Accessible Children's Park in Schio

I had heard about the construction of an accessible children's park in our city Schio. I like going around on my bicycle and I had tried looking for that park a few times, but had not managed to locate it. Finally, yesterday during an evening walk with my wife, we found it.

This post is about this new park of Schio (VI, Italy), which is accessible to both adults and children with disabilities. It is a park for all, no one is excluded.

Right to Play

Article 31 of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), states that all children have a right to leisure, play, and participation in cultural and artistic activities. Irrespective of country, culture, religion, and social status, all children have always played from prehistoric times. You just need to look at baby animals to understand the importance of play in their growth and well-being. Yet, few persons think about children with disabilities and their right to play. Accessible playing grounds and parks are needed so that they can be children like all the others.

Lack of play opportunities and social interaction with other children hampers the proper development of children with disabilities.

Even adults with disabilities need accessible playgrounds for their children, so that they can accompany their children and play with them like all other parents.

An Accessible Park and Playground

An accessible park and playground does not have stairs or narrow gates at the entrance. If it has stairs, it also has a ramp for the wheel chairs. Inside the park, there are suitable paths for wheel-chairs and crutches and persons with mobility problems. For the blind and low vision persons, the paths are well-marked and easy to see. At the path crossings, to help the blind persons, there are suitable surface marking which they can feel with their walking canes. Where necessary, even inside the park the stairs may be accompanied with ramps. They should have clear sign boards with both icons and texts to explain each play-structure. For blind persons recorded audio messages can also provide information.

Accessible park does not mean that every play-structure will be accessible to all the children with disabilities. There can be specific play-structures for specific groups of children with disabilities, such as the swings for children on wheel-chairs. For the use of some or most play structures, help may be needed from adults or other children, as it happens for children without disabilities. Different age groups of children may also need adult supervision.

Accessible Park in Schio

The park is located in Magre part of Schio, on Via Pio X, next to Banca Alto Vicentino. The park has been partially completed with rides and play structures, while they still need to build the Baskin court (for playing modified basketball, which can be played together by all children including those on wheel chairs or with other disabilities - it was invented in the Italian city of Cremona in 2003). It is supposed to be the biggest accessible parks in the Veneto region.

The park has a ramp for reaching the top of a slide, and each ride/play structure is marked in vivid colours. Each area is made of some soft material which acts like a cushion if you fall down. Some of the rides look strange, not usually seen in play grounds. Many of them have a futuristic look. The next time my grand daughter will come to visit me, I am planning to go back to this park and explore all these rides with her.

The park is not very well known, probably because it is not complete yet and there are no public sign boards to guide people to this place. It would be great if this park can be connected by a bicycle track or a passage to the larger park and cycle track on the other side of Alto Vicentino bank (along Via Campo Sportivo), because then more children can reach here without needing some adult to bring them here on a car.

Conclusions

I think that the idea of making an accessible park is great. City municiple government and Alto Vicentino Bank along with other partners deserve our congratulations for thinking of it.

This visit brought back a memory from Guyana (S. America) of many years ago. I had met two boys, 8-12 years old, both had a genetic muscular dystrophy, which was gradually becoming worse. The older boy was already on a wheel-chair, though he could still manage to climb stairs with difficulty. While I was talking to their grandmother, both the boys had found a slide and immediately climbed up to slide down and play (in the image below). There was no treatment for their condition and both boys were destined to get progressively worse. I remember the desperation of their grandmother and their joy in playing.

When we were visiting the accessible park of Schio, there was a man on a wheel chair with his family while a child on a wheel chair was playing on one of the rides. To see them in the park was the proof that all cities need such places, because we all have persons and children who can't enter playgrounds - they are waiting to come out of their homes and play with others.

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#accessibleparks #accessibleplayareas #accessiblesports #schio #italy

Papermade & the paper art (2)

Papermade is a biannual art exhibition held in Schio in the north-east of Italy around Christmas. As its name suggests, it focuses on paper art. The last Papermade exhibition was held in December 2017. In this post I present some of my favourite works from this exhibition, starting with the installation that I liked the most.

