Lindsay Marie Morris

When you step before a Caroline LaCava Lemon Lamp, you may simply see citrus slices. But for the neon glass artist, like most of her work, there's so much more than meets the eye. The continuous tubes that form the shapes connect her to her Sicilian roots.

The New York-based artist's journey began when she took a neon class at New York's Alfred University that illuminated a whole new world of art, connecting the concept of two-dimensional line drawing to three-dimensional displays. It was a way to stretch beyond the traditional, leading to some of her edgier pieces that pay homage to the feminine body and lean into optical illusions. 

"I was drawn to the lemon," she says. "And I knew it was important to me just based on the foods that I have grown up eating at the Feast of the Seven Fishes and stuff like that. So much of it is citrus-based."

Three of Caroline's paternal great-grandparents came from Filicudi in Sicily's Aeolian archipelago, and one emigrated from Calabria. That Calabrian great-grandfather worked as a glass engraver, something Caroline wasn't fully aware of until she began glasswork herself.

One day, while taking a course at Washington's Pilchuck Glass School following her studies at Alfred, she was asked to create a piece revolving around her heritage.

 

"I thought, 'This is just getting crazy at this point,' because how did I just end up in a class for glass engraving that's also supposed to be inspired by your background when my great-grandfather from Italy was a glass engraver?" Caroline says.

 

These coincidences led her to explore her heritage more in her glass art.

 

Caroline shared more about her work, inspiration, influences, and what she hopes viewers take away. 

 

 

What drew you to the world of art?

The fact that my parents are creatives definitely played a role. They've always heavily encouraged my art career.

 

My dad is primarily a musician. He went to music school but ended up just dropping out. He worked for a company and also is a clam digger. He's lived 20 lives, but playing music is what he does every day.

 

My mother is a studio art teacher and 2D artist. She teaches dark room and studio art. She also does printmaking, photography, and painting outside of work. She dropped out of art school to raise my brother and me, then returned to finish while I was in high school, which was cool to experience with her. 

 

My earliest memory of creating is my earliest memory ever. Creativity was the solution to everything during my upbringing. I went through so many battles in my head when choosing art as a career. You always end up circling back to the things you want to do as a kid. I was always passionate about so many forms of art, but being able to keep to myself and be in my own world really drew me to visual arts, especially when I was young and angsty.

 

I had all these careers in mind that were forced upon me in high school just to be "realistic" in the arts. Like, "I could get into art therapy or be a teacher," and all these backup plans. Eventually, I came to the conclusion that I just wanted to be an artist. 

 

Caroline LaCava's Lemon Lamp series reflects her Sicilian heritage.

 

How did you transition from hot shop glass blowing to neon?

At the school I went to—Alfred University—you have to take a hot shop course before getting into neon. Not that one's particularly harder than the other. I think it is just because the electricity side of neon is a bit more dangerous. So that's why they try to get you in the hot shop first before you do neon.

 

It was very much a last-minute decision for me to take Intro to Glass. I'm pretty sure I chose it because my friends were in it, and I wanted to try something different and challenge my sculptural abilities. 

 

Before taking any class like that, it was hard to visualize how to make glass into art. That's why I was initially not that interested. I was just picturing cups and goblets in my head.

 

The same goes for neon. I was like, "How do you even turn flat signs into something that could be considered art?" All I could imagine were "Open" signs, which certainly didn't interest me.

 

I ended up really just falling in love with the invigorating process. The second I was able to take a proper gather from the furnace, it clicked, and I said, "I've got to keep going."

 

I took that class in the spring of 2017. When I came home for the summer, I decided to do a studio internship at Urban Glass in Brooklyn. I went there once or twice a week, and they let me take a neon class for free.

 

I had made something sculptural in the class, and once I started lighting things up, I was like, "This is no boring sign!"

 

Now, I have a strong production signage background. I've worked on plenty of signs, which I think are very cool. But as far as my own artwork goes, once I was able to make something sculptural and a little bit unconventional and realized how you could really push the boundaries of this medium, I said, "There's no stopping now!"

 

Each of Caroline LaCava's works consists of a single continuous tube. 

 

How does neon allow you to express your creativity differently from hot-shop glass-blowing?

I've always been interested in very linear drawings in general. This is why I am mainly intrigued with the medium, even when it comes to traditional signage.

 

Neon always appealed to me just a little bit more because it was just a great way for me to mesh my interest in 2D and my interest in 3D, and considering so much of my drawings were so line-based, it just seemed natural for me to take the next step to unravel those drawings and make into a sculptural lamp with one continuous tube.

 

You have to look closely at a traditional neon sign to be able to tell that it's one continuous tube because we block out so many parts with paint. But I always say that approaching the making of a neon sign is very similar to how you would do a contour line drawing, as far as the mental gymnastics of it all goes. 

Similar to how you would try to draw an image without picking your pen up off the paper, you approach a glass-bending layout in a similar manner. You're trying to figure out how to make that image or word with a continuous tube of glass. Unlike in signage, I don't block out certain parts of my neon sculptures with paint. You're seeing the whole tube all the way through.

 

There's more than initially meets the eye with Caroline LaCava's Cunt Chandelier.

 

Tell us about your use of optical illusions.

My interests in illusions and double image began when I was in high school. I looked at famous artists like Salvador Dali, and I used to make double-image drawings.

 

The first time I did some sort of optical illusion in neon was with the Cunt Chandelier, and that was in college. It felt like a self-portrait to me. I knew I'd be evolving this piece even after college, but I never would have guessed that I'd apply that same process to other forms of imagery. 

I was inspired by how I've navigated the world and how people approach me in life. How people make judgments at first glance. Even when the latest Cunt Chandelier went viral over the summer, so many comments said they were confused or unimpressed at first glance until it hit them.

 

I realized that's how people have approached me in life. They look at me, especially in the glass industry, and underestimate me. Or even when people take advantage of my initial kindness and quickly realize I'm not going to put up with that. There are so many stories I could tell with this piece and so many situations in life that can be applied.

