INSTUDIO 3 .12 .14 10.12 .14 Curated By Jennifer Kelly Hoskins Mary-Madeleine de Bellescize Haley Markham Sadie Sullivan
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INSTUDIO 3 .12 .14 10.12 .14 GANZO via de’ Macci, 85/r Firenze
Curated By Jennifer Kelly Hoskins Mary-Madeleine de Bellescize Haley Markham Sadie Sullivan
GANZO, the creative learning lab of Florence University of the Arts, continues its program of exhibitions with the works of students. The “In Studio” exhibit is a compilation of works done by Florence University of the Arts students (School of Fine Arts) that explore mediums done in various classes such as Words, Painting and Emotions: The Mind Map of Creativity, Foundation Drawing, Florence Sketchbook, Foundation Painting, Mixed Media and Ceramics. The artworks deal with a mixture of mediums including ceramics, paint, oil, graphite pencil, and much more. Each class explores a different theme that allows the students to interpret that specific theme in their own way. The title of the new exhibition presented at Ganzo’s AperiArt is an explanation of the educational path of the students. It’s a dynamic process in which students, as foreigners in Florence, have the chance to navigate, observe, listen, analyze, and perceive new contexts. A process that has also allowed them to be “in the studio” and experience the daily life of the artist, in close contact with themselves and their creative expression. Vitality accompanied by reflection is felt in each featured work: this is the greatest satisfaction for the instructors after guiding the students through experiential learning, demonstrating yet again how learning is about practical application and facing challenges .
Student Curators
W OR D S , PA I N T I NG , A ND EM OTI ONS : THE MI ND MAP OF CRE ATIVITY N IC O LETTA S A LO MO N
“From inner visualization to painting: a process”
Nostalgia
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Andra Guzzo There is a calm yet somber mood indicated in my two pieces that came from an inner visualization of two colors. While coming up with the concept for my piece, the term nostalgia emerged, and it strongly resonated within me. Nostalgia means going back or having a yearning for the past; it can be happy or painful. I feel both are encompassed in my works. It is interesting for me to see the similarities and opposition within the two works after completing the whole process. The combination of happy and painful merged to form a bittersweet feeling within. The two pieces work together to bridge the gap between my myself and my emotions. It is interesting to note that that the purple work came before the yellow work. I see my previous mindset working in relations to what I have come to discovr now. These discoveries are strongly tied with how I feel about myself.
Nostalgia II
W OR D S , PA I N T I NG , A ND EM OTI ONS : THE MI ND MAP OF CRE ATIVITY
I begin with a rough sketch of the Ponte Vecchio, then decide what I want the composition to look like. From there, I begin with mixing colors to create a palette to work from. My emotions through the process when making an abstract painting in Plein Air verses a non abstract painting differ drastically. I feel free and without fear, when painting abstract, sometimes the final result can be disappointing but its the process I enjoy the most.
The Beginning
With little surface to work with, I discovered it was easier for me to highlight the abstract approach to painting in Plein Air.
