michel
Galazzi: Sewing and Tortellini
I am from a long line of Italians who came to the United States in the late
1800s during the first large wave of Italian immigration. My father’s family
moved to the Boston area and mother’s to rural Pennsylvania. Both my paternal
and maternal grandmothers were first-generation Italian Americans born in the
early 1900s in the United States. Each of my grandmothers profoundly influenced
me, yet both in quite different ways.
When I was five my father’s mother taught me to embroider
and needlepoint, providing me with seemingly endless amounts of materials with
which to work. She helped me organize my threads in a beautiful mahogany cigar
box given to me by my grandfather, and she frequently reminded me that “good
girls learn to sew.” My father is an only child, so relating to a young girl
was not my grandmother’s strong suit. I found these interactions annoying at
best, yet, I appreciated learning the sewing skills.
My mother’s mother, my Nona, came from a large family and
she had four children, the youngest of whom is my mother. Nona was a
fabulous cook, and she made all of our large holiday meals not from recipes but
from memory. I had nine first cousins so Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners
frequently sat 25 people at her dining room table. Nona often began folding
handmade tortellini in the late summer in preparation for these winter holiday
meals. Before I was allowed to learn to fold the tortellini, my job was to
crank the pasta machine evenly and slowly, rolling out the three-foot-long
lengths of flour, egg, and olive oil dough.
For my 13th birthday in early
August, I requested that Nona come visit me for a few days so that I could
learn to fold the tortellini. At the time, I lived in a very small house on
Cape Cod with my mother and brother. With little room in our galley kitchen, we
set up shop in my upstairs bedroom where Nona also slept when she visited.
Together, we rolled and folded the delicate noodles for three days straight, talking and laughing. She loved me in a pure and simple way and I truly adored
her. She understood me. Each year, I handmake the tortellini. My two sons and three
nieces help me now, so the tradition continues.
My ongoing series of shadow
drawings, called String Theory, is directly influenced by both of my Italian
grandmothers. When I hand sew the delicate stitches, I remember learning to
embroider and needlepoint. Once the sewing is complete, I cut the paper away
from the stitching. Handling the long pieces of hand sewn paper and dipping
them into molten beeswax wax feels just like maneuvering the delicate pieces of
long pasta as they make their way from the rolling machine to the cutting and
filling table. In a deeply familiar way, my hands remember these early skills.
When I am making artwork in my studio, my body knows what to do and my head and
heart follow my hands.
String Theory for Nancy and Ron, 2020, 48 x 20 x 4 inches; Super String Theory, 2015, 93 x 40 x 22 inches
Both paper, thread, encaustic; photos: Karen Philippi
Milisa Galazzi
Photo: Karen Philippi
. . . . . . . . . .
David Ambrose
Installation from Repairing Beauty, the artist's mid-career solo at the New Jersey State Museum, Trenton, 2017
Ambrose: Like Thread Through the Eye of a Needle
My fascination with paper began when I was seven as I
convalesced from major surgery on my right leg. At the time, paper became the
playground for my imagination, and to this day it has remained my safe haven, the
primary surface for my creative endeavors.
My family immigrated from Sicily and Italy in the early 20th
century. Their path to America was guided like thread through the eye of a
needle, since both sets of my grandparents included tailors and dressmakers.
Those talents allowed them to establish their lives here and make a living.
Applying pattern to build a structure, sewing, and the
needle all play major roles in my recent series of works on pierced paper. To
create each work, the paper skin is first damaged by the act of piercing or
puncturing it hundreds or thousands of times by hand with a pin tool—a long metal needle commonly used by ceramicists. The paper is then repaired by the
act of drawing or painting on its surface, much in the same way my damaged
child’s body was repaired by the surgery and stitches applied to heal it. I use
a wide array of materials to repair or heal the surfaces of my paper works,
including pastel, colored pencil, ink, gouache and watercolor. The equally
divergent processes of control (repetitive pattern) and chance (intuitive
application of color) play a major role in the work, with the whole having the
feeling of a topographical map with each layer of the process captured in the
final stratification.