 

I was trying to channel my personality into it in general, having a soft and harsh aspect to the piece. It's something that appears graceful or delicate at first, and then you look in the mirror and are confronted with this harsh word. And you're forced to look at yourself in the mirror. The Cunt Chandelier is how I check people. It's an "expect the unexpected" sort of thing. I think many women can relate to all this.

Caroline LaCava reveals the hidden message reflected below the Cunt Chandelier.

What do you hope viewers take away?

I would hope that people view my lights as conceptual works of art rather than "just a lamp." I think with neon being newly considered an art medium, I used to worry some people might not see what I see. Thankfully, a lot of people do. Then there are others who think I should have sold 10,000 cunts for $50 a pop, and they just miss the point completely. That's part of the fun, though. People get to know me, and I get to know them.

 

I hope some sort of storytelling does come across when people look at a piece like the Cunt Chandelier. The whole unraveling of the image and not being able to see it quite clearly at first holds meaning to me. So, I'd like that to translate to the viewer as well. 

 

 

 

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Whether she's upcycling discarded materials or working with clay and sand from Mount Etna, Stefania Boemi's works serve as a heartfelt tribute to Sicily's rich history. The sustainably minded artist hand-sculpts her own version of the iconic teste di moro, crafts chandeliers with remnants of holy cards, reupholsters furniture with antique fabrics, reimagines Sicilian puppets using doll heads and lithographed tin boxes, and sews hammocks from traditional bedspreads. Her artistry extends to her ambitious restoration of a more than 1,000-year-old Arabic paper mill into a sanctuary for art and cultural events.

 

I recently had the opportunity to connect with Stefania, who shared her background, drive, process, and more.

 

You are originally from Bronte. How did that factor into your artistic journey?

I believe that growing up in a place where boredom is abundant gives creative minds the opportunity to explore various ways to fill time. Creating something from nothing or very little is one of these possibilities. I think that if I had grown up in a city and had been one of many children with days filled with pre-arranged activities by parents, like swimming, dance, or English lessons (just to name a few examples), I probably would have become something entirely different.

 

Your training is in physiotherapy; what influence has this had on your art?

I worked full-time for almost 20 years in neurorehabilitation, a branch of physiotherapy that exposed me to devastating, often dire illnesses and connected me with people with whom I formed deep bonds. The contact with their suffering and the opportunity to help them navigate their difficult days taught me a great deal and inevitably shaped my worldview. But at a certain point, I felt the need to give space to parts of myself that hadn't had the time to be "cultivated." That's where the choice to split my life between physiotherapy (which I still practice) and art came from. I would say that the creative part of me influenced my approach to physiotherapy, not the other way around!

 

Stefania Boemi
 

What drives your passion for sustainability in art, and how do you select materials?

Nowadays, there's a lot of talk about ecology, eco-art, "green" practices, and sustainability. These topics have become "trendy!" But for me, it's simply about love and admiration for the beauty of nature. These sentiments, if we can call them that, were inherited from my mother. I grew up in the countryside, and after a long pause living in the city four years ago, I chose to return to live amidst nature. It feels natural for me to be "sustainable" in everything I do. The materials I choose are either "repurposed" (like the bedspreads I use for hammocks, the crystals for my chandeliers, or the lithographs for my cushions) or sourced locally (like clay or sand from Mount Etna). The connection to the island is strong, omnipresent, and indispensable in both cases.

Stefania frequently repurposes vintage materials.

Tell us about your creative process.

Describing the creative process behind my pieces is quite difficult for me. In most cases, it's an instinctive spark. Once that spark ignites, the step to realization is immediate and materializes through a sequence of trials and errors—until exhaustion! I study the results and explore possible solutions. My hands are the instruments of my imagination, and controlling the material becomes both a pleasure and a surprise. When I recognize poetry in the achieved form, the creative process is complete for me.

 

Teste di moro reimagined by Stefania Boemi

How do you incorporate Sicily's culture and history into your work?

I think I achieve this through the choice of materials. Clay is Sicilian soil, and the teste di moro, with their legend, tell a piece of the island's history. The association and identification happen naturally, and in this case, obviously. Other pieces have more secret ties, perhaps less evident. They involve the reuse of materials/objects with a past story linked to local customs and habits. Our roots are important. They need to be preserved. They tell us who we are and our identity. They allow us to differentiate ourselves and maintain a world with millions of diverse peoples, each with their traditions, colors, customs, and habits. And that's simply wonderful. Imagine how boring the world would be if we were all the same!

Red teste di moro by Stefania Boemi

 

Are there any upcoming projects you are particularly excited about?

Yes, there are new projects on the horizon that also involve my current artistic production in some way. But the project is much broader. Four years ago, I fled the city and purchased an estate on the banks of the Simeto River. It includes the Arabic Paper Mill of Ricchisgia, a building dating back to the year 1,000. It was constructed by the Arabs during their domination of Sicily, with 26,000 square meters of land cultivated with pistachios and olives. The Paper Mill, after the Arabs left, was transformed into a convent and inhabited by the Benedictine and Basilian orders for about three centuries. The entire property was later donated to Count Nelson, who became the Duke of Bronte. It remained in his family's possession until the 1970s. I was overwhelmed by the beauty of this little-known, secret place, which is part of an important minor historical heritage. It became my place in the world and my world. Here, I live and work surrounded by unspoiled nature, with rhythms and habits vastly different from those I previously had. I am personally involved in restoring and rehabilitating this extraordinary space. It's a complex project, challenging on many levels, especially financial. But it has become a life project. I'll host art and events. There's still much to do, but so much has already been accomplished. When I finish (if I ever do), I'll be able to say it was the most beautiful work I've ever done.

 

Medusa by Stefania Boemi

What advice would you give young artists?

I came across this writing by Rainer Maria Rilke, which encapsulates everything I could advise:

My daughter, if you feel a fire within,
a light burning deep inside,
don't smother it with the doubts of the world,
don't extinguish the fire with fear.
The path of the artist is long and uncertain,
but full of hidden treasures;
every brushstroke, every note, every word
is a step toward your truth.
Don't seek the approval of others,
don't expect applause at every step.
Art lives within you,
a silent song that only you can hear.
Create out of love, my daughter,
not for success or fame,
because true art is born from the heart,
not from the hands of those who judge.
You are young, and the world is vast,
full of dreams to paint,
of sounds to capture,
of stories to tell.
Be brave, and never stop searching,
because the artist never finds the journey's end,
but only new roads to explore,
new skies to paint with the stars.