The above image shows details of a sculpture called "In your arms" by the Italian artist Marco Laganà. It was made by using papier-mache on a wooden structure, showing a soft whitish-bluish tree with a black bird. It was the art work that I liked the most in this exhibition because it gave me a surreal and dreamy feeling. I also loved the texture of branches and the bird. In fact, I think that in appreciating the paper art, texture of the paper plays a crucial role.

Let me now present some other works that I liked in this exhibition.

A sacred geometry by Karen Oremus (Canada/UAE)

Karen had created this work by cutting shapes in the paper with a laser and then stacking those papers over one another. This led to the creation of two kinds of towers - a downward going gentle tower/well that reminded me of the geological configuration of the Echo point near Munnar in Kerala, India. The other was a tower rising up in the air.

Scattered words in Arabic and English on the two sculptures made me think of the mythical Tower of Babel.

Domestic intimacy by Alexio Minini (Italy)

Alexio used paper and the origami to create a dancing old couple. The paper folds were very effective in creating wrinkles and screwed-up eyes on the faces of the dancers. (Click on the image for a bigger view)

This sculpture reminded me of very similar paper sculptures that I had seen in the central square of Mexico city in the early 1990s. I had even bought one of those sculptures as a gift for a friend. I wonder if something similar has inspired Minini's work.

At home by Maurizio Corradin (Italy)

Maurizio, an art therapist, had made a huge installation of a dome using paper, plastic, coloured LED lights and painting. The image of this work that you will find below shows the close-up of one of the sculptures near the bottom of the structure so that you can appreciate the kind of work that had gone in creating it.

The tiny figure seems to be made of metal wearing a helmet along with a red shoe in the left foot. It has wings of paper while white flowers adorn its head. It also has a wood stick with its tip painted black representing an erect phallus, giving the idea of a tribal fertility god.

Overall, I found the installation to be a little gimmicky for my taste and it did not evoke an emotional response in me. However, I did appreciate some of the details of this work.

House of my mind by Daniela Camuncoli (Italy)

Daniela is known for her paper collage work. She had made a wonderful collage of a young woman with earnest blue eyes that I loved for its colours, form and textures. I thought that it was unpretentious, clean and direct. It also had a charm in it that made me stand there and look at it for a very long time.

Apart from David Laganà's papier mache installation mentioned above, this was the art work that I liked most in this exhibition.

Some other Paper art installations

In the first part of this post presenting some works from a previous Papermade exhibition, I had explained that I am not fond of use of computers to create art - I feel that it is a kind of cheating. However, I also agree that my attitude towards digital art is a bit irrational - digital art is probably the future of art and artists need to have the freedom to use the medium they like for their art-expression.

Here are some other installations from the Papermade exhibition, which were good but at the same time, were based on a more traditional use of paper.

The first of these was a work called "Over confidence" by the Italian artist Alberto Balletti. It had been produced by an ink-jet etching. It showed a nude couple, probably in their fifties or sixties, who seem to be lying close to each other and yet distant, lost in thoughts with a kind of defeated look on their faces. I am not sure why the artist has named it "over confidence". Can anyone explain?

The second was called "Cartographies of the soul" and was by the Argentinian artist Alicia Candiani. It had a row of papers, each with blocks of orange and white colours with some superimposed images like the arm and the hand shown in the image below.

The third was called "Through the glass" by the Italian artist Simone del Pizzol. It had prints of an ink etching hanging in a row in a room, each showing some variation around a figure seen across a glass.

The fourth and the last art work of this group that I liked was called "Acathexis" and was by the Israeli artist Orit Hofshi. In this, the artist had used xylography (wood block printing), showing figures made in black ink against a red background. The image below presents some details from this work.

Acathexis is a psychoanalytical term used for persons who are unable to feel and show emotional responses. I think that probably this work showed Israeli persons who have been desensitised by the long on-going war with the Palestinians.