The result, I hope, is both beautiful and engaging to viewers,
allowing them to take their own personal journey across the surface of my work.
I profess my unabashed alliance to beauty. There is enough ugly on the planet
without my help.
Detail of The Red Window with full view inset, 2020; watercolor, gouache, crayon, and ink on pierced paper, 30 x 22.5 inches
Nocturnal Revelations, 2012, watercolor and gouache on pierced paper, 18 x 12 inches
David Ambrose
. . . . . . . . . .
Joanne Mattera
Installation of Riz paintings, 24 from a series of 40, 2020, oil stick, oil pastel, and Prismacolor on 300-lb. Fabriano hotpress, each 14.25 x 14.25 inches
Mattera: A Textile Sensibility
I am the oldest child of five, born when my mother was in
her early 20s. Mom was overwhelmed with babies and housework, so she often left
me in the care of her unmarried older sisters,
my aunts Lena and Antonette Misci, who embraced me as the daughter they never
had. They lived in the Misci family home with their mother, my grandmother, Annina.
Lena, born here, was a dressmaker who had been taught to sew
by her father, Amedeo. Grandpa arrived here in the early 1900s. His skill as a tailor allowed his growing family to live frugally,
but in their own small home, in a town just north of Boston. Lena worked out of
a bedroom that was filled with fabric, notions, and clothing in all states of
construction. She taught me to sew. Antonette, who grew up in Italy, taught me
to embroider, knit, and crochet. She came to this country at 25 with a steamer
trunk full of linens made by her grandmother, my bisnonna, Rafaella
Ciammaichella, who wove on a homemade loom in her kitchen. My aunts used some of
those cloths—muppine, we called them—in their own kitchen. I found their various twill and bird’s eye patterns endlessly fascinating. Grandma Annina was a knitter. You knew
where in the house she was by the click of her metal knitting needles; usually
it was in the living room, where she sat on a plastic-covered wing chair.
When Lena and Antonette were not working or keeping house or
cooking, they were crocheting afghans, knitting sweaters, embroidering
tablecloths, and tatting the lace trim on linen handkerchiefs. I joined them
with my own little needlework projects, feeling cocooned by their affection and
abilities.
Fast forward to art school in the late Sixties. Stain painting
was the big thing. Without a gesso ground, the liquid acrylic sank into
the weave of the canvas. I didn’t realize it initially, but the textile
connection between what I did as a child and what I was doing as an art student
was as straight as a dart. After graduation when I had no money for art
supplies, I shredded all my stain paintings and wove them into new paintings. Now
I make small color field paintings that reference silk fabric. Initially I denied
the textile connection, but as I developed my own strength as an artist, I came
to acknowledge and embrace the textile sensibility of my paintings. Textiles
are in my DNA, and what I make springs from it.
Perhaps I should add that in 50 years of artmaking I have gone down a lot of avenues. Another major one is the modernist grid, which serves at the underpinning for a lot of my work, even the way I display it. But when you think about it, the grid, with its vertical and horizontal construction is not unlike the warp and weft of fabric. It seems that all roads lead to Rome.
Riz 25
Installation view of my solo show, Joanne Mattera: Silk Road, at Arden Gallery, Boston, in December 2020; all paintings encaustic on panel, 18 x 18 inches
. . . . . . . . . .
Grace DeGennaro
Lattice studio installation, Yarmouth, Maine
DeGennaro: The Visible and the Invisible
The strongest connection between my Italian American
heritage and studio practice is a result of being raised in the Catholic faith.
The cavernous space of the cathedral that my family attended, the glowing
stained-glass windows that were both narrative and geometric, the hushed
community, the soaring organ and choral singing, and the incense gave me a
sense of both the visible and the invisible.
