Christine Palamidessi stitches Goddess Nike Mask in her Boston studio "With my needles, I sink down into my material, myths and imprints of flesh, tugging the thread to join what... Continue Reading →
I want inner peace. I want love. I wanted the experience of being a woman in Abaya; I choose to do it for 21 days. I wore the garment as an artistic experience. I am an artist. Here's what i found out....
Abaya can be a fashion garment and some women have 30 or more abayas in their closