Poetry is a Place
Workshop by Alessandro Ferraro
October 3-10, 2023
School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Italian artist and illustrator Alessandro Ferraro will lead an intensive workshop for students of two comic book classes taught by chicago-based artist Cecilia Beaven at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Working with illustration for almost thirty years, for a long time Ferraro has been interested in the relationship between written words and images, particularly in the context of illustration, where the image retains a functional purpose in relation to writing. From the point of view of the artist, words can also represent inspiration, a starting point where images originate and find their freedom, separating from the text to become something new.
With the workshop “Poetry is a Place,” Ferraro brings together two mediums that represent complementary forms of communication: poetry and postcards. Both artistic forms allow us to create images that can potentially connect people and reduce distance. A distance that is not so much physical, as we live in a digital word, but conceptual, cultural and personal. The art created in this workshop has the potential to represent identities that come into contact, and create new connections and dialogues.
Participating students will collectively choose three poems to inspire them, to depict the place that they see through the lines, real or imagined. They will then recreate these spaces on postcards, exploring three different painting techniques.
This program is NOT open to the public. A public exhibition of the artworks produced by students during the workshop will be presented in February 2024 at the Italian Cultural Institute of Chicago.
I was born on February the 9th 1966. I am an artist. I obtained an Illustrator’s Diploma at the European Institute of Design in 1991. As an illustrator I am interested in visual communication, something rather different from what I aim for as a painter, free and even ‘without use’, one might say, except that what interests me most about illustration is definitely the relationship between writing and image. My complete illustrator’s works are on my website at www.alessandroferraro.it and my latest artworks and exhibitions (MAXXI; MAAM, DIF, ARTSINERGY, MACROAsilo and others) on www.nuvolavaga.com. I live and work in Rome.
This program is part of Chi Siamo: (Re)presenting Italian Culture, the theme selected for 2023 by the Italian Cultural Institute of Chicago. This year-long series will explore the topics of representation and inclusion in Italian arts, with a specific focus on cross-cultural contamination in contemporary and modern Italy.