Twenty-five years ago, searching for an abstract vocabulary
to communicate ideas of ritual, growth, and the passage of time, I began using
geometric forms and specifically the image of a dot or bead. The beads are a
direct reference to the counting of beads, each bead marking time and the
saying of a prayer on the rosary.
When the pandemic erupted
this year alongside our increasing awareness of racial inequality and global
climate change, I was inspired by a dream image of a lattice. I began a new
series of paintings and drawings of a lattice formed with cube shapes, the
cubes rendered with colored beads. The lattice image symbolizes the passage of
one mode of being to another. The rungs of the lattice representing an
ascension of human knowledge and a realization of a new stage of existence.
Lattice (Clarity), 2020, oil and cold wax on linen, 78 x 48 inches
Lattice (Growth), 2020, oil and cold wax on linen, 78 x 48 inches
This photo is circa 1957 in the Bronx of me with my father, William (real name: Raphael) DeGennaro, and my grandfather, Dominic DeGennaro.
Dominic immigrated to New York when he was teenager, sent for by his older
brothers who had a grocery store in Brooklyn. He never spoke much English and
never learned to drive. He did not return to Italy because the boat ride
here was so traumatic, and he would not fly. He owned a corner grocery store in
the Bronx for decades. He was so sweet and a wonderful cook, grew tomatoes
and a beautiful pear tree in the backyard. Sadly the language barrier kept me
from getting to know him better. His father painted and played the organ in
church in Vico Equense. Pop married a fierce Irish immigrant, my
grandmother Mabel Corr, who stressed education and music. It was an odd
pairing. Her parents and brother lived with them in the Bronx.
My father was a charismatic public educator.
Educated by the Jesuits in the Bronx, he loved reading, music, dance, theater, playing the piano, stylish clothes, and was a chain smoker. When I was in second grade and
a classmate called me a "wop" my father marched into the school next morning to
lay down some laws. He was very progressive, hiring African American
educators in his districts and always supporting women. Both my sister and I were protected and encouraged.
Grace De Gennaro
. . . . . . . . . .
Laura Moriarty
Ex Uno Plures 2, 2020, encaustic on paper, 35.5 x 25.5 inches
Moriarty: Mima’s Favorite
I am an Irish Italian American, but my cultural upbringing
came wholly from my mother's Italilan family. My grandmother, Anna Policella,
married my grandfather, Pacifico Roccio, a cook on a navy ship, and they
had two daughters. My grandfather was a storied rogue. All the kids called him tadone
[Abbruzzese dialect for grandfather] and thought the sun rose over his
head. During the war years, my grandmother worked in a hat factory in
Beacon, New York, and raised their daughters alone, while my grandfather was
off having three more daughters with another woman—the youngest one is the same
age as me. So in all he had five daughters, but among the family's grandkids, I was the
only girl, and the oldest, and that was enough to make me my grandmothers'
favorite.
I spent most Saturday nights sleeping over at her house,
watching Lawrence Welk on TV, going to church with her in the morning and
'helping' her make homemade macaroni, braciole, and gravy for our big family
Sunday dinners. She always made extra gravy and let me stand at the
stovetop dipping endless chunks of crusty Italian bread into it. I also
accompanied her on many trips to the Bronx to visit her brothers and
sisters and stock up on special ingredients. Many of them lived together
in a big, loud, multifamily brownstone near Morris Park.
Every Christmas Eve she
made a massive feast and the whole extended family came together at her table,
including my grandfather and his other family. Everyone was always very excited about
my grandfather because we saw him rarely. They retell his colorful stories to
this day as if they are the stuff of legend. But they never amused me much
because I always saw the reverence he was held in as a slight to my grandmother,
who stoically put up with it and never said a bad word about him. She taught me
things about grace that are so deeply instinctive I cannot even put them to
words, but I know her influence is indelible.
I think my studio practice is inspired by what I would call kitchen culture,
with all its communalism, ritual, improvisation, nurturing, and traditions. And
the processes—like laying out fresh noodles on trays carefully sprinkled with
cornmeal and set out on her sunporch to dry. For me, studio activity is always
like cooking and brings me back to Mima’s.