Breaking Sun
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Blinded by the Light
S O C I A L P R A CT I C E S O F CONTEM PORARY ART L UCIA GIARDIN O
Alice Cheeseman Kaelynn Maloney Danielle McCleave Sarah Opitz While the beginning of our project took place in the studios at FUA, the primary and essential interactions happened at the Il Giglio residence. According to their website, Il Giglio “is a structure that can accommodate seniors with varying degrees of autonomy. “ The community offers up to 60 beds for seniors who desire to reside either with or without roommates; and the fl oors are organized according to the varying levels of autonomy, primarily based on those residents with dementia. Upon our fi rst visit to Il Giglio, we were greeted by residents of all varieties - as young as fi fty and as old as ninety. What was immediately striking was the strong sense of community and care for the residents by the staff members. Elderly care facilities in the United States are often marked by a sterile and unfamiliar quality, yet the atmosphere in Il Giglio is one of warmth and community. Different amenities such as common areas, infi rmaries, a gym, and a green area are available for resident use. We entered their space as cultural and generational outsiders, with the intention of bridging the gap between these two cohorts. Much of our task in working with the residents of the Il Giglio community was about breaking barriers and conversing, building trust. The fi rst barrier was gaining clearance to work in such a community. After given clearance, our next great wall to shatter would be to gain emotional clearance. As strangers and foreigners, patience was an essential element in overcoming cultural and linguistic barriers. Initially, our ideas to build relationships revolved around creating a sort of collection of art - produced and curated by the residents. However, after our fi rst sketching exercises, we quickly realized that the ultimate goal of a resident show would be too overwhelming. Instead we decided to focus on the needs of expression of the residents. We created notebooks to give to the residents, with which we would also assign them sketching exercises to improve their technical skills as well as their solidarity as Il Giglio residents. The essential ideal that we hope to reveal in that beauty is being unapologetically oneself. This idea was taken from another class exercise, in which we read what other FUA students defi ned as “beauty”. The phrase “being unapologetically oneself” is the title of our work and experience with the residents because we witnessed them in their unique forms. American culture deems youth as ideal beauty, so it is through our work with an older population that we may begin to dispel this common belief. We have observed the residents mostly in their body language because of our language barrier. In doing so, we have learned that language and understanding are much deeper than linguistic coherence. We have learned about the residents through their physical quirks and in a way to insert ourselves into their unique dialogue, we will film ourselves copying their movements. In this action, we aim to gain a bodily sense of their individual situations.
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Unapologetically Oneself
M I X E D M E D I A PA RID E MORET T I
Danielle McCleave Despite my extremely urban upbringing, from living in Orlando, LA, Dallas, and Nashville, my heart has always been with nature. The complexity of growth that is displayed so humbly within fields and trees fascinates me. There is a quiet life that is always present, but never begging for attention. So, when I came to Florence to study art, I was caught a little off guard by how absent green life was. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely adore city life and the movement and energy of the people that live there, but even in the large cities that I had lived in, there were always spurts of nature amidst the streets and buildings. But for Florence, one must search to find nature within the city center. What I generally thought of as nature was not present, there seemed to be no life in the city. But with that thought I realized that the city on the contrary to my initial concepts had so much life. That instead of trees and shrubs being the city’s nature, the people that moved and lived throughout the city were the “nature.” So for my piece I decided to allow the “nature” of the city, humans, to leave their fingerprints on the green life from the hidden places of the city. Showing that in a city even absent of “nature” that the inhabitants of it become the life.
All Natural
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M I X E D M E DI A
Jillian Shaw The history of mapping begins with the stars. The ancients would look up at the sky every night and use the stars to make sense of their world on earth, most importantly was The North Star which is part of a grouping of stars called Ursa Minor, or Little Bear. This grouping of stars is a constellation. What I fi nd interesting about constellations is that they are no more than a few connected lines that humans have decided have a meaning. We connected these random points of light above us with astrology and mythological stories. We have a canon of constellations, but who is to say those are the only shapes and fi gures represented by the stars? I explored the idea of creating my own constellations from random holes in paper.
Astrum
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F OU N D AT I O N PA I N T I NG AL ESSANDRA RAGIONIERI
Brianna Greenwell Untitled
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Devin Culpepper Untitled
F O U N D AT I O N PA I N T I NG
Genevieve Kunz Untitled
Kelsey Norton Untitled
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Jennifer Hoskins Volterra
F O U N D AT I O N D R AW I N G AL ESSANDRA RAGIONIERI
Andra Guzzo This work titled Legs was completed in Foundation Drawing. The assignment was to work in pastel to defi ne the correct proportions and skin tones of the models legs. By using a mixture of white, red, and yellow, I was able to accomplish a similar skin tone to that of the model. I added blue, purple, and brown to better defi ne the shadows displayed in the legs. Smudging was used to smooth the texture of the pastel, while some of the texture was left in the beginnings of the fabric. The main focus of the piece was the legs of the model so the body, chair, and fabric are left uncompleted.