Perseo and Andromeda by Stefania Boemi

What do you hope to share through your art?

In my view, art has the duty to evoke emotions. I hope to succeed in offering this—a small emotion.

 

 

Upcycled and reupholstered by Stefania Boemi

 

 

 

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The saying that one man's trash is another man's treasure certainly holds true for New York City artist Daniel Lanzilotta. The self-proclaimed plastician prides himself on his non-extractive practices. He rarely invests in supplies; there's enough trash paving the streets, floating in the rivers, and washed up on beaches to work with. By fashioning sculptures and jewelry from this debris, he hopes to inspire more conscientious consumption. As a member of Al Gore's Climate Reality Project and an advisor to The BxArts Factory, Daniel seeks to lead change. 

His own inspiration? Daniel points to his Italian heritage and the influence of his family, particularly his grandfather from Barcellona Pozzo di Gotto, Sicily, on his life. 

"My grandfather's there; he's in me," Daniel says. "That DNA is very much alive. I carry with me an ancient gene that motivates me and how I see the world."

Daniel shared more about his grandfather, the type of art he creates, the genesis of his journey, how he selects his materials, the story behind his award-winning The Mask, the unique challenges he faces as an environmental artist, his goals, and more. 

 

 

Tell us about your grandfather who influenced you.

He was a fancy plasterer. He did a lot of beautiful cornice work, all the stuff you would see in the buildings of probably the early twenties, thirties, and forties. And that wore him out. He then became an insurance salesperson. He was the hero of the family because he did very well.

 

He was very active in the Democratic party, which I find very interesting because Italians are often not. I used to go with him to give out flyers. I remember it might have been for Hubert Humphrey—that's how far back.

 

My grandfather was a hoot. He never owned a car; he would walk and take the bus everywhere.

 

He would come every Sunday. They didn't live far away. And he would knock at the door and say, "Guess who?"

 

He and my grandmother dressed as if they were going to a wedding every single day. I'd say, "Where are you going, Grandpa?" And he'd say, "To get milk," while wearing a three-piece suit, pocket watch, hat, big overcoat, and beautiful, clean, shiny shoes. This was every single day.

 

He was a very positive, upbeat figure for me. He married outside of his religion, which was the most amazing thing to me. It was the golden standard of marriage for me. They were just the most perfect married couple on the planet. And for him to do that at that time was gigantic. He was the most courageous person I ever knew.

 

Describe your art.

I work specifically 100% with trash and plastic debris. And that is coming at me at all times, seven days a week, 24 hours a day. I'm wearing it right now. It's my clothes, it's in my body. It's past the blood-brain barrier. It's in the food, it's in Himalayan salt. Microplastics are everywhere.

 

I gave myself the name plastician to imply that I am working with plastics. I've been doing the plastic thing for 28 or 29 years now, and it has been a very long journey of doing this. And through that journey, I became an environmentalist and an activist. My premise is that I tried to bring significance to the seemingly insignificant, meaning that the bottle cap you see on the street as litter is something way more beautiful than that.

 

I speak about consumer-extended responsibility and not so much producer-extended responsibility like Coca-Cola or Pepsi, who make the most plastic stuff in the world and have complete disregard for what happens to it. I ask, "How did it get there, and whose responsibility is it?"

 

As the end user, we are all responsible for ensuring it's put in its proper place because only 9% of plastics get recycled theoretically. So what happens to the other 91%? That goes to landfills, the ocean, and incinerators.

 

I use beauty through art to capture people's attention and then have a conversation. I'm not the plastic police. In fact, I just got accepted to New York City's Sanitation Trash Academy. I signed a paper for training with the New York City Department of Sanitation. I sent it in thinking I wouldn't hear from them for weeks, and five days later, they said, "You're in." And I said, "Yes, I'm the right guy."

 

So, it's about awareness and one's personal responsibility to deal with the issues at hand. And they're very detrimental at the moment.

 

What started your plastician journey?

I was sitting on the beach in France with my son, who was three years old at the time. And he was playing with plastic toys, and I was sitting there looking at plastic debris on the beach. So, I started making assemblies. I was just taking stuff off the beach. I could only use what I found—no screws. I used my Swiss Army knife and started making stuff. I still have all those original pieces, and I would go back by myself and take walks. Then, I kept seeing the same trash over and over and over and over again. And this went on for years, and I just started honing my skills with it.

 

I am one of the 2024 Human Impacts Institute's Creative Climate Awards recipients for one of my pieces, The Mask. And I have a piece now in TriBeCa. So this art has taken on a life of its own, and I did not ever realize that I would get to this degree, into this depth of it, 29 years ago. 

 

I've been to zillions of conferences about climate change, and they never speak to the art. They're speaking to business, how to create business from a crisis. I have always found that very interesting because you have to deal with crises and change behavior. That's what my real platform is now: behavior modification.   

 

Can you elaborate on how your work brings significance to the seemingly insignificant?

I've attached this concept to the idea of humans. I deal mostly with plastic debris. In the beginning, it was mostly around ocean debris found on beaches. Then, I made the connection between the single-stream use of plastics and human beings and how human beings are treated in society as single-stream use of human beings.

 

What does that mean? So you're walking down the street, and of course, you see plastic bottles, caps, and other plastic debris constantly coming into the environment. It's mostly, if not all, caused by human beings. It's either carelessly done with the intention of it being thrown out of a window into the environment or placed in overfilled garbage cans.

 

When I look at trash in the environment, particularly litter, I see displaced energy. That item took an effort and a certain amount of energy to create. If it's a candy wrapper, it was made, printed, transported, and traveled to a store. Then, it was used to protect the product and wound up as litter. So that's displaced energy.