Implement 3, 2020, 7 x 4.5 x 3 inches
Tableau for Thomas Cole, 2016-18; pigmented beeswax, black sand, metallic pigments, powder charcoal, installed at Cedar Grove, the former home of Thomas Cole, founder of the Hudson River School of Painting, with Cole's paintings on the wall
Laura Moriarty
. . . . . . . . . .
Don Porcaro
Talisman installation at the Visual Art Center of New Jersey, Summit, 2016; marble slate, limestone, and brass
Porcaro: The Rightness of Stone
Both my paternal and maternal grandparents came to the States at the turn of
the century from Southern Italy to find a better life. One of my earliest
memories is of visiting my mother’s uncle and his brother who, after they came
here, opened a stone yard in Connecticut. Seeing all the stones, mostly
monuments and gravestones, stacked up made a deep impression on me.
This impression didn’t find its outlet, however, until many
years later when I took a sculpture class in college. 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 knew that that
tradition belonged to my culture. I have visited Italy many times and have gone
to the quarries and stone yards all over the country. I work with marble and
stone from around the world. but the marble I like to work with the most comes
from Carrara because of its fine granular structure and its ability to hold a
defined edge. It’s easy to understand why great carvers like Michelangelo chose
to work with Carrara marble.
But I am not a stone carver
in the traditional sense. I am more aligned with Bernini as a builder and
architect, one who constructs with stone. Bernini’s Fontana dei Quattro
Fiumi in Piazza Navona in Rome has always been a source of inspiration, not
only because of the way he stacked the stone to create mass and form, but the
way he combined history with mythology, placing a 3000-year-old Egyptian
obelisk on top of the figures of the four rivers. In my own way, I use the
inherent characteristics of stone to express my interest in humanity’s imprint
on nature, the passage of time, both geologic and historic, and the mythologies
we ascribe to our monuments.
Talisman 18, 2019, marble and limestone, 66 x 20 x 20 inches
All of Us, 2017; limestone, granite, marble, and sandstone, 94 x 30 x 41 inches
Don Porcaro
with an installation of his work at Bella Abzug Park, Hudson Yards, New York City
. . . . . . . . . .
Elisa D'Arrigo
Edge of My Seat, 2020, glazed ceramic, 9 x 7 x 6 inches
D'Arrigo: Deep Roots from Sicily to the Bronx
It is impossible for me to tease out which of my early influences were related
to being Italian American (or more specifically, Sicilian American) from other
factors, but I do think that having Sicilian/Italian American heritage and
being Bronx bred in the 1950s were all of a piece.
In my family a repeated refrain was that Sicily was only
recently considered a part of Italy (mid-1800s), and had been conquered by
“everyone,” creating a unique and insular collective sensibility. The rich
cultural history was often discussed, from the Greeks to the Arabs and Normans, as
well as the genius of relatively recent locals, Vincenzo Bellini, Luigi
Pirandello, and Giuseppe di Lampedusa, among others. Yet the deprivation that
caused so many to emigrate, as well as the irony of leaving a place of great
physical beauty for dismal tenements, was a frequent topic as well.
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 is with me still.
Before emigrating, my grandfather was a shoemaker who tanned
his own leather. My grandmother was an
expert embroiderer and the only butcher in her town. My mother, a self-trained
painter, also revived forgotten recipes. And my father, a serious cook,
self-taught poet, and superb dancer, said he learned English on the Roseland
Ballroom dance floor.
Our backyard had fig trees (of course), wrapped with
multicolored oilcloths and rough blankets, all tied together with rope each
winter, resembling twisted, grotesque, disjunctively textured looming abstract
figures. Those fig trees, and the prevailing 1950s visual culture of curvaceous
cars, brash comics, and extreme hairstyles, were endlessly fascinating.
