Calligraphy by
Laura Di Piazza
Photograph by
Jakob Ott

Bewusstsein * White River Junction, Vermont, USA * 2013 * Vinyl, paper, ink, wood and metal * 147,32 cm x 59,69 cm

exhibition copy by Paola Bonino:

Bewusstsein consists of discarded handwritten notes collected by the artist for about three years. They are primarily to-do lists from places she has been to recently. As a calligrapher, Di Piazza is concerned about the practice of penmanship, which is fading in our modern digitized world. However, these thrown-out notes indicate that people are still writing, even for seemly unimportant things. After collecting them, Di Piazza bound these lost pieces together with thread. In the resulting work, the artist combines two different elements – the concept of Bewusstsein (awareness) and discarded to-do lists – in order to highlight their contrast in terms of our mental-state of time. It is hard, in fact, to be in a state of awareness during our daily lives, when we are preoccupied with thoughts of the before and worries of the thereafter. The to-do lists, often created for remembering the most mundane chores, are focused on accomplishing tasks in the near future. Perhaps they are chores we want to forget but become a nuisance when we do. Do we create these to-do lists because we hope we will later be in such a state of Bewusstsein (awareness in the present) that will we likely forget the things we must do? The piece was also created using a vinyl garment bag whose function is to be ‘suspended’, thereby serving its primary purpose of protecting a garment. The garment bag was chosen to emphasize that time is suspended too when we are in the present state of Bewusstsein.

This silver lining needs refining (in collaboration with Hugh Rennison) * Berlin * 2013 * Handwritten quotation, gouache, wire, card * 59,4 cm x 42 cm

quote: “The only joy in the world is to begin. It is beautiful to live because living is to begin again in every moment.” – Cesare Pavese

Thank you WellWed Magazine & Vermont Vows for inviting me to The Wedding Affairs on 11/10/12 as guest calligrapher held at Shelburne Farms. For calligraphy samples please visit Calligraphy Arts.

Review by Laura Di Piazza

Adam Blue’s current exhibition AstroExplorer – A Guide to the Heavens, at the Main Street Museum, takes us through three distinct spheres.  “Constellations for the New Millennium”, which consists of 84 drawings and text pieces, provides concise and sometimes blunt discourse on current environmental, political and social issues, as well as pop culture. Its range is wide; from the garbage dump epidemic in the Pacific Ocean to easily accessible online porn. Sprinkled within the commentary of our times is what I view as the ‘consolations’ of the constellations in the form of horoscopes. I was born under the sign of the Predator Drone. When things do not go well for the Predator Drone, AstroExplorer’s horoscope wisely advises: “never you mind, you can always take refuge in the Pringles and Mountain Dew that feed your soul”. (WoW, it’s like that was written just for me.)

In this series Blue also juxtaposes contrasting features. For example Goth Fairies is a drawing of a levitating fairy in Dominatrix style attire, with crop in hand, and angelic wings.

Not all is fun and games, there’s also serious commentary on social injustice.  As seen in ‘There’s Margin$ in the Marginalized”.

In this series Blue accurately depicts, in an uncensored manner, the tone of our current and common form of modern-day information consumption: “sound-bites”.

The next series in this exhibition is called “How the White Cube Hangs Once the Gallery Has Closed”, which is a photographic collection of site-specific journeys of the White Cube.  If the “Constellations for the New Millennium” is like the WiFi in the home then “How the White Cube Hangs Once the Gallery Has Closed” must surely be the balcony. Here, the moment calls for reflection and space. The traveling minimalist White Cube becomes part of the landscape by being a participant within a site, however still it may appear. The White Cube makes observations that we may ourselves ponder, like when in the produce section of the supermarket: “Eating organic whenever you can is important.”

Raking leaves can be totally zen.

The final series is a collection of 12 finely executed gouache drawings that unfold like riddles. This series reminds me of the coziness of bedtime stories and the vast inner-space those words can hurl me into.  In this case Blue’s paintings sends my imagination running and questioning. Will Artificial Intelligence one-day wonder, “Who am I”? Does our internal forces no longer shield itself within powerful symbols but instead hides itself within sugary snacks? Why is that monkey swinging with a cell phone in his hand? Is he too distracted by the ever-shifting monkey-mind that plagues my sleep before important meetings/events the following day? I wonder.