Conclusions

I like Papermade art when artists use paper as a building material through papier-mache, collage, assemblage, origami or paper-cutting, and not just use it to print or paint something. In the last Papermade exhibition, there were not so many examples of such use of paper to create art. Most of the works had used paper to print or paint. Thus, I was a little disappointed. However, I loved two works - House of my mind and In your arms.

If you had missed part 1 of this post about a previous Papermade exhibition, you can also check it.

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Papermade & the paper art (1)

Since 2013, around Christmas every two years, Schio in the north-east of Italy holds an art exhibition called Papermade, focusing on paper-art. This first part of my blog-post presents some of my favourite exhibits from the Papermade exhibition held in December 2013. The second part of this post will look at exhibits from the event held in December 2017.

The above image presents Paper Women with  papier-mache white shoes shown against a red backdrop. It was one of my favourite installations from that exhibition. It was a work of Taiwanese artist Li Chen.

Let me also explain why I liked Chen's shoes! I think that appreciating art is about emotions provoked by the art. It reminded me of a Bollywood song from the 1964 film "April Fool"- "Mera naam Rita Cristina, ai-yai-ya, mein of Paris ki haseena, ai-yai-ya". You can watch this song on Youtube and try to guess why this work of art reminded me of that song!

Use of paper in art

Paper-making was invented in China around 2000 years ago. It came to Europe in the 12th century.

The tradition of Papier-mache, combining sheets of paper and molding them to create sculptural forms, also goes back to early China. It was adopted in France in the 17th century, who gave it its name by which this technique is widely known today.

Cutting paper for artistic expression was also invented in China in the 4th century. Folding papers to create paper-sculptures called Origami developed in the Edo period of Japan in the 17th century. Collage and Assemblage created by gluing together different materials on paper to create art are credited to early 20th century France.

Thus, using paper in different ways as a medium of artistic expression is not new. The Papermade exhibition of Schio brought together some examples of these practices.

Here are some of the art installations that I liked from Papermade 2013.

Secret Heart by Marina Bancroft (Canada)

This installation had a book whose pages had been cut in different ways, creating layers of paper-strips with scattered and incomplete words, growing in different directions. At some places, the paper strips were weaved like baskets, at others they were free floating.

Forgotten words by Terhi Hursti (Finland)

This installation also had books in Coptic calligraphic language, bound together along with forms in fluffy white cotton. The yellowed and blackened margins of the books, which were deformed as if they had been out in the rain, gave me an idea of passage of time and experiences of life.

The fading inks of the calligraphy made me think of all the languages, stories and cultures that are disappearing and dying, as young people think that English language and Western cultural values express superiority, modernity and progress while indigenous cultures and values are reduced to becoming museum pieces.

Paper Mache Tank by Marco Ferrari (Italy)

This installation used a wooden structure on which plastic containers in different forms and colours were recreated with paper-mache. It reminded me of some of my journeys in Africa, where in the rural areas, it is not easy to find petrol pumps and where people, especially women, sit along the roadsides selling petrol in colourful plastic containers.

It also made me think of the tons of plastic bags and bottles that are littering our lands, ponds, rivers and oceans, creating a vast new continent of garbage.

The second moon by Fernando Masone (Italy)

The installation had a central rod covered with paper that carried a three-tiered cut-paper flower at the top. I am not sure about the symbolism of the two cups holding the round moon of cut paper, but I liked its simple lines and symmetry. The textures of handmade paper were also very prominent in this work.

Vertigo by Margherita Levo Rosemberg (Italy)

This installation had rolled up papers from newspapers and magazines, stitched together in different layers along circular wire frames that brought a mild sense of vertigo as I looked at them. It was one of the most physical installation in the exhibition. The artist Rosemberg is a psychiatrist and she adds different layers of meanings to her works, both physical and psychological.

Design For Living & Lost Letters by Peter Ford (UK)

Let me conclude this post with the work of another artist that I liked very much.