In retrospect I think the Italian Americans in my Bronx
neighborhood brought 1950’s hairstyles into especially outrageous realms; they
were gravity-defying sculpture, held together with industrial-strength hair
spray. I was entranced by these visuals, considering them on a par with art I
saw at the Met, Cloisters, or Museum of Primitive Art. My parents loved art, and we went to those
museums (they thought the best stuff was Italian), but contemporary art was not
on the radar.
My grandmother’s needlework inspired me to learn traditional
embroidery stitches, and I found drawing with thread, as I thought of it,
especially appealing. I was attracted to art that also functioned: reliquaries,
fountains, vessels, devotional objects. Creating a beehive hairdo seemed like a legitimate expressive endeavor.
Maybe that's why I've never understood the craft versus art divide.
The work I’ve done over the years, from hand-stitched
sculptures to my current hand-built ceramic works, which additionally function
as vases, can trace at least some deep roots to my Sicilian/Italian American
Bronx background.
Dothead 2, 2020, glazed ceramic, 8 x 8 x 6 inches
Morpher, 2019-2020, glazed ceramic, 9 x 9 x 5 inches
Elisa D'Arrigo
. . . . . . . . . .
Lisa Zukowski
Prosopopoeia, 2020, mixed media, 9 x 10 x 4 inches
Zukowski: Keeping Secrets, Making Do
Gay Talese, in Italian Americans on PBS, said Italian
immigrants had a great respect for authority yet a distrust of authority. My
grandfather hid the past and was terrified of some mysterious authority figure
that was going to do us harm. We were taught never to talk about family matters
with others. The heritage of being blue-collar working class created a condition of secrecy
that offered a protection from the world outside the family.
This has manifested itself very strongly in my work. Working
abstractly helps to hide, to mask, to not be overt. I almost always hide things
in my work, secret meanings, hidden objects, covered up text. In the Bundles
series what is unseen is almost as important to the work as what is seen. The
bundles are filled with shredded ephemera. The outside materials are also
significant; the fabrics are old clothes, some belonging to my parents. They
are wrapped up in string as a kind of safekeeping, a way of keeping their
secrets.
I grew up in an Irish neighborhood in Brooklyn. Being of
Italian descent made me an oddity, somehow less equal to the Irish kids. My
insular neighborhood fostered the racist attitudes of several generations
earlier, when Italian immigrants, especially Southern Italians, were somehow
not quite white, not quite equal. Such was my world outside the home. But
inside, we were beautiful, talented, and interesting. The men in my family
could build anything—boats, houses, furniture, you name it. The women were all
expert seamstresses who could sew, knit, and crochet without patterns. I benefitted
from all of it. I helped my father build boats and houses and learned all
things needlework from my mother and grandmother.
I was the first of my family
to graduate from college. One of my father’s favorite sayings was, “If you
can’t make it or steal it, you do without it.” Not that he would steal
anything, but he really did make everything. And if possible, made it from what
was around.
Prosopopoeia, and much of my other work, is very much
in that tradition. Sometimes the materials speak to me, other times I enjoy the
challenge of making discarded material work for what I want to say. My husband
and I are remodeling our cottage in Florida, and the materials for this piece
came from the construction debris.
When I was growing up, extended family was always around. I
lived next door to my maternal grandparents; an uncle’s family lived above my
grandparents. My parents’ social circle consisted primarily of relatives. My
brothers and I were told that “friends come and go, but your family is
forever.” My family is still my foundation, and the subject of much of my work.
I was thinking of my mother when making Heaven, and
about feeling loss. I was in the midst of dealing with her estate so she was
very much on my mind.
Heaven, 2017, mixed media, 48 x 20 inches
Bundles, 2016, mixed media, variable dimensions
Lisa Zukowski
. . . . . . . . . .