 

When I look at litter, I'm looking at human trauma: personal trauma. Why would someone do that? How does someone do that? And I equate that with rage, anger, carelessness, and laziness. I see this in many different locales and environments that I go into, and I take trash walks, particularly in New York City and neighborhoods where people don't really care.

 

When I was growing up in the Bronx, it was very, very clean. Everyone took pride in sweeping, cleaning, hosing sidewalks, trimming hedges, and shoveling snow.

 

So, making that connection and bringing significance to the seemingly insignificant is essential. I take out of that bottle cap that was displaced and thrown into the environment as litter and create something of beauty from it. Thousands of handmade beads are in my work. I make sculptures, hats, earrings, and all kinds of really incredibly beautiful things from that trash.

 

I once worked on a crack vial project. Crack cocaine, if you're not familiar with that, comes in very tiny plastic, colorful vials. They're all over the place, so I started collecting them five years ago and made a sculpture. And when I walked into a park up in Harlem, I saw someone keeled over. And I realized that it wasn't a single-stream use of plastic that I was looking at anymore. It was about single-stream human beings and the same attention to litter—or the lack of attention—that is not given to the situation at hand and its impact on our lives. That person who's addicted to hardcore drugs and keeled over or literally overdosing is not cared for either. That person became a single-stream human being. They have a story, and drugs started to play a very pivotal role in their lives, where they're now out on the street. So, I saw the human being becoming that single-stream person who needs to be attended to. 

 

How do you select the plastic debris and other materials you use in your art?

I don't look for stuff, but it finds me. And the times that I do go out for trash walks, I'm looking at content, I'm looking at how people shop, and I'm looking at what's getting thrown out.

 

Most of the time, I am walking. I have two aspects to it. One aspect is that I look for toys, and I have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of little human figurines, which I really don't use in the artwork. It's just a comment on society and what I find in the toy world.

 

The stuff I use as materials in the artwork is just the constant flow of materials. It's never-ending. It's in the streets and the rivers and on the beaches, and it just depends on what catches my eye.   

For instance, I made a few pieces from Tropicana orange juice caps, which you constantly see in the environment. On another level, there's the Tropicana orange juice container. They're just very interesting and have beautiful designs, so I use them in my work.

 

Most of the stuff I find speaks to me in shape, color, and form, such as the type of plastic. And I don't always use it. I hold onto it, and then I make pieces. I use a lot of laundry detergent jugs of different brands. The colors are all very interesting and beautiful.

 

So the environment is constantly feeding me plastic at some level somehow, somewhere, wherever I go. It doesn't matter what country or what city. It's always in the environment when you least expect it. You think you're in such a clean place, but it's not. It's lurking somewhere. Some interesting shapes will pop up.

 

Urban centers, of course, are the best places to find the treasures. I don't spend money on art supplies. Over the years, I've concluded that what I do is non-extractive, and one of the key points is that I'm taking trash out of the environment. Plastics. And those materials were extractive materials from their inception. Most of today's plastics are made from crude oil, gas, or coal.

 

Other artists will use extractive materials like acrylic paints and different art supplies based on fossil fuel consumption. That's extractive art. And so I created this term for myself: I'm a non-extractive artist; I'm only taking out what's already there. Because of that, I've developed many different methods of doing this and processes to make it all stay together.

 

Tell us the story behind The Mask.

I'm always intrigued by what I find; for instance, the big, black facial part was found on the very eastern part of Canal Street in New York City. And when I found it, it screamed at me. It wanted to be a mask, something I hadn't made in a very long time. 

 

I was reluctant about it, but it was haunting me. At that time, I was being represented by an art gallery in New York, and the curator said, "Make a mask," and so I did.

 

I wound up putting it in the gallery without him knowing. And when he came in, he was just blown away by that.

 

It's been a very powerful, powerful mask. It has some kind of energy, and many of these pieces do. I've had people stand in front of these pieces and cry. And I was there.

 

I was blown away by the fact that these plastic pieces touch people in a way that I never expected. One particular piece in particular is Pointing to Heaven, which is about a little girl who was killed. They have an impact that I wasn't expecting. And the mask is just like that.

 

It's one of the winners of the Human Impact Institute's Creative Climate Awards for 2024. I was very honored to accept that award. It is made of hundreds and hundreds and thousands of handmade beads that dangle to the floor with a filigree or the floral arrangement of plastic on top of the head of the mask.

 

The process to get there is really a ritual. The piece is more of a totem that addresses the lack of ritual in our society and the process of healing for personal trauma that a lot of us go through but don't have an outlet to express.

 

Plastic really is forever. These pieces will outlive many generations, like the ancient arts of the classic periods of Rome, and certainly in the Renaissance, like David and various others, such as Bernini's doors, which use bronze and marble. These ancient materials have lasted for centuries, but plastics will outdo them by far. We're talking thousands of years, and under the right conditions, bronze and marble will disintegrate either by age and atmosphere or acid rain. Plastics may break down, but they're always plastics.

 

That's what that piece is really about. It's a journey. It took many years to gather the parts. I didn't know it would be the mask, and it all came together.

 

One day, that mask was fabricated in Bridgeport, Connecticut, and its response has been overwhelming. It's a mesmerizing piece when you're present in front of it; it has a haunting benevolence. It's a cathartic piece again for me, and seeing those who look at it and want to have a conversation about their experience with it has been very rewarding. The face of climate change has been very impactful.

 

What challenges do you face as an environmental artist?

The pieces that I do stand on their own. But then, when you understand the narrative of the pieces and how they came to be and the story of plastics, fossil fuels, and climate change, you understand that there's a whole other level of connection. And that art is driving the message about personal responsibility for consumption, the responsibilities of corporations, and how we are going to deal with all this in light of the magnitude of what's happening. So that's what an environmental artist is: this converging of activism and a narrative about change. And that's not easy.

 

When people see this work, they need to know the story. So the story has to go on the side, on the wall, on a pamphlet, or somehow with the talk. And it has to be verbalized and has to be brought to the attention of the viewer.