The British artist had two installations and I liked both of them. Design for Living had designs made by raised-up relief on handmade paper. It had geometric forms laid out in grids, mixed with islands of people. It made me think of a map for blind and low-vision persons and I liked its gentle colours.

Lost Letters had wood-block prints in rectangular blocks that reminded me of ponds where they grow fish and prawns. Round bumps of coloured papers rising up in those ponds were like some little islands. Words like memories and forgetting floated in those ponds.

Conclusions

I liked the idea behind the Papermade exhibition. However, many of the exhibits were paintings or printed things on paper, and I did not find their ideas very stimulating or innovative. I must also confess that I am not enthusiastic about digital art - I feel that it is a kind of artistic cheating if we use computers to create art. I am sure that many of you would not agree with me on this point!

Most art exhibitions of Schio are held at the historic building of Palazzo Fogazzaro in the city centre and are free. If you are visiting Schio, do take a look at Palazzo Fogazzaro to check its on-going exhibitions.

In the second part of this post, I will talk about installations from the more recent Papermade exhibition held in December 2017.

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The wonderful world of Steam-Punk

Steam-Punk is a fashion, literature and art movement inspired from the innovations in the 18th century which led to the industrial revolution. Recently I saw some steam-punk enthusiasts dressed in their costumes.

It was my introduction to the steam-punk movement - I had never heard of them before. All the images in this post are of the persons from the Italian "Steam-Punk Nord-est" association.

Costumes and make-believe worlds

People have always loved dressing up in costumes, for example, in the Venice carnival.

The Punk style with striking costumes and colourful spiked hair styles made their appearance in the 1970s. In the 1990s, imaginary worlds of science fiction and fantasy, led to different movements like cyber-punk and diesel-punk. For example, during the 1990s, while living in Bologna (Italy), I came across groups of young persons, living as homeless urban vagabonds, with long matted hair and dogs. They were known as Punkabestia (beast-punk). The Steam-Punk movement also started in those years.

In more recent years, role-play games and fantasy worlds have become popular and are called Cosplay. I love the colourful Cosplay costumes.

Steam-Punk Philosophy

Steam-Punk ideas were influenced by writers like Jules Verne and H. G. Wells. Scientific advances made in the 18th century such as the steam-ship and steam-engines play an important role in Steam-Punk.

The term "steam-punk" originated in the late 1980s as a variant of "cyber-punk". Science-fiction writers of Steam-Punk, imagined alternative worlds based on coal and steam power. For example, American writer Paul di Filippo wrote a trilogy of steam-punk novellas in 1995.

Steam Punk is a retro-futurism - a retro (old) technology imagined as a future. It can mix digital technology with handmade art. For example, look at the amazing old rusty-looking digital camera used by the Steam-Punk enthusiast in the image below.

Steam-Punk Costumes

The steam-punk brings together modern costumes and some elements from Victorian era such as corsets, gowns and petticoats for the women, and waistcoats, long coats, top hats and bowler hats for the men.

The costumes are accompanied by accessories such as old airplane goggles, parasols, stylish guns and sling bows.

Many well known fashion brands such as Prada, Versace and Dior have come up with clothes inspired by Steam-Punk. However, the real steam-punk enthusiasts invest a lot of resources and personal imagination in creating their costumes. For example, check the beautifully made complex hats worn by the two persons in the image below!

Steam-Punk Nord-Est Association

The Steam Punk association of the north-east of Italy, whose members are featured in this post, came to Schio, where I live, during a recent cultural festival called the British Day. Among the group, they even had a look-alike queen Victoria (in the image below).

The members of this association design and wear steam-punk costumes and show them off during the different cultural festivals in the region. They also organise symposiums to present their "steam-punk" inventions and creativity.

Conclusions

As our societies become more developed and as we have more free time, I think that movements like steam-punk will become even more common. They are a way of having fun. They are also a way of organising smaller communities around a common-interest, to escape from the anonymity of the modern urban life.