Adam Blue is the Education Director at AVA Gallery and Art Center, a nonprofit community art center in Lebanon, NH and is an art editor of The Whitefish Review, a semi-annual, nonprofit, literary and arts journal.

To get into the holiday spirit teacher’s assistants Noële Ody and Cäcilia Brown asked us to create gifts. Above is a gift I created and it was randomly received in a round of musical chairs, where everyone had a seat when the music stopped.

Before going 3-dimensional, I contemplated certain feelings, sounds and images one might experience during the holiday season by playing with words and their placement or rearrangement.

“Ein guter Gesang wischt den Staub vom herzen” – Christoph Lehmann 1576-1638 ” A good song wipes the dust from the heart”

I was fortunate to locate found objects quickly (wheel and microphone stand) at Hallein’s recycling center, that later became Outside Woman. Below is an image of Outside Woman before it became a part of the collective works on the Intimate Violence project.

Many thanks to Vesko Gösel for creating the red chaotic spiral piece pictured below, which was included in the final installation.

Final IV project exhibited at the Alte Saline, August 2012.

Not Here

Inside Woman – Floor Woman – Inside Woman

Laura Di Piazza, He’s Different, 2011, digital photograph

At the conclusion of this photographic project, I read Allan Kaprow’s The Eighties, Essays on the Blurring of Art And Life, which I found to be fascinating. Right off the bat Kaprow asks “What if I were to think art was just paying attention?” (Kaprow 201).  Kaprow defines and distinguishes between, art-like art and life-like art as follows: “art-like art” he describes as popular and even mainstream. There is a neat mental box (aka schema) into which people can comfortably put this art and there are proper “external” places in which to house them. These are cultural institutions  (museums, galleries, concert halls, etc…), which subscribe to the art-like arts separateness. That is: “Mind is separate from body, individual is separate from people, civilization is separate from nature, each art is separate from the other” (Kaprow 202). It is exclusive and lives in a caged bubble. Kaprow goes further to say that these institutions also “share the same separating point of view about art and life; that art could vanquish life’s problems as long as it was far enough away from life so as not to be confused by it and sucked back to its mire” (Kaprow 202).  In sharp contrast to art-like art’s exclusiveness and separateness, life-like art is about connecting art to life and acknowledging that the two can be very much a part of each other.  Kaprow describes the traditional artist as a specialist and the lifelike artist a generalist who has an enormous selection of resources or types of canvases to do her/his artwork. Kaprow’s description of where we can find art and who can find it, reaches far past the limitations of the traditional and commercial art world. The resources of one’s art is inexhaustible in life-like art because it is not bound to the materials of a given art store/supplier and it’s relevance is not dependent on the approval of art critics.

I’ve had other unplanned photographic opportunities to capture art in my everyday life. Below are some additional examples.

Laura Di Piazza, Look Ma the Sky on Our Table, 2011, digital photograph

One cold winter morning I had the rare occasion of having lunch at a local Vermont café with just one of my children (usually we travel in packs), my then four-year old daughter Lucy. Lucy presented me with an opportunity to really look with my mind and eyes open. She said “mommy, look the sky on our table” and I replied ‘huh?’. Again she repeated herself. I paused, I recall being confused. How can one have the sky on a table? Then I looked at what her small little finger was pointing to and then I understood. This was a lovely moment, a Seussical moment (coincidentally just 2 doors down from where Theodor Seuss Geisel, AKA Dr. Seuss, lived for several years), where art appears in a nonsensical and unexpected manner.

Laura Di Piazza, Shin, 2011, digital photograph

I took a walk on a bitter cold winter’s morning. The clear blue skies and bright sunshine gave this tree’s shadow crisp clear lines. I photographed it as I did several other trees that morning. Later after downloading the images on my computer, I noticed that this particular tree possessed the Hebrew letter shin, which is considered a holy letter in Judaism that stands for Shaddai, a name for God.

with illusions so bright

I sometimes think I don’t see them

He enters dreams

As if he were balancing the surf

knowing he really doesn’t know

whether it’s wave or hand

doing the controlling

He slips notes under my feet

And the steps delight and frighten

him into new corners and open fields

when his day or moment

sees it’s fit

for such justice of parody

————————————————————————-

‘Gathering’

She appeared to address the landscape

as if it were socks that needed pulling off

The slow smile and widening eyes

seem to tell me from across

our standing bridge

that she could see fantasy

of touching there

and nowhere there

like the reflection of the silverscreen

upon my eyes

she saw it clearly

and it broke up the slowness of day

and the staleness of the common

- Marsha Norman

I have been to some amazing galleries: smalls ones in quaint New England towns and large scale exhibitions in big cities, however my favorite galleries are the ones I visit in my sleep. I never know beforehand what will be on display. I do know upon waking who the artist and curator is.

