Packing up the Packs of She-Wolves
By Anna Bottinelli
After ten years in Rome Kristin
Jones is heading home. The artist, best known for the She Wolf images etched on
the banks of the Tiber River and the city’s torches, is leaving the Eternal
City and heading back to the Big Apple.
“I have given everything I
could. I worked hard night and day for eight years hoping to find the right
team of collaborators who could make the project into a project of, by and for
the City of Rome itself,” she said. “We have succeeded in making miracles on
the Tiber. I have to trust that the seed that I have planted in Rome may one
day take root and grow.”
After earning a master’s in
fine arts from the Yale School of Art and Design, Jones was awarded a Fulbright
Scholarship and arrived in Rome in 1983. Dr. Vincent Scully, a professor of Architectural History,
suggested that Rome was the right place for Jones’ combined interests in public
space and art.
Jones had a vision. She wanted
to create a site where the beauty of water and Rome’s historical past could
blend with the creativity of a new generation of contemporary artists. Thus,
the idea of “Piazza Tevere” appeared “where the river questions the relationships
between us and nature,” she said.
The Tevere “offered a
readymade gallery for grand-scale projects,” she said. While passion and
creativity were Jones’ driving forces, she had to deal with one serious problem:
the glory of Rome’s past impedes on
the recognition of contemporary artists.
In 2001, Jones returned to
Rome on a Senior Fulbright Fellowship and immediately turned her attention to
the TEVERETERNO project. In 2005
the first of several events was launched. Twelve documented images of the She
Wolf – the same number as Rome’s years – were lit. A choir of 100 voices
completed the setting as, “all arts are powerful means of communication beyond
language.”
Later in 2006, a second event called
“Ombre dal Lupercale” entertained over 10,000 people on a summer night. Again,
She Wolves, lights and music occupied the water-stage from sunset to dawn.
Every year since TEVERETERNO,
Jones has organized events to merge art with nature. In 2008 it partnered with
the River to River Festival in New York, projecting animations of the She Wolf
on Castle Clinton, South Street Seaport and South Cove in Battery Park City.
This year TEVERETERNO has organized TRILOGIA: an exhibition at the Capitoline Museums.
Jones managed to defeat the deified Roman past by reviving the river in a modern
way,
.
Comments