Hello friends,
It's been quite a journey since my last update. I've wandered through Italy, France, and Switzerland, returned briefly to San Francisco, and now I'm temporarily settled in New York City.
My time back home in Italy was the reset I needed. I had the privilege of officiating my best friends’ wedding in Marina di Ragusa. Writing my speech from a café in Noto and rehearsing it by the sea in Marzamemi are memories I’ll cherish.
Sicily always finds a way to inspire me, and I’m certain its beauty and complexity will surface in future artworks. I've visited three times now with close friends and it stands out as the most authentic place I've experienced in Italy, contradictions and all.
I found some time to walk the Valley of the Temples in Agrigento. To my pleasant surprise the valley was hosting a temporary exhibition, I Tesori d’Italia. A work particularly resonated with me: Combustione by Alberto Burri, a mixed-media piece incorporating acrylic, paper, cardboard, vinavil, cloth, and combustion on canvas. Burri blended textures and materials into a harmonious composition. It’s stunning how seamlessly he unified these diverse elements, highlighting both chaos and order within a single frame.
Italy was also rewarding professionally. I sold two pieces that hold special meaning for me: the first iteration of latent space, and untitled from my new series eidetic images.
latent space I was inspired by someone whose ability to recognize beauty in the everyday I greatly admire. eidetic images took its aesthetic from a conversation with a dancer and architect about Gottfried Semper’s The Four Elements of Architecture. These exchanges are the stimuli that shape what I make.
In New York City, I've connected with many artists. These conversations reaffirmed a trend I've noticed within the art world: artists increasingly exploring themes of in-between worlds, blurred boundaries, and transitional states. It’s interesting to see how different artists approach similar ideas from vastly different perspectives, enriching the collective conversation.
a book
Other People’s Words: Friendship, Loss, and the Conversations That Never End by Lissa Soep
On how the people we talk with keep talking inside us long after the conversation ends.