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Carmen Sorrenti: Art from Dreams, Visions, and the Self

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Carmen Sorrenti, creator of the Pholarchos Tarot GS: Your tarot paintings arrest me. I’m drawn into a realm I’ve never seen before. In each picture, the central character and all the vivid, almost burning color leaping from the canvas, stuns me in an awakening way. I have to stare. There’s so much to see and wonder at. Things are going on as if in a magical, fantastical forest—birds, tiny figures, and all kinds of symbols for emotions, everything poised or moving with life. And it’s all of these elements at once, like a mystical concoction, that pull me into their strange and powerful world. Could you describe how you—your own essence—and your later studies in dreams, mythologies, astrology, storytelling, and the human experience alchemize in your creativity? CS: I come from mountains that plunge into the sea. The elements are forceful here and the area is dear to old myths. In some versions, it is where Odysseus had himself tied to his ship’s mast

Davide Muccinelli—A Mesmerizing Lens

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An Interview with Gail Spilsbury Davide Muccinelli was born in: Castel S.Pietro Terme (Bologna) Italy and studied at Faenza ’ s design high school "Gaetano Ballardini." Alongside his successful career in the ceramics industry, Davide has pursued his passion for photography with hypnotizing results. More of Davide ’ s work can be seen on Instagram: instagram.com/muccinellidavide/ GS: Could you say why many of your pictures involve sky disproportionately to any land in the frame? And, your pictures show a fascination with clouds and what they ’re doing. DM: I love sky and all that it represents: poetry and infinity. GS: You have lots of road and night shots that blur lights and create different atmospheres. What interests you in these depictions? DM: I think that behind what we perceive there is much more. I love the contrasts and the normality, the day and the night. GS: Do you digitally alter your photographs? DM: Sure, whe

Lydia Predominato—Meticulous Innovator

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An interview with Gail Spilsbury Lydia Predominato’s career as a fiber artist began in 1976, not long after the fiber art field made its  entrée in the late ’60s. Almost fifty years later, her award-winning, innovative pieces stand among the best work created by Italian fiber artists. Prolific in her ideas and output, Predominato pioneered new directions in the fast-advancing fiber art movement, while at the same time reintroducing the art of weaving to Rome’s fashion design school, L’Accademia Koefia, where she still teaches. Her home studio in Rome’s Garbatella neighborhood showcases the chronology of her artistic explorations. The room also houses a substantial floor loom positioned next to a smaller lever loom —icons to her profession. GS: Lydia, I have many questions to ask you, but seeing the soft, delicate scarf in production on your lever loom, I wonder how you do it all—the weaving, the teaching, the gallery artwork, and al