Legs
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Timothy Dominic Ahene As I am still a beginner in drawing, details and shading have not been my strong points. This work was an opportunity to explore abstract ways of showing detail, and the use of shadows. I have always liked high contrast in artwork. In my opinion, it allows one to focus more on the subject of the artwork. In choosing the space on the paper that the drawing would occupy, I was inspired by a painting I saw before I drew the tower. While my implementation of the style varies from the painting I saw, I believe, the eggshaped space works better than a rectangular one would have worked.
Tower in Perspective
F L OR E NCE S K E T C H B O OK PARIDE MORET T I
Mackenzie Kolling These pieces are studies of patterns found in churches in Florence. For these pieces, I explored the flat, two-dimensional planes of these patterns and attempted to create new spaces within the predetermined repetition with the use of tone and color.
Florentine Pattern I
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Florentine Pattern II
F L O R E N C E S K E T CHB OOK
Kimberly Knowles Studios: Fractured Grey
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Devin Culpepper This assignment we were required to fi nd and replicate a Florentine pattern. It was not diďŹƒ cult fi nding one when Florence is surrounded with beautiful elaborate designs. During my time in Florence I did a lot of traveling so I would spend a lot of my time walking to the Santa Maria Novella train station. Every walk there I would have to pass the Santa Maria Basilica, and just stare at the amazing patterns conversing the outside architecture. Everything about the design was so intricate and perfect it was just amazing to me that someone was able to create it. I wanted to attempt creating this design and while also portraying the elaborate process that goes into laying it out. Using watercolor for the fi nished look, I left parts uncolored, with guidelines would use to measure out my process. Being able to step back and see my process of how I created it was one of my favorite parts about this piece.
The Patterns of Santa Maria Novella
C E R A M I C S A D VA N C E D GAETANO CUNSOL O
Elizabeth Rago “Of the Earth.” The feeling of caricature is created by the over exaggeration of specific qualities in a work in order to convey more clearly the character of the subject. I utilized the lower portion of the face, rather than the eyes, as a challenge to myself to convey the agitation of the spirit in a more difficult way. Throughout this process I used minimal features in a gestural manner producing clarity through obscurity. Varying the way in which I worked with each mask, I believe, established a fresh feeling in the pieces. Variables included wetness of the clay and the amount of clay that I would add at a time during the building process. In carving the excess clay out from within them, I made them as thin and delicate as possible to contrast with their rough exterior and added clay dust to specific areas around the mouth to generate visual interest and further texture. I feel the wetness of the clay that was present during most of construction brings out the aboriginal quality that resembling a mud mask. My hope was to make these pieces feel like they were unmistakably made out of clay and to feel very “touched” and worked with. These pieces represent the fact that as humans were created from dust and will return to it. These faces are extremely expressive and lively like the time that we spend in this world, but resemble stone to show that death is always a reality, even in life.
