PANTA RHEI - New Works on Paper, 2020
“All that is, is in flowing, and nothing lingers behind (‘ta panta rhei, kai ouden menei’)”
Classic Greek language is exceptionally rich in sound and meaning, and this shred of a quote attributed to Heraclitus of Ephesus and his treatise on nature is a Latin School jewel of affirmation that has stuck with me throughout my life. This philosophical quote has been like a floatation device and a mental mantra for me as I left my birthplace and culture to come across the ocean and dive into a different life of my own making, first in Mexico, then in the US. I believe that leaving my environment, where I felt emotionally and creatively stagnant, saved my verve for life and gave me a wider field to explore and a worthy purpose to follow. Embracing the current of my inner compass, I came to a place where I found a partner, a family, an education, a job, and a career that afforded me the privilege of publicly being able to make a statement as artist.
This exhibition bridges the flow of my life in Ohio as depicted between the art I create for myself and the work developed in the community, which I often do for a living. Now, after half my life has been spent in my adopted country, I have split my life into two cultures. The initial group of works welcomes the viewer to images of my origins in Italy, impacted by the experience of living in the United States, documenting where I am both geographically and sentimentally. From this first space, the two main galleries focus on works influenced by the communities I work with.
“The Children of Babylon (for Lillian Tyrell),” presents five large woodblock prints on pulp painted paper depicting situations I witnessed and still remember as heavily symbolic snapshots in my years as a traveling art teacher. The other part of the exhibition is entitled “A Banda (The Band, the title of a song by Brazilian star Chico Buarque).” This installation of masks and puppet heads were made through many years of participating in parades and performances in Cleveland and Oberlin. I intend to immerse the viewer into a realm of art thaumaturgy conjured up in recycled color cardboard and held together by staples and hot glue--dazzling but temporary, ritualistic and playful at the same time. Here art is brought to the street-level as an offering to the community to enjoy and ruminate about, and for children to realize a golden time in which they discovered that they could play to be somebody else, somebody heroic.
I myself had that luck of experiencing such pageants, because back home we had floats for the celebrations of Carnevale. I remember my prophetical red cowboy hat: the difference between me and many of my contemporaries is that I never want that parade to stop. I do my best to keep it and share it.