Sandra DeSando
Becoming the Pine, 2017, colored pencil and acrylic, 90 x 66 inches
DeSando: Close to the Earth
Foraging: I remember my parents walking the woods near our
house to forage for food. They would collect berries, mushrooms and greens to
carry home to eat, or to jar or jelly. My father was Sicilian. He walked,
drove, met with people to find amazing stuff to pick. We would also plant a fig
tree wherever we moved. We planted fruit trees, peas, corn, and tomatoes around
our property. My parents were always out in the woods and I would follow. They
were close to the earth like no other family in our community. They learned
where to go to pick what they needed. No more, no less. They gave me respect
for the bounty of the land. They were
fine caretakers.
Tree knowledge: I took my own walks. With young friends we
explored the woods and rivers, following the cycles of life in my surroundings.
I watched the fish, small animals, and bugs. My artwork is about becoming one
with the tree. I look to the trees as my guide. They are very generous. Several
years ago they invited me to join them, I willingly agreed. I was taught about
the beginning of life. How things came into being, from object to living
entities. My work shows those entities joining together, willingly or not. I
watched and wondered if I could influence that process and perhaps change how
the world works.
Big Blue, 2017, acrylic on panel, 30 x 26 inches
Stream and Island, 2018, acrylic on panels, 49 x 50 inches
Sandra DeSando
Margaret Lanzetta
Studio view with work in progress
Lanzetta: A Passion for Nature
In 1918 my grandfather, Salvatore Lanzetta, left
Castelvetere sul Calore, Provincia di Avellino, and arrived at Ellis Island,
alone, an 18-year-old with no English, little money, and less education. I
can’t imagine what courage that took. A stonemason by trade, he found
employment in the industrial mill city of Waterbury, Connecticut. There, he met
my American-born grandmother, Anna, the daughter of another Italian immigrant.
Salvatore toiled his whole life in factories. He never really learned to
speak much English and never bought a car, but he died with money in the bank,
owning outright a three-family home.
Embedded in this classic American immigrant story was the
heart and soul of Italianità. No one ever told me art was important; they just
demonstrated it. My grandmother crocheted finely bordered handkerchiefs,
antimacassars, and bedspreads. My grandfather, an accomplished amateur
photographer, developed in his basement the formal family portraits he sent
back to Italy. His endless, multicourse Sunday dinners were a celebration of
everything homemade, including the wine, while Enrico Caruso‘s operatic tenor
filled the air.
A passion for nature is the
most direct artistic inheritance from my grandfather. As we worked together in
his garden, I learned every vegetable name in dialetto. I drew plants
and flowers as a kid and have continued since then. Nature as symbol and
inspiration has been a persistent, significant theme in my work. The
south-facing perennial garden I cultivate at my studio in Long Island City
links my art to a larger world. While providing organic references for my work,
the garden also embodies my family history. Hostas, hyacinths and forsythia
bushes, transplanted from my grandfather’s garden, rebloom every year,
celebrating the unending continuity of family and nature.
Detail of Applaud All Songs with full view inset, 2020; silkscreened paper, fabric, and canvas cutouts mounted on canvas, 56 x 40 inches
Lanzetta's studio garden in Long Island City, Queens
Margaret Lanzetta
at Kenise Barnes Fine Art, Larchmont, New York, with Flaneur, Trade and Belief, and Applaud All Songs
. . . . . . . . . .
Patti Russotti
The Stately Famiglia, 2020, inkjet on kozo, 30 x 40 inches
Russotti: La Famiglia
The family I Photograph: I have been scanning collected mushrooms for the last
couple years. Since I began doing this, they have consistently presented
themselves to me even when there is no reason for them to be there. Looking for
them is exhilarating, never disappointing. The shapes, sizes, colors, and
textures are astonishing. Had they always been in my yard? Was I simply not in
tune enough to notice? While exploring a variety of resources, I came across
the phrase, World Wood Web. The interconnectedness of trees, fungi, lichen made
perfect sense to me.
