Interview with Patrizia Italiano:
FG: What’s unique about your work?
Patrizia: My pottery is inspired by a life suspended between
the places I love most, and the places where I live my daily life. My Sicily:
my dreams, my nightmares, the things I love and those I hate. I like imagining
stories and giving life to the objects and characters, so immersed in their own
environment and cultural context. My market traders are born of irony, from
strolling through Palermo’s food markets and observing people, from
hearing the made-up chants of the vendors shouting about their goods. Their
gestures and body language, their physical features, formed by all the
different conquerors that have ruled Sicily down the ages, each
leaving their mark. Palermo’s markets are full of history and tales, of
streets buzzing with artisans and crafters, of old buildings and palaces that
blend with the market stalls. I wish to recreate in clay the same traits,
colours, chants and wares of the vendors, who smirk back at me even as I shape
their features. The same is true of Filicudi itself, one of the Aeolian islands
where I live several months a year. The island is complicit in my life: a
magical place that I love dearly and that I bring inside me, with its colours,
smells, and infinite landscapes; its sunsets and old stone paths. The dark,
blue-green sea-light triggers images of submerged worlds of fish, crabs,
shells, dolphins…and mermaids!
FG: What do you want people to do or feel when they
encounter your creations?
Patrizia: I would love to believe that the people who buy and
use my pottery and my creations could hear the ancient voice of Sicily,
the history that pervades the island; and that by looking at and touching them,
they could lose themselves in this ancient and fascinating world of mine. The
chaos and the silence, the culture, the beauty and the decadence – all the
contradictions which characterise my world and live inside me.
FG: What is your favorite material to work with?
Patrizia: I love all types of clay; I love touching them and
getting my hands dirty, feeling their harsh textures and the ways they
transform through sophisticated chemical processes. I love opening the kiln and
witnessing the transformation process; seeing, each time, a new creation come
into the world from clay – an old miracle which repeats itself in the history
of all the ages.
FG: What motivates and inspires you?
Patrizia: I get my inspiration from my inner journey and my
deeper self: An idea may spring to life from a dream, or from a personal or
ethical motivation; from an encounter or a collision… There are countless
possibilities, and creativity is like a wild plant which sprouts up everywhere
and overruns, which sometimes invades you so much that it requires shaping and
tidying.
FG: What funny moments, unexpected surprises, or obstacles
have you encountered?
Patrizia: The work of an artisan is often full of
bureaucratic hurdles and legal entanglements related to the workplace. I shut
down my first enterprise ten years ago – swamped, like many others, by the
2008/2009 financial crisis. Now, after a long break, I have opened a studio.
Governments should put mechanisms in place to support artists and their
activities, which contribute so much to the culture of a place and make it unique.
There cannot be a true identity for the people without artists and
craftsmen.
Interview with abstract painter Stefano Casati telling about his new series of works "Onanism" presented on Fumogallery.
Fumogallery is excited to welcome the stunning Italian artist Alessandro Casagrande in its art family.
Francesco Cusumano is an Italian artist from Carini, Palermo - Italy who lives and works near Zurich, Switzerland. His abstract ...