It's not just a pretty thing that looks nice on the wall. There's a message here to start really reevaluating our participation. We're all in this together. No one is immune. We're all consuming and doing stuff that we probably shouldn't. Some of it is feel-good, and some of it is greenwashing. And so we have to dig a little deeper, make personal changes, and challenge ourselves to start looking at the world because it's a temporary experience. Other people are coming down the pike, and those folks who aren't here quite yet have to come to their senses about what we're leaving behind. And so I asked myself this question: am I finding this place in better condition than when I leave it? Or how will it be when I leave this planet when I die?

 

My conclusion to my question for myself was, "No, I'm not," even though I try very hard to ensure I'm doing the best I can. I gave up my car well over a year and a half ago, and now I just go by bus, train, and bike. That was my sacrifice; that was offsetting my carbon footprint. And so I do a lot of that. I don't own any fancy computers. I don't have any kind of gigantic electronic equipment. I don't own a TV. I just have my phone. That's a challenge.

 

What are your future goals and projects?

I got accepted to the New York City Trash Academy with the New York City Department of Sanitation, and that's like a six-week course on everything trash. I am very excited by that, and I hope to gain some really interesting contacts, get involved with the sanitation department, and be able to go and see it. I always fantasize about going back to school and studying trash from an academic point of view.

 

I would like to get into more galleries as a solo artist. I decided to do a trash chandelier. I've had these pieces for a very long time; they're some kind of plastic armature that I believe thread came on. They're very colorful and beautiful, so finally, I decided, "I have to use these things."

 

I have about 12 of them, and I'm only using two for the chandelier. Everything has to be from the trash, and it's going to be quite stunning. And I'm very excited by this piece of work that will come of it. It'll take a year or more at the rate I go. And so that's very exciting.

 

What do you hope viewers take away?

It's about the single-stream use of plastic and bringing significance to the seemingly insignificant, like that bottle cap no one cares about and that person no one cares about. It's also about bringing consciousness to the plastic issue of litter and creating art from it to have a narrative about creating a dialogue.

 

When people look at my work, they're drawn into it by its beauty, texture, and color. A lot is going on in these pieces. And so they're intrigued by them. I've had many occasions where I've had the opportunity to speak live in a gallery or at an event where I'm asked to speak specifically about what I do. I bring this to their attention: It behooves us as individuals to take responsibility, deal with our trauma, and deal with our unbridled shopping and consumption.

 

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Artist and educator Hillary Younglove was content working on her various projects alone in her home. She'd made a career out of it. But a conversation about puppetry would change the course, igniting a new passion she had not realized.

Her friend told her about the Processional Arts Workshop, a nonprofit ensemble of puppeteers, artists, and musicians committed to creating site-specific, community-organized parades, processions, and performances in the small Northern Italian town of Morinesio. Led by American workshop instructors Alex Kahn and Sophie Michahelles, locals would come together to make large puppets from recycled materials while learning techniques such as bamboo armature construction, paper-mâché casting, and scenic painting. 

The California-based Rhode Island School of Design alum and former Fulbright Scholar found the project fascinating. She decided to travel to Morinesio with her employer's art department, theater teacher, and music teacher. They joined in the puppet-making, and on the day of the culminating event, the Midsummer Procession, she was surprised to see hundreds of people show up with puppets from past years to march throughout the town before gathering for a large dinner. 

"I think it was at that moment I thought, 'Wow, the artwork that we made is reaching all these people,'" Hillary says. "And I just loved seeing the magic in the adults' and children's eyes, and I thought, I want to do this. It was the start of my thinking about community art and its impact."

Today, Hillary proudly promotes community projects as a specialty. In 2023, she'd return to Italy—this time to Lentini, Sicily—with her Sonoma Academy students, who collaborated with local non-profit Badia Lost & Found on a mural project. 

Hillary and I chatted about that recent project, its inspiration, subject, challenges and highlights, impact on the students and community, and more. 

 

 

What inspired this project, and why Sicily?

We do a lot of trips abroad with the students. A couple of years ago, I thought it would be great for our students to get to know Italian teenagers. So our arts department planned a trip to Sicily. One of my colleagues, a music teacher, has family from Puglia, and he's been to Sicily a lot, so he wanted to do an arts trip to promote his music program. And I said, "Well, if I'm going to come, I want to do a mural."

I started reaching out to different arts organizations in Sicily, writing to them without knowing anyone. I showed them the murals I'd done, but I wasn't getting very far. Then, I was put in touch with an organization called Badia Lost & Found, which is in Lentini. They were the perfect organization, a group of artists who wanted to revitalize a beautiful yet dilapidated neighborhood full of history. They started having local artists do murals throughout this designated arts district. 

Lentini is not a tourist town at all. It's off the beaten track, but the people love their town. They started to put these murals in, and they got a big building where they have art classes, too, for the local kids. And so it was a perfect fit for us to partner with them. 

I was put in touch with Erika Puntillo at Badia Lost and Found, who spoke English fluently. So we planned something on Zoom. It was right at the end of the pandemic. I'd had some experience making murals before with students, so I knew how long it would take to do something. I knew we only had one day to do it, which was really tight.

My goal was for our teenagers to interact with Lentini's teenagers. And so she got a local high school with an arts focus to come, and they were going to paint with our students.

Meanwhile, I did some research because they said they wanted something symbolic that represented the region. So I started going online and visiting museums and looking at different artifacts, and I found this image that I thought would work well as a mural. It was a Byzantine image, a stone carving. I thought the simple design would allow all skill levels to participate. So I took that image and drew it, and then I had one of my students create several color variations to scale. We sent those color palettes and designs off to the people at Badia Lost and Found, and then they chose the one they wanted.

 

Byzantine carving on display at the Regional Archaeological Museum of Agrigento

 

What were some of the challenges you faced?

We had exactly six hours to paint this mural. So I asked them if they could paint the background color before we arrived, leaving us just enough time to sketch out the whole thing and paint it. 