The Family in Which I Grew Up: Being Italian in the 1950’s
required invisibility. We were still not fully accepted or respected. My
siblings and I were not allowed to speak Italian, only English. Many of my
friend’s parents had already changed their names to something “acceptable.” The
women seemed to run so much yet were always forced to do it hidden away. Ethnic
and cultural prejudice was widespread. I experienced it many times. Once I filed
a car accident report and it disappeared. And I found that Italian judges did
not like educated Italian women who had not yet had children.
These are some of the things I learned:
. Always have more than is needed. You never know when
someone will stop by
. Never have idle hands. If you are sitting, you should be
sewing, embroidering, tatting
. Make everything from scratch: food, clothes, gifts, and
make it all exquisite
. Always have an antipasto, a primo piatto, and a secondo
piatto plus dessert
. Keep a garden and love nature
. Always put your family first
. Protect your own and a select few
I also observed suspicion, anger, jealousy, sadness. And great
love.
Red Russotti, my father’s first cousin, and Frank Valente
ran the Mafia in Rochester. I remember regular mob trials growing up and the
fallout from being a Russotti. During family gatherings, the men always talked
in hushed little circles. They knew who was doing what. To this day, I am not
sure who was involved in the mob, but I know that some were. I was completely
fascinated watching them. How could they have so much to say to each other? Did
they talk to the women about the same things? Why were the women always in the
other room? Usually the kitchen, cooking and cleaning.
All of my aunts and girl cousins and my mother did handwork:
knitting, tatting, needlepoint, smocking, sewing of some kind. My mother’s work
was always exquisitely done. She would often take apart whatever I did so I
would have to start over and do it better. I did not have store-bought clothes
until my 20’s. She made everything, perfectly. And she cooked like she sewed.
To this day, I never feel like a piece is finished until I
add some kind of handwork, stitching, waxing, something extra to the work.
Famiglia V2, 2020, inkjet on kozo, 30 x 40 inches
Negentropy, 2020; encaustic, monoprint, film transfer, 17 x 14 inches
Patti Russotti
Photo: Jeff Schewe
. . . . . . . . . .
Brian Alterio
Garlic Scapes #2, 2012
Alterio: Respect and Tradition
I am the proud product of an ardent Italian family from
Boston. I was raised a respectful, appreciative Italian young man whose family
emigrated from Ariano di Puglia [now Ariano Irpino], in Southern Italy near
Naples. My early memory was one of respect for others and an innate
understanding for tradition and interfamilial respect.
Calla Lilies, 2011
Cactus Tango with Sun Disk #3B, 2015
Brian Alterio
. . . . . . . . . .
Thomas Sarrantonio
Sea Study II, 2020, oil on paper, 5 x 5 inches
Sarrantonio: A Reflection of Italian Heritage
When I was preparing for my first visit to Italy, my wife, Ann, and I
visited my Italian grandmother, excited to tell her about our trip. She started
yelling at me, “Don’t go! Don’t go! There’s nothing there for you! Don’t
go!” I realized that my grandparents had
left behind a life of hardship in the hills of Abruzzi and worked hard so their
children would not experience the deprivation that Italy meant to them. Living
in Astoria, Queens, they had no interest in the life they had left behind. My planned trip seemed like a betrayal to her.
Of course, we fell in love with Rome immediately. Visiting friends who
were living in there, we were able to avoid many of the superficial experiences
of tourist life, instead living in an apartment in a residential area, cooking
meals at home, and enjoying the sounds, smells, and sights of the endlessly
entertaining life of Rome. We also visited Florence, Venice, and Assisi on this
first trip.