Untitled
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C E RA M I C S A D VA N C E D
Mackenzie Kolling As an artist, I am inspired by all things organic. To me, organic forms are the most beautiful because they don’t try to be. They simply are. Their unconscious nature and state of being, whether in a state of growth or decay, is beautiful to me, both in its simplicity and its complexity. The organic doesn’t try to conform to what it isn’t. No matter the lengths mankind goes to control what is wild, the natural will never be overcome. In contrast with the seemingly chaotic world of the natural, I seek to recreate such forms and combine them to create new forms, using hyper-controlled carving methods paired with a more gestural, loose construction, allowing the clay the chance to reveal its true organic nature as well. My work serves as a way for me to express both my awe of creation and to observe the effects of mankind on that which we did not create. For this piece, I chose to base the form off of a human heart. This form, like many of the forms in my work, is combined with the form of the Veiled Lady mushroom. I frequently use this form because it holds such a quality of alien beauty. It is an unrecognizable form to many, but is at the same time, somewhat familiar and undoubtedly organic in nature. For this reason, it is the perfect form for my work, as I want the work to be obvious in its organic origin, but at the same time, unrecognizable as one thing in particular. My pieces tend to be a combination of things, and are therefore something new. My drawing, on the other hand, conveys the attempt to organize that which, by its very nature, is seemingly disorganized. Perhaps it isn’t truly disorganized; perhaps it simply has its own way of order that we don’t understand. This, paired with the contrast within the human heart form, causes the work to be somewhat uncomfortable. There is a sort of tension, between delicate and heavy, detailed and gestural, order and disorder. In this way, my work reflects that nature is never perfect by mankind’s standards. However, by using the human heart form, I remind the viewer of the true wild nature of humankind; that no matter how we evolve, we will still, in our innermost selves, be organic, crooked, imperfect. We will always lack control. My original vision for the sculpture was to create a highly detailed and realistic piece. Throughout the process of creating this piece, however, its concept began to challenge that which within me seeks to control every aspect of what I create. It became a challenge to myself, to allow the clay to have space to move and breathe and behave organically in its own way. The drawing then became a demonstration of what the sculpture could have been, a hyper-detailed, hypercontrolled hyper-realistic piece; a piece that demonstrated total control and ordered predictability over the organic medium. I realized that this was very thing I wished to confront the viewer about. However, but the end of this process, I found that my work had confronted me.
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Heart
C E RA M I C S A D VA N C E D
Jillian Shaw My piece is a representation of sea rocks, reimagined in the form of functional pottery. The concept of recreating the look of sea cliffs came to me before visiting the island of Capri in Italy. Once I saw the cliffs there in person, I knew that I wanted to recreate what I saw. The rocks I saw were overwhelmingly beautiful.One of the most interesting details I noticed while in Capri was the waters tendency to erode the rocks in strange ways. This can even include a gaping hole in the bottom of a rock formation. I wanted to show this curious phenomenon in my piece, by designing a texture that would show how waves beat up against the surface of the rock and creating a form that had an arch.
Erosion
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Richard McNulty This series was inspired by the delicate and intimate relationship between humanity and the natural world. With a turning point reaching our doorstep we must spark our love for our origins and learn to treat Nature as our rightful mother. Ceramics provides the unique opportunity to work with raw nature and turn into a reflection of ourselves. The unfired stone-like figures close the gap by allowing a symbiosis to be reached between the purely uninhibited nature and the need to express my wonder for our earthly home. The impossible patchwork of stone textures paired with their vulnerable physical state reflects the tensions that humanity has self-inflicted by abusing Nature.
Untitled
C E RA M I C S BE G I N N E R GAETANO CUNSOL O
Kayla Lovelance Study of a Shoe
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Valerie Wyatt Study of an Ikebana
INSTUDIO
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
INSTUDIO 3 .12 .14 10.12 .14 GANZO via de’ Macci, 85/r Firenze
JENNIFER KELLY HOSKINS MARY-MADELEINE DE BELLESCIZE HALEY MARKHAM SADIE SULLIVAN Student Curators
GIOVANNI ROSSIELLO Faculty Coordinator
GABRIELLA GANUGI FUA President
THOMAS BROWNLEES SAS Chair
GIULIO VINCI FUA General Manager LUCIA GIARDINO Social Practices of Contemporary Art ALESSANDRA RAGIONIERI Foundation Painting | Foundation Drawing PARIDE MORETTI Mixed Media | Florence Sketchbook NICOLETTA SALOMON Words, Painting, and Emotions: The Mind Map of Creativity GAETANO CUNSOLO Ceramics Beginning | Ceramics Advanced
SUSANNA BAUSI Press Office
ALBERTO SIMONCIONI Graphic Designer
Special thanks to Ganzo staff
www.fua.it | www.ganzoflorence.com