We rented a big tour bus to take the students around Sicily. When we arrived in Lentini, it was really funny because it felt like we were rock stars arriving in this little town that Americans and other tourists seldom visited. The local citizens' heads turned as the bus pulled in. Our bus got stuck on one of the small side streets, but the locals helped us get the bus unstuck through lots of gesticulation and advice. And so we were late, and then it started raining.

 

The student artists in action

 

Tell us about the experience when you got there.

We immediately got to work. They had their group of kids there; our kids hit it off with them immediately. It was really great. I was so happy to see that my goal had already been achieved through their interaction. As word got out in town that the Americans were painting on a side street, an English teacher brought her class over. There were tons of kids talking excitedly, exchanging stories and ideas about teenage life in Lentini versus life in California with views on art and soccer. It was beyond what I had hoped for. So I was super happy.

They also had commissioned a local muralist. She worked with the Lentini art students while I worked with mine. Our murals were face-to-face on different apartment walls. 

They asked the neighborhood, "Do you want a mural on your building?" And one family agreed to have our design painted on their apartment. 

The family, with two little boys, watched the progress with excitement. We got it done just as the sun went down. So it was great because even after that day, the Sonoma Academy students kept in touch with the Lentini art students they had made friends with, and then those kids met us on the last day in Catania. It was really heartwarming to see that connection. 

The artists beneath their finished masterpiece

What did you personally take away from this experience?

I'd love to do more community-based art projects so that people who don't frequent galleries or museums have art in their lives. Art is for everyone, and everyone should participate in the act of making something creative. So, I would love to collaborate more here and abroad. It's just a wonderful thing. 

 

Art from Hillary's recent Traveling Postcards exhibit

I actually just finished a project that I did for a nonprofit called Traveling Postcards, which supports survivors of gender-based violence through the healing arts. I curated a show in Washington, D.C., for the organization and went there in October to help hang the show. As part of the exhibit, my students helped with writing quotes from survivors and made collages that I turned into small butterflies that accompanied my giant one. 

I'm really interested in how art is a healing and community force. And so I want to keep doing projects like these. 

 

 

 

 

 

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Hailing from a small town in the Sicilian province of Agrigento, Rome-based artist Daniela Bracco has made a name for herself with her unique fusion of digital and traditional illustration techniques. Each piece of work tells a story, drawing from the beauty of her environment and the people she encounters.

"I am very attracted to nature and its forms," Daniela says. "My illustrations come close to figurative, alla vita reale, but I always try to say something, offer a different point of view, or focus on something rather than another."

Opposite most artists, Daniela started primarily with digital illustration before transitioning to colored pencils and brushes and combining both techniques.

"For me, it is always a discovery," Daniela says. "Having a blank sheet of paper in front of me means starting a new journey, a new adventure that I don't know where it will take me."

Daniela and I connected to discuss her work and inspiration further. She shared her view of illustration's evolution, advice for emerging creatives, and what she hopes resonates with viewers.

 

 

What are some of your favorite projects that you have worked on, and why?

I am very attached to different projects. Certainly, the work I did in the monthly magazine of Il Sole 24 Ore (an Italian newspaper) was very important for me because I had the opportunity to work with many professionals who taught me so much.

 

Then, I am very attached to projects that enhance the territory and food, such as the illustrations I do for the newsletter of Domenica Marchetti, a project I have followed for years and feel very close to.

 

How do you find inspiration for your illustrations?

For my illustrations, I look for inspiration from the world around me. I really enjoy going around and observing people, environments, and landscapes, photographing them, and then incorporating them into the illustrations.

It also depends on the themes I have to illustrate. Of course, there is also a lot of visual research, artistic or otherwise.

 

How do you see the role of illustration evolving?

Definitely, this is a good time for illustration. There was a time when photography was the only visual language you found in newspapers and magazines. Now, you also find illustration is a different language from photography. It has a great potential for expression and storytelling, and that's why it's spreading a lot.

Digital and the tools available today have flattened, in my opinion, the expressive power of this language; you often see a lot of similar illustrations. However, I am convinced that, on the other side, some really experiment a lot and well and take this visual language into worlds where no one has ever been

 

What advice would you give to aspiring illustrators?

It is difficult to answer this question. However, I would say to be patient and don't give up. If this is what you want to do, do it. It won't be easy, but if it's what you want, you'll get it because you can't help yourself, and it will always be worth it.

 

What do you hope people take away from your art?

I'm convinced that in any form of art, everyone sees what they want to see. It can be something exciting or irritating or simply a moment when you stop and give space and time to your "sensitive eyes," which puts you in touch with the sensitive world that today, in today's hectic everyday life, becomes more and more distant.

 

 

 

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Quilting is not a traditional Sicilian craft, yet it's part of Sicilian American quilter Giuseppe Ribaudo's heritage. Threads tie him to Casteldaccia, Sicily, where both sets of his grandparents came from, and West Babylon, New York, where he grew up downstairs from his seamstress maternal grandmother. At the side of her machine, he was first exposed to needlework. He'd watch her sew and mend clothing while his parents worked at his father's restaurant. But he never saw garment sewing as his thing. It wasn't until college that Giuseppe again picked up the needle and embraced another type of sewing: quiltwork.

In all good quilts, each piece of fabric tells a story. But the stories have been a little different for Giuseppe (aka Giucy Giuce), with some tapping into the fantastic like his sci-fi series and others more lurid like his true-crime collection. And then there's his Nonna series, inspired by the decor of his grandmother's home, where he enjoys Sunday suppers to this day.

 

I recently spoke with Giuseppe, who shared more about his grandmother, influences, and unique spin on the craft. 

 

Tell us about your grandmother.

I always say my grandmother was the first feminist I ever knew, and I don't think she even realizes that she is one or was one. She worked at a clothing factory in Long Island. She was by far the most proficient of everybody who was there. 

How have your Sicilian roots influenced you?

My culture has taught me to be really creatively free. I learned a lot from my father, who is a chef. I learned how to cook from him. I've been cooking with him my whole life. I model a lot of how I approach my craft on how my father approaches cuisine. A love of food, a love of presentation, and a love of detail really influenced my work ethic. My father taught me at a really early age to think outside the box. I don't know where that really came from, but it's something that I feel was ingrained in me at a really young age. I could look at things through an American lens and a Sicilian lens at the same time, so I looked at things differently when I thought about how my family looked at them. 