I was always attracted to Italian art. In our suburban home in the
cultural wasteland of Long Island there were three art books: Leonardo,
Michelangelo, and (incongruously) Velasquez. I spent hours with these books and
embarked on an oil copy on cardboard of The Last Supper when I was 11 or
12 years old (it could be generously described as a disaster). Trips to Italy
were always art focused for me, including “pilgrimages” to visit The Last
Supper in Milan and Giotto’s Arena chapel in Padua. I was never
disappointed in these experiences. My interest in Italian art reached back in
time to Classical Rome, Etruscan and Medieval Art and
forward to Baroque and Modern. One of the many experiences that I will not
forget was sitting in the Museo Nazionale Palazzo Massimo surrounded by the
four walls of the Garden Fresco from the Villa of Livia at Prima Porta (First Century B.C.). The modern lighting, compressed into a matter of minutes, is engineered to mimic the changing natural light
that would have bathed the room in the course of a day. Watching the warm light of a Roman day transform into the cooler, darker values of late afternoon into evening was a magical and
transportive experience.
On a visit to the village of my ancestors in Abruzzi I met my
grandfather’s sister (he had not seen her since he left at 19, when she was 16)
and I was pleased to find that my lineage going back at least seven generations
were all shepherds. The landscape was not unlike the rocky hills of the
Shawangunks [the southeastern edge of the Catskills] near where I now live, and the hard life that was evident there
helped me understand my grandmother’s dismay at our plans to visit.
Returning to my own practice, what I think I strive for and find
inspiration for in Italian Art is a sense of the timeless. When I look at
Masaccio and other masters I see echoes of both Classical and Modern Art. There is no isolation in a time period. A
dear friend recently compared my seascapes to Morandi which I consider high
praise indeed, and perhaps a reflection of Italian heritage.
Sea Study III, 2020, oil on paper, 5 x 5 inches
Sea Study IV, 2020, oil on paper, 5 x 5 inches
Thomas Sarrantonio
. . . . . . . . . .
Joe Cultrera
Still from Hand of God: Paul-Window
Paul Cultrera looks back on his abuse by a parish priest
Cultrera: Tales of the Old Days
My youth was spent in the Italian America neighborhood of Salem,
Massachusetts. It was a small but vibrant playground. Our houses and our lives
were connected by culture, clotheslines, and cookie recipes. I was frequently
in a tug of war between the embrace that neighborhood gave me, and the promise
the railroad tracks at the bottom of my street offered.
I learned to make movies by fiddling with a Super-8mm camera in the
basement of our house—the one my Sicilian grandfather helped build in 1915.
Almost every film I’ve made has had some piece of connective tissue tying back
to that edifice and the large, loud family that once occupied it. In 1977 I
used the train tracks to head to New York City. Thirty years later I returned
to live in that same house. In between that time, I studied at the School of
Visual Arts; created Fellini-influenced narrative films about the old
neighborhood (Of the Neighborhood and In His Frame), as well as
documentaries about blue collar life (Leather Soul), the commerce of
Salem (Witch City), and the sins of the faith (Hand of God). I
worked as an editor and occasional director for clients as diverse as Human
Rights Watch, the Rolling Stones, and Food Network. After a decade of traveling
back and forth to New York City, the pandemic has me editing TV shows back in
the bedroom I once shared with my big brother. The clothesline out back still
squeaks tales of the old days on every sunny day we hang our wash.
Hand of God is a film first and foremost about family. It has an investigative
spine, but at its human core it is a story of how bad things happen to good
people, and how those people react and survive by forming a tight circle. The
film has no agenda except to speak in true detail about my family's experience.
I wanted to inform through experience, not through expert analysis. I wanted
people who did not grow up Catholic to see what that was like and how our
blind faith allowed these sorts of crimes to happen and go unspoken
about. For Catholics there would be an obvious recognition and maybe a sense of
healing because of the portrayal of strength in family.
Clockwise from top left: Director Joe Cultrera is encountered by an angry Bishop Richard G. Lennon of the Archdiocese of Boston; Baptism--water becomes a symbol of Baptism, tears, and cleansing; Web Boy--a Catholic childhood is caught in a dirty web of deceit; Father Birmingham--dirty laundry is hung out on the Cultrera family clothesline
Images by Hugh Walsh from the Cultrera documentary, Hand of God
Joe Cultrera
in his family's home at age 2