For me, it was an opportunity to learn about their striking and colourful world. That day, my favourite costume was a photographer with an ancient looking camera (in the image below) though I am not sure if it worked!.

Using your fantasy, if you could create an imaginary world based in your own cultural ethos and history, what kind of worlds would you like to imagine?

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Mario Converio and his iron sculptures

Italian sculptor Mario Converio is known for his sculptures in wrought iron. Though iron has been known to humanity at least for a few thousand years, its use for creating sculptures is not very common as it is difficult to work with. Mario manages to creates poetry with the metal.

Recently an exhibition of his works, "Metal Fantasies" was organised in Schio (VI, Italy), where I had an opportunity to talk to Mario. This post presents the artist Mario Converio and some of his sculptures from this exhibition.

Mario Converio

Mario lost both his parents early - his mother died when he was 2 and his father, when he was 12. His artistic journey started when he was 14 and decided to make a sculpture of his father (in the image below, Mario Converio with the bust of his father).

Mario did not attend any art academy. He was interested in art and started learning it by himself, experimenting with different materials and techniques, starting with clay and stone. He visited different parts of Europe and was inspired by ice-sculptures, after which for a period he worked with ice and glass, and participated in many international art events. One of his first metal sculptures was that of a female-butt made from a grass-cutter. Since then he likes to experiment with butts and this has brought him fame.

In 1976 he was one of the founders of artists' group of Schio. The group organises street events in which he demonstrates his wrought iron sculpting skills. They had also started some art courses.

Over the past decade he has participated in different events about wrought-iron sculptures in Italy and in different parts of Europe. He has won awards in some of them. He feels that this has been a great learning opportunity for him to see the techniques others were using and sharing his own experiences. Apart from iron, he sometimes also uses bronze and stones in his works.

He told me, "Making art is a process of trial and error. Some times, it works and I am happy with my creation. Other times, I feel that it was a mistake and it did not come out as I had imagined it."

Working with iron is hard and tiring work. Mario said, "I am 73 years old and I start to feel that I can't go on doing it for very long. It requires strength and energy of a younger person. When I was younger, I didn't use proper protections like using gloves to protect from vibrations, so that has created some complications for me."

About the sculptures in the exhibition, Mario explained that some of them were things that he had made many years ago, while others are more recent. Making of these sculptures requires time. The simple ones can be completed in a couple of weeks while big sculptures, require months of work.

Creating sculptures in wrought iron

To create the sculptures, the artist needs to choose the iron sheets which then have to be forged at high temperature. While a sheet is red hot, its shape can be molded. The iron cools quickly and thus time for shaping it for creating sculptures is short.

Mario first creates a model of his sculpture in clay, which is much easier to work with. This allows him to think of the shape he wants to create in iron and plan the process.

Though iron is a difficult metal to work with for an artist, Mario's long experience and ability makes him bring out a kind of dynamism in his sculptures, making them come alive. Beaten iron can assume different hues, from a cold bluish grey to a warm burnt sienna. These chromatic variations add to the beauty of his work.

Apart from working with sheet metal, Mario has also experimented with perforated metal sheets for creating his sculptures. Creating a sculpture with such nets, requires additional care as it needs to be shaped delicately. Some of his most suggestive works have been created in this way.

Now, let me briefly present some of his works from his "Metal Fantasies" exhibition.

Nature sculptures

Mario likes to sculpt animals and birds, with an occasional flower or a plant. Among his animal sculptures, I especially liked animals frozen in action. Among these, my favourite was a running dog, its whole body lifted in air with only a paw touching the ground. I loved this dog's expression and I could almost see its saliva drooling down its mouth.

Female form

Mario's sculptures of the rounded female buttocks are famous. He had a large number of them in the exhibition. I liked the ones where the metal's shape suggested the roundness and the female form, rather than the more explicit ones showing genitals.