 

Quantum by Giuseppe Ribaudo

 

Describe your first collection, Quantum.

It's a little weird, but it was like a math professor or science teacher who always longed to be an artist. The collection was what that professor would draw and doodle in his journal or sketchbook between grading papers and things like that. And it was like that for me, too. I had wanted to design for a while.

 

My relationship with the fabric company I was working for at the time began with me pitching a fabric collection to them, and then they hired me. I took the opportunity to soak in as much as I could, but I always had this thing in the back of my mind of what I wanted to be doing. And so that collection really began to mold what my aesthetic would end up being, what I liked, and what I was drawn to literally and figuratively in my designs.  

 

There was stuff inspired by DNA strands, and there's this one print called "Petri" that was supposed to be a graphic visual of different samples and Petri dishes and things like that. It was just very mathematical and geometric. I wanted to do line-drawing versions of these scientific ideas I had heard about and learned about throughout my life. 

It's very geometric, and the colors are very tonal. That's still very much part of my work and what I do. My fabrics are designed as tools for the quilts that I create. I'm always thinking of my color palette and adding colors to the broader palette of all of my fabrics.

 

Quantum fabrics by Giuseppe Ribaudo

How has your process evolved?

It's evolved quite a lot. I don't have any formal design training at all, so I'm constantly thinking of an idea and how to translate that. The thing that's been really fun for me as a designer is no two collections have ever been created in the same way because it's always just trying to come up with a creative way to be able to translate the image that I have in my head—whether it be a file on the computer or something hand drawn. I'm always trying to figure out creative ways of making it happen. I have a true-crime collection that I did a couple of years ago. It consists of all these random little elements that I drew and scanned. 

That's why it's continued to be an exciting job for me. I never go into a collection theme without any idea how I will create the end of the artwork. I daydream a lot. I don't sketch much; I write in a journal and list my ideas. So I'll have a theme for a collection, and if I have an image, I'll just write down a word that's descriptive of that image. And if every time I look at that word, that image comes back, then I feel like I'm onto something with it. I'm very cerebral about it, and then it's like, "The artwork is due in two weeks; it's time to actually get to work on the collection!"  And then I'll sit down and actually start working all out. Sometimes, it'll be half done by hand or half on the computer—whatever way gets the work done. But it's always different, which is really fun as a creative person because it always feels fresh. 

Declassified by Giuseppe Ribaudo

Some of your fabrics display text. Can you speak to that?

I do a lot of writing, and I love words and text. People love text prints, so I do a lot of those. I have a collection called Declassified, which is about the government conspiracy to cover up the existence of extraterrestrials. That collection has documents and written testimonials that I synthesized from lots of reading about alien encounters. I wrote them all out, turned them into my own versions of their stories, and then redacted a bunch of information.    

 

Giuseppe Ribaudo's true-crime series, The Gnarls Hollow Trilogy

You enjoy taking people along on your explorations and research.

For sure. I always try to reveal a little bit more about myself as a person outside of the quilting world with each collection. I've done collections before where it was like, "I'm going to do this because it feels like it will be a home run. It feels like people will want it." And those never perform as well as those that really feel like they're authentically something I actually care about and am interested in. For example, the alien one is something I've always been super interested in, and I have stories of encounters. Sci-fi has always been a big inspiration for me, as has true crime. I've always been kind of morbid. I'm a relatively cheerful person, but I've always had this dark bent on what interests me. We have all these different sides to ourselves. 

 

 
Giuseppe Ribaudo's Nonna

Tell us about your Nonna collection.

It was my most personal collection, and it's also my most successful collection. Every element was so specific and personal, and every element had a story behind it. From that collection, I learned that if you have the impulse and the instinct to be personal and make it specific, you should go for it because people will be receptive to that. 

 

That collection also hit at the right time—during the pandemic. A lot of people were feeling really nostalgic for better days. I had also moved to Maine (I'm now back in New York), and I hadn't seen my grandmother in seven or eight months. I'm a good Sicilian boy who goes to my grandmother's house every Sunday for dinner. So it was really, really hard to be away from my grandma for that long.

At that time, you had to be careful about who you were exposed to, and you were getting tested before you went to people's houses. We packed up the apartment, and I knew I couldn't move to Maine without saying goodbye to my grandmother. So we got our tests again.

We went to see my grandmother, and we were having dessert. My grandmother had these beautiful dessert plates, and when she pulled them out, you knew that we were having something special for dessert. So she pulled out these plates, and I was looking at them. I've always loved them. They have this beautiful little cluster of flowers.

I was like, "I would just love to have something like this on fabric. I would just sew with this all day long." Then I turned around and looked at my grandmother's couch with its floral design on it. I thought, "I wonder if there's a fabric collection here."

It hit at exactly the right time. It was what I needed to work on when I left New York. It felt like I was still tethered to home in that way, especially during such a hard time. So, I had the print for the main floral, and the dessert plate turned into its own print. There were these little clusters of flowers that turned into their own print. My grandmother has this huge piece of furniture, a big radio record player thing, and the speakers are lined with this beautiful green and yellow tweed. So, the tweed turned into a print from the collection. 

I blended these very personal, specific things from her house. The idea was mashing up my grandmother's aesthetic with my aesthetic. I wanted it to feel very traditional, but I wanted to bring it into the 21st century and make it feel very now. So, I combined my grandmother's florals and very traditional designs with my geometric symmetrical sorts of things. And it's up there in the best work I've done. 

I remember the first time I showed it to her. I had talked to her ad nauseum about this collection, and I didn't realize that the whole time I was talking to her about the collection, she was designing a collection in her mind. I told her, "I used your plate to design this. I used your couch to do this." So, in her head, she was picturing what that fabric looked like. And so I remember when I actually showed her the fabric, she had this look on her face: What the hell is this? Because it was not what she had envisioned. She thought it was going to be the soft pinks in her house and the creams and all this, but it was bright yellow and navy blue. It was my colors. She was really confused. Then I laid it all out and showed her the quilts that went with it, and now, she really gets it.  

