Rome Studio
When sculpture reflects the materiality of your surroundings
I was writing this yesterday morning when the news came through that Alex Pretti was murdered by ICE here in Minneapolis. Today I participated in Emergency ICE Watch Training and Community Action Call via zoom, and I would encourage you to do the same so that you are informed when this happens in your city or if it’s happening already and you need tools to understand how to react and what your role can be. The courage and discipline that I see everywhere by citizens who refuse to look away is giving me hope. Nonviolence is doing things with courage, clarity, discipline, with safety in mind. Nonviolence is strategy, and Minneapolis is showing the world what that looks like. We are here, we are watching, we are staying human, and we are staying together and we remain loving. If you want to donate, Stand with Minnesota is doing great work. Everyone can do something. Everyone SHOULD do something.
A reminder I am having an ARCHIVE SALE beginning at 2pm central time on Monday the 26th. A portion of sales will be donated to mutual aid efforts. Thanks.
The transition from Rome to Minneapolis was a jolt to say the least. When you arrive to a state of emergency in the dead of winter, and you have young kids, reflecting on the last 4 months in Italy isn’t really a priority. At least right away. However, one recent cold evening, Adam and I were huddled together in the dark, post-sauna, looking at our Rome pictures, listening to Dear Old Stockholm, a perfect night. It finally sank in and I felt a sweeping bodily sensation of missing Rome, my city for a while. All of my memories were permitted to flood me. There are so many layers, moments, places and people that I will forever carry with me. Going back over all of my images, I really wanted to give a minute to think about that time and the work I made, and check back in with it, to see how it made me feel.
But quickly, some things that I miss deeply are being able to take a break in my beautiful, light-filled studio, eat an orange and look up at the skylight, then at books, go for a walk. I miss seeing the same faces and the dogs in my neighborhood, Monte Verde, and my family of fellows at the Academy, (whom Aliza, the director, said, “were a particularly tight-knit group”). I miss getting just a little bit lost, but eventually getting to know the city pretty well. I miss pizza rosso from my neighborhood forno, amaro, suppli, nasoni, the sampietrini, and all of the little surprises an Eternal City has in store for you. So many surprises.
Looking over my pictures, I can feel what I felt when I was there: La Città Eterna is a big mess of materiality everywhere. There are never ending layers, fragments, aggressively filled cracks, relics embedded in walls in ways that made sense to someone once. The old with the new, very common in Europe. Decay of a place with preservation driving the politics of the living. But amidst the ruins and testament of life and civilizations through the ages, there are still many unanswered questions. I for one did not know how much of a mystery the Romans were until I lived here. I hung out with Roman archaeologists and historians all of the time and there was a lot of “we still don’t know why”, when it came to the Romans. I guess i was kind of shocked at their acceptance of this. We visited mithraeum, necropoli, villas, coliseums, duomo, ancient shrines and temples; deep in the earth places where ritual and sacrifice certainly took place, but the activity that took place and the reasons why were unclear. Yes, clearly the God of Wine and Revelry is depicted, and that was likely a bathtub there, so surely there was some debauchery, but we’re not sure why… really, or even what they were up to down here (in the mithraeum), was a typical conversation.
I’d love seeing a column embedded in a building, three feet above the ground, steps leading to nowhere, a collage of materials that made up a repair, an improvement. Rome is a mess of stories and detritus. Atop the jumbled mantle of it all is a thin crust, a less permanent and more colorful trace of contemporary humans lodged in the capitalist grind: flashing neon lights, litter, graffiti. Thousands of years of human activity memorialized in hard materials, with bits of cigarette butts, umbrella parts, plastic bottles on top. It was like living in an ongoing sculpture, being sculptured.
Four months isn’t long to land somewhere, start from scratch, and make new work. But I made the most of it and by the end was “experienced-out”, four months was enough in the end. I was ready to decompress for real and get back to the small and contained-ness of my life at home. A Rome day may look like: seeing the kids off to school at the bus stop, stretching, walking to the center en route to a museum, event, or whatever, heading to the studio for an hour or two, always a coffee with Gabri at the bar, maybe something different? let’s be spontaneous; let’s go walk around villa Borghese, holy shit that’s the Ara Pacis, whoa that’s the Column of Trajan just right there in front of me, wait, what is THAT… many days like this. There were also a lot of side trips— Bologna, Naples and Santa Maria Capua Vetere were favorites. Rome made me want to make art and experiment with materials. Tracey Emin will tell you that art is not a vocation, it’s barely a choice. That resonates and I am thankful I am driven to push my questions, emotions, and frustrations through materials. I show up to the Academy with no plan, barely any materials. Feels brave, feels needed.
The whole process of sourcing materials when you are feeling out your new surroundings is an adventure, it guides you. Sourcing plaster is a much different experience here. Many new choices in clay bodies. I have no choice in the firing process, I’m fine with that. Some of the English translations in the ceramics studio that I visit are British English, it’s confusing. I collected wire, tubes and other bits along my walks and brought them to the studio to add to the ongoing ensemble of collage I was working through.
In Rome I had a favorite corner. I put an image of it on a piece of paper and it became one of my favorite works. Certainly the classical sculpture had an impression on me. I am always looking at gesture and composition of bodies, especially the worn and disrupted ones. I started thinking about bodies and what they were holding. I made drawings and sculptures of forms that referenced bodies, abstracted. Flags, wood, tangled wire, boxes all became foundational modes and means of expression. I frequently visited my favorite fragment of sculpture— two legs embedded in rock, at the Villa Pamphili. These legs possessed a feeling and movement, certainly no one else cared, but it was something I had to revisit often. When you are around a bunch of other artists, talking and sharing new things is inevitable and special. I started writing poetry again because of David, who started a poetry club and gave us prompts. My writing became adjacent to the work, like it was part of it. Four months is but a blink of an eye; use what you can and be spontaneous. I fell in love with copper tape. I discovered Italian artists Luisa Gardini, Leoncillo Leonardi and Marisa Merz. Giuseppe Cassetti introduced me to the importance of seeing Italian 20th century politics through the lens of Surrealism and Dada. He introduced me to Arte Povera, Diana Rabito and Bas Jan Ader. We had trouble communicating because of the language barrier but when he visited my studio he told me that he saw “visual poetry”, and that will fuel me forever. So many great studio visits with artists and friends whom I adore and respect; Liz Glynn told me about Pyllida Barlow, Henry Taylor told me about Isa Genzken, Andrea Fraser told me about Viennese Actionism, Christine Sun Kim wrote sage words to me on her phone. I devoured old Italian interiors magazines from the Mercatino. I’m still processing all of it. I’ll be back in Rome for the 2026 Open Studios. Thanks for reading and looking.
Please never think of Rome as if it was just a dream. Something that vaguely happened. Grab that time you lived there because it’s yours. It’s already under your skin. And you know, as we say in Spanish: que me quiten lo bailao (No one can take away from me everything i’ve enjoyed). ❤️