My favourite among his female butt-sculptures was the one shown in the image below, made from a perforated thick iron sheet. Compared to the legs that are lateral, the upper part of the body is turned forward at an impossible angle.

Another of his sculpture, which is well known, had a nude woman wrapped around an old TV set.

Among his full body female nude sculptures my favourites were those where the body was shown frozen-in-action, like the girl doing acrobatics with a ribbon in the image below. Like the frozen-in-action animals, in all these sculptures, only small parts of the bodies were anchored to the base while most of the sculptures were in the air.

Male form

There were occasional sculptures of male nudes, buttocks and genitals among his work but they were not a prominent part of his work. Among these, my favourite was one in the image below, of a guy with a six-pack abdomen and once again, frozen-in-action body.

Conclusions

I loved Mario Converio's sculptures. I liked the way he combines abstract unformed metal, as if being torn away from its roots, and how it gently transforms into a shape, hinting at something instead of being explicit. I also liked his ability to freeze a moment in time in the metal, catching the dynamicity of an action-charged moment. They are full of drama and emotions, something which you do not expect to be so strong in a metal sculpture.

To conclude, below you will find the thumbnails of some other sculptures by Mario - click on them for a larger view. Do tell me which of Marios's sculptures presented in this post did you like the most and why!

Note: Some of the images of his sculptures presented with this post, have been modified with photo-effects and are therefore, different from how those works actually appear.

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Meet the artist and sculptor: Corrado Meneguzzo

Some months ago I visited the house of an Italian artist and sculptor called Corrado Meneguzzo. It was an opportunity to look at some of his works and to talk to him about his art.

The above image shows one of Corrado's art installations. The art does not arise in a vacuum, it is molded and guided by the life-experiences and living-contexts of the artists. I love visiting artists in their homes and to listen to them talk about their works.

Visit to Corrado Meneguzzo

Corrado lives and works at the top of a hill in a relatively isolated area of a small alpine commune called Priabona, a few km from Schio in the north-east of Italy, where I live. The visit to Corrado was organised by a friend, Roberto, for a local cultural group. We were a group of about 15 persons. (In the image below, Corrado, wearing blue jeans and blue shirt, is in the centre)

When we reached his home, Corrado was waiting for us with an illustrator friend, Luca.  From his isolated and drenched-in-silence home-studio on the top of a verdant hill, we could see the houses and the church in the tiny commune of Priabona far below us. Except for an old abandoned church with a bell tower, there were no other buildings or people living nearby.

Corrado explained that archaeological objects from the neolithic and from the Lombard invasion periods (6-7th century CE) have been found in the area around his house. He said that this idea of living in area which is on a continuum of ancient human settlements for thousands of years, is very important to his sense of being an artist.

Corrado's artistic background

He explained, "I grew in a house in the valley below with my grandfather who used to make wooden objects. My step-father used to decorate churches. My uncle Giobatta brought artists to our town and I had been visiting his museum ever since I was young. All this sparked my interest in art. When I was seventeen, I took part in a collective exhibition in the Casabianca museum. I did a diploma in architecture focusing on old painting techniques. But studying art was more of a personal endeavor."

One of his first works as a sculptor-artist was to find and renovate an old house on the top of the hill, that was a crumbling ruin, and make his studio-home in it. He says that he did almost all the renovation by himself, one step at a time (Corrado's home in the image below).

Just outside his house there are displayed different old art installations including a few wooden sculptures and some chairs made of different materials including old truck tyres, mostly from 2005-06.

Corrado explained that in the 1990s he used to work more with stones. Then he shifted to cement. Around 2006-07 he did a lot of work with old tyres. Now he likes to work with wood. In between he also does paintings. He feels that each material has its own voice and it tells him what it wishes to communicate.

He took us to a short visit to some of his installations spread out in the open areas and grassy slopes around his house.

The Confessional

Corrado's home is located behind an old abandoned church with a bell-tower on a hillock rising behind it. From the hillock, you can look down on the other side of the hill in the valley below towards Malo and the road going towards Vicenza 25 km away.