 

Giuseppe Ribaudo's Winding Ways

What do you hope people take from your work?

I try really, really hard to do something different, make it my own, and make stuff for people who may not want to work with a painterly floral all the time. There's space in my industry for the people who are sci-fi geeks and for those who like geometric stuff more than they like flowers and things like that.

 

I'm not breaking new ground. I'm taking the same things that have been there before, but playing with them a different way. So they're text prints, but instead of just being regular text, there's the weird alien sci-fi side to it. They look different than what you're used to. 

I'm very fortunate that I have fabric in shops in Australia, Norway, and all of these places. I take that responsibility really seriously, and I really hope that people see that. I try to push it further. I try to make it so that you're getting something new and different because I'm different.

And so if I was just trying to do more of the same, I don't think I'd still be doing this. Because in the most authentic collections, those are the ones where I've really found the most success. And so I hope that people see that I am trying to do my own thing and that I hope that that inspires other people to do their own thing. We don't have to do everything the way it's always been done.  

Giuseppe Ribaudo with Basement

 

 

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Maria Rapicavoli says she isn't a journalist, but her works of art tell a story about global events tied to Sicily, encouraging viewers to form their own opinions. She's covered issues ranging from the militarization of airspace and immigration to the mafia and the Second World War. Each piece offers arresting and interactive visuals to provoke thought and further conversation. 

One of Maria's many evocative pieces stands out to me for its subject matter: Crooked Incline. For this piece, Maria created porcelain geometric shapes resembling bombs dropped by the Allies during World War II. The work serves as a haunting reminder of the damage wrought on Palermo, particularly by the Americans, who escalated bombing frequency and intensity in 1943. 

Maria, who was born in a town on Mount Etna, has lived in New York for 13 years. She's currently doing an artistic residency program in Palermo organized by Istituto Svizzero.

 

I recently had the opportunity to chat with Maria, who shared her art inspiration and what went into the making of Crooked Incline. 

 

 

What influence does your Sicilian heritage have on your art?

I use Sicily as a starting point for all my projects. I've been doing a lot of projects related to structures of power, economic issues, and socio-political issues. I am constantly taking inspiration from Sicily. Starting from a personal and familiar point of view, I try to make works that have a wider perspective. 

 

What inspired Crooked Incline?

I was invited to have a show in an old Palazzo in Palermo as part of a project called Cassata Drone during Manifesta 12, an itinerant international art exhibition that in 2018 took place in Sicily. I've already done projects about how the sky is controlled and the militarization of the sky above Sicily—even above New York. I've always been interested in the common idea that the sky is open and accessible to everybody, but it's not. There are borders similar to those that are geographical, but the difference is that the borders are often arbitrary in the sky. They're just lines drawn, not based on geographical borders but on what is below the sky. 

I was born in an area near military bases. Some of them are American bases and have existed since 1943 when the Allied forces arrived in Italy, first in Sicily. So, the militarized sky has always been part of my background. As a child, I remember hearing the roar of military planes, but I couldn't see them because they were super fast. However, this doesn't exist anymore because drones are very silent. 

 

While doing this project in Palermo, I was supposed to remake a site-specific installation called A Cielo Aperto, an artwork related to drone corridors. The idea was to recreate the airspace above Sicily. 

 

Because I usually spend one day or night in the place where I work on my installation, I asked the curator if I could sleep in the exhibition space. When I woke up in the morning, I realized something was wrong. I asked the owner of the building, and they told me that the palazzo was tilted because of a bomb that the Americans dropped in 1943 during an air raid. The building was damaged, but it wasn't destroyed. 

Based on that, I decided to change my project. Because my family has a background in construction, I was familiar with plumb lines, which were widely used to create perpendicular lines. 

 

I decided to make visible this damage related to 1943. I recreated plumb lines, but I used porcelain instead of metal. I made a hundred plumb lines and installed them in the space. Of course, the plumb lines were falling straight, but because the room was tilted, there was a sense of disorientation, so I made the plumb lines a little bit bigger, and they looked a little bit more like missiles or bombs. They looked like they were ready to explode or were about to be dropped.

 

Why did you use handmade white porcelain elements?

So, porcelain is fragile, the opposite of metal and stainless steel. I was also playing with the contradiction that they would break and could not damage anything. They would be damaged if dropped, so it's the opposite of real bombs or missiles. 

I've been using porcelain a lot in my practice. I usually use white porcelain and don't decorate it. I wanted to create this contrast because a bomb is usually never white.

 

How do you incorporate historical narratives into your works?

I research a lot, and then I get inspired by one element that strikes me as urgent. I work on that. And usually, it's always about making visible something that otherwise is not really visible. 

 

What is the impact of power structures on your work?

It's all based on a critique and then an analysis of the strongly connected structures. Economic, military, and political structures are all part of the same system. I like to talk about them because I like to talk about the daily consequences of these structures and what affects our lives.

 

Tell us about your current project.

I am working on a piece related to a criminal trial against the Sicilian Mafia, the Maxi Trial (Maxiprocesso), that took place almost 40 years ago in Italy. I have already documented all the folders of the Maxiprocesso. What I'm doing here now is to research the courthouse designed and built specifically to host the trial. I don't know the outcome yet because I just started my research in Palermo as part of the residency Palermo Calling: Art & Science together with architect Fabrizio Furiassi, who is also researching the courthouse. 

 

What do you hope viewers of your art take away?

I don't want to force anyone to share my view. Every time I make a work, I have an urge to bring up something that bothers me or is relevant to make visible. But that doesn't mean that the viewers have the same approach as I do. 

When I make a work, I like that the viewer will have their own interpretation and view. I would like them to have a broader view. For example, I made a video (The Other: A Familiar Story) about the story of a woman from my family who was a victim of domestic violence and was forced to move to the United States. This is a specific story that belongs to my family, but I tried to make it more universal and ensure that the viewer could appropriate it. It could be any woman anywhere in the world. And that's the approach I have with every project I make.

 

 

 

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