The Matthew Online

Packing up the Packs of She-Wolves

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,

 

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A Model's view of the 20th Century

By Juliette Laaka

ROME, Nov. 18 - The Museo di Roma in Trastevere is featuring this month an exhibit of photographer Lisette Model’s work –“Lisette Model and her Successors- photographs from 1937-2002,” a collection that spans Model’s fascinating career as well as those of her former students.

Model was once quoted as saying, “I am a passionate lover of the snapshot, because of all the photographic images, it comes closest to the truth… the snap shooter’s pictures have an apparent disorder and imperfection which is exactly their appeal and style.”  Model’s ability to candidly capture humanity represented the essence of individuals from Paris to New York for over sixty years.

Model’s understanding of personal style is what makes her images so powerful and appealing. The photos possess a raw quality that spans the artist’s life, her passion capturing the world around her.  Everyday activities documented through her lens are bestowed new adoration through the romanticism of black-and-white photography.

Art Superlatives: Bello, Bellissimo…Bellini!

By Anna Bottinelli

Two years after the memorable exhibition on Antonello da Messina, the Scuderie del Quirinale has opened its doors to the works of another Renaissance artist, Giovanni Bellini. The Venetian painter, also called “Giambellino,” lived in the second half of the 15^th Century and is regarded as the forerunner to Leonardo da Vinci.

Considered as “the best of all painters” by Albrecht Dürer, the pre-eminent German painter and printmaker best known for his Apocalypse woodcuts, Bellini introduced a more systematic use of oil paint, which was already commonplace in the art of Dürer’s Northern Europe. Bellini is the one who conferred to his paintings soft colours and warm atmospheres, which will later be perfected by Giorgione and Titian. Bellini is the one who gave feelings to a landscape and painted human figures in harmony with nature, and has earned widespread acclaim as Leonardo da Vinci’s precursor.

JCU alum opens Spazio Officina, an art gallery in Rome

By Clara Peters

ROME, March 17 — John Cabot University graduate Jeanne Stavropoulou Rossi opened her new gallery Spazio Officina in Rome's Piazza Bologna last week to a packed house of admirers.

Rossi is passionate about contemporary art and is striving to create a vessel of ideas -- those of her own and of others.

Spazio Officina is located in Piazza Bologna on via della Lega Lombarda 48 in what used to be a factory for construction materials in the 1950’s. The gallery is one large and spacious room, with a simple style leaving the focus on the pieces.

Tracing Back Trastevere: A Multimedia View of the Neighborhood’s History

By Emily Finkelstein

ROME, March 13 – Lining the Piazza S. Egidio, mere cobblestones away from John Cabot University, is the unassuming Museo di Roma in Trastevere, dedicated to the art and culture of the neighborhood, and of greater Rome.

The collection may not compete with those of Palazzo delle Esposizioni, however, the pieces may interest JCU students, especially those residing in Trastevere. The watercolors of 19^th century painter Ettore Roesler Franz  reside in one of the museum’s permanent collections, Landscapes of Memory. His work mainly features scenes of the Tiber River, evoking almost a Venice-like landscape. 

Snapshots of dreams that never come true

By Nadin Aloufi

ROME, March 11 - Earlier this month, Rome's Palazzo delle Esposizioni exhibition of American photographer Gregory Crewdson came to an end, but not before John Cabot University photography students had the opportunity to see his spectacular work.

Crewdson is known for creating pictures filled with the drama and emotion of a Hollywood film. His photos capture images of American suburbia, but include disturbing details. This contradicts the idea of the American dream; the images illustrate reality and the unaccomplished dream.   

"He creates something false that appears real, so real that it appears false again," said William Pettit an art studio professor at John Cabot University.

 

 

An artistic view of Women's Day

 

By Beatriz Fiore

ROME, March 11 – Women artists commemorated the centenary of International Women’s Day last weekend presenting a collection of modern works in Rome's Cortese&Lisanti art gallery.

The exhibition “Donne D’arte.Freedom”, open from March 8-23, offers a range of both solemn and colourful pieces by contemporary women artists.

“It seems, and not only to us, that female artists in general have always been neglected and underestimated,” says gallery owner Massimo Lisanti. “We have chosen a theme which enables us to celebrate these artists in many ways: freedom. The diverse techniques, modes of expression and even the arrangement of the exhibition give the idea of freedom.”

 

Making a success of failure

By Meagan Haessig

ROME, Feb. 14 - Drama and theater serve as a means for providing the abstract and conventional tools for “world making”, author Olga Taxidou told a gathering of students and professors at the Aula Magna auditorium on the John Cabot University campus on Tuesday.

Taxidou, author of "Modernism and Performance," came to JCU to discuss her insights into the modernistic views of theater and the field of modernism itself. 

JCU student art exhibit packs them in

By Christina Tscherteu

ROME Dec. 10 - On Thursday night, a packed Via Mattonato Photo Studio was the scene for  an exhibit of paintings, drawing, and photography produced by John Cabot University students during the semester.

The drawing classes had all their sketch books on display for all to see. For the painting class, there were numerous still life renditions of wine bottles, food, and portraits to look at. As for the photography class, each student had a collection of their favorite photos hanging on the wall.

Some of the onlookers were the artists’ roommates coming to look at what they had been working on all semester. Maureen LaNoce, a JCU student and roommate of Christina Captein, who is in the painting class, came to support her friend. “Christina had been working so hard all semester and we would see her painting in the living room and now we actually get to see her hard work displayed,” said LaNoce.

The professors who teach the art classes were there to support and talk to the students. William Pettit, who teaches painting and photography classes at JCU, said “the art exhibit is a great opportunity for students to share their experiences in Rome through art.”

All of the artists were there as well to answer any questions about their artwork and also to look at what their other peers had been working on all semester.

Dante, Botticelli and Ptolomy converge on Via Veneto

By Coralie Mevs

ROME, Dec. 6 - This month, the Marriott Grand Hotel Flora on Via Veneto hosts an exhibition that offers the possibility to glance at some of the most significant pieces -- or at least, close approximations -- of the Vatican's rich literary collection.

On Wednesday afternoon, an elegant waiter welcomed groups of art lovers into the hotel’s luxurious hall where the exhibition ‘Secrets of the Vatican’ celebrates the anniversary of the five-star hotel. The display provides eight duplications of the most outstanding pieces from the world renowned Vatican Library.