Laura Di Piazza, Moving Sandwich, 2011, pencil on paper, 20” x 24”

I first saw “Moving Sandwich” in a dream gallery I visited while sleeping. I was walking slowly through this space and stopped before this drawing and thought “I really like this, it makes sense”. When I awoke I wrote down a description of the drawing. A couple of months later, I created this drawing which is very similar to the original one I saw in my dream. By including dream imagery in my art practice, I enjoy incorporating parts of life that are very much present however difficult to remember and acknowledge. I also feel that this practice of including my dream world into my waking (we certainly include our waking life into our dream world), helps me acknowledge where I go, where we all go, for part of our day. As abstract and foreign as dreams may be, they are an activity we all experience. This thread of our greater connection, through dream experiences, I believe deserves our attention.

Laura Di Piazza, Bunny Says, 2011, spray paint, paper and ink on plastic,

23.5” x 27”

In contrast, my work “Bunny Says” was not seen in a dream, that I am aware of: However, because I feel it has many dream-like qualities to it, it belongs in the collection of my dream-inspired works. For example, the canvas itself is actually a garbage bag, which has symbolic value: I wonder, are our dreams part of a mental or mnemonic recycling system, as some sleep scientists have suggested? Do we need to clear out or sort out old information to make room for new information? These questions are the backdrop of the work. The center of this piece is newspaper print that has been spray-painted on. I sometimes find recalling dreams is similar to this spray-painted newsprint, where the information is all there however I cannot access it – or in this case, read it.

Laura Di Piazza, Past Mt. Rim, 2010, ink, tissue paper and newspaper on coverstock board, 18” x 24”

The artwork pictured left, “Past Mt. Rim”, encompasses all of my artistic practices; calligraphy, poetry, dream exploration and visual art making.

I found that my dream recall improved while taking a class at AVA gallery called Art and the Unconscious. What resulted was a collection of fragments of a dream that inspired “Past Mt. Rim”.  The title alone represents the enormous mountainous surface, one side of which, we live upon during one part of our day, the other side of which we stand upon during the night. It is impossible to be on both sides at the same time. However I have found with lucid dreaming that I can reside at the summit, which joins the two briefly. In the deep states of art-making, where awareness of time is absent, I also find that I enter a similar state that welcomes me to stand in this kind of dual space.

My dream treasures gathered during this class also included the following artwork “Scanning Inner Child” (below) which I saw in a dream and brought to (daytime) life later that spring. I find that the overall dream impression is usually determined by the predominate feeling(s) the dream encompass rather than (only) by the actions that were played out therein. The dream that inspired “Scanning Inner Child” contained strong emotions to hunt and gather my abandoned wounds, the unhealed cuts and bruises of my psyche. To go back to my internal forest, however deep the dark felt or primal the noises sounded, to retrieve, acknowledge, mend and sow, as I would flower seeds, my discarded pain.

Laura Di Piazza, Scanning Inner Child, 2010, paper and ink on doll, approx. 5 lbs – 7 oz.

(from the ‘Add Before You Judge’ series)

In creating Cards, I made a conscious decision not to use a polished and uniform calligraphic hand. I wanted to express through the letterforms and over all layout the essence of this man’s words, his story, that which is not pretty and tidy. I chose for certain words –“cards”, “attacks”, “freezing”, “destroys”, “place”, “seem” and “my own”– to appear differently, in this case thinner and possibly more fragile than the other words but also of more meaningful semantic weight and substance.

Cards, is but a small window into the life of a man with many hardships. I cried when I first heard this man’s story on a local radio spot in support of the Upper Valley Haven (UVH). I was especially surprised to hear towards the end that he was just a young man of twenty-six. UVH houses and provides living staples and educational programs to individuals and families who are between homes.