LE AVVENTURE DI PINOCCHIO
I received a grant from the National Surface Design Association to research Renaissance Italian silk velvets and brocades in Florence and Prato, and to use these sources as a starting point for a series of textile panels based on Carlo Collodi’s Pinocchio. The resulting work links and contrasts decorative elements with narrative ones. It also unites the mundane with the magical, the rustic with the refined, and the opulent with the impoverished.
The real, uncensored Pinocchio story is darker, and much more of a cautionary tale, than the toothless version we know in America. Pinocchio has many instances of the real and the magical coexisting, the kind and the cruel, the funny and the frightening. In this series I present favorite slices of the Pinocchio story. These are of special interest to me because of the strong imagery conjured up by the language, and I have depicted, through abstraction, narrative and collage, my versions of the story's characters, settings and events.