He started the visit to his works by taking us up the hillock, behind the bell-tower. This brought us to an art installation called "the Confessional". Built in wood and painted in black, the confessional looks more like a pulpit. Personally, its design made me think of a guillotine where they could behead persons.

Corrado explained that as a child, his mother took him regularly to the Catholic church. He was a three years old child and was supposed to confess his sins to the priest. Since he was tiny, sitting at the confessional he could only see the legs of the priest sitting inside.

He didn't seem to have pleasant memories of those visits and through this installation made in 2011, evoked the feelings of dread and sadness that the confessionals represented for him. His religion related experiences seemed to play an important influence on his art.

Feeding trough for birds

It is an installation made from an old feeding trough that was used in the past for giving hay to the cows. Corrado had turned it in a standing position and then fixed a small red cup to the top, which holds water for the birds. It was an installation on the transformation of objects, that he had made some 10-11 years ago.

Suitcases

The concrete moulds of the old suitcases were made for a project called "Interpreting America" in 2011. These represented the emigrants who used to leave Europe with with their belongings closed in old suitcases, leaving their homes to search for a new and better life somewhere else. Today, the emigrants from Africa and from the different wars, are a new version of the age-old search for security and well-being.

The cement moulds of the suitcases were brought back to Corrado's home after the end of the exhibition, and were left out in the garden. With time, moss and grass has grown in those molds, giving an idea of decay and at the same time, bringing them to life.

The Womb Window

For me, this installation of a vaginal opening made in dark concrete and fitted with a red grill was the most provocative sculpture of Corrado. When I saw it, I thought that it symbolised the violence against the women and the horrible practice of female genital mutilation, still common in some communities/countries especially in Africa and Middle east. It is also prevalent among the Bohra community in India.

However, Corrado gave a completely different interpretation of this work. He said that it represented his mother. The red grill was supposed to be his window, behind which he used to stand as a child and look out at the world from the safety and the security of his mother's protection.

The Angel Chairs

Over the past couple of years, Corrado has been sculpting chairs, especially the "angel chairs" or the chairs with wings. He has been experimenting with different kinds of materials and techniques for making these chairs.

One of the chairs that he was working on, was placed in the veranda of his studio. It was huge and made with rough wood. It was shaped like a broken angel, a kind of Milo's Venus transformed into a chair. I really loved this sculpture.

Inside the studio, there were different chairs in wood, lacquered with a shining red paint, that he was completing for an exhibition to be held in Los Angles. He explained that making of each of these chairs took around 400 hours of work. These are part of his "Seat Art" project.

There was many other chair-sculptures in his studio including a more traditional looking wooden chair painted in red and with the sign of cross on its back, with a rosary wrapped on its back; and another made with wood and an old tyre.

Paintings

The studio also had different paintings by Corrado. One of his old paintings had a woman dressed in black standing near a lake.

A lot of his paintings were about female genitals dripping blood. This brought back to my mind our discussion in his garden about the sculpture of the vagina with the red grill. Though he had explained that sculpture in more happy terms, I think that his art represents some unresolved issues with women and sexuality.

Another of his paintings was a nude self-portrait (click on the image below for a larger view).

Conclusions

If I had seen any one of his art works displayed in an art gallery or in a museum, it would have given me a certain idea about Corrado as an artist and as a person. Looking at his home and at the different works he has done over the past 20 years and listening to him talk about them, gave me a different kind of understanding about his art.

Of all his artistic works, the one which I would like to own, if I had sufficient space to display it properly, would be the "Broken angel" chair. I think that this choice represents my own preference for romantic and good-looking art. In terms of emotional impact, I think that my vote will go to the "Womb Window" or the "Suitcases", though I wouldn't like to own them, as I found them disturbing.

I had asked Corrado, which of his art works was the one that he felt closest to his heart. He had answered that probably it was the Confessional or perhaps the painting of the woman in black.

If you could choose only one of his art works, which one would you choose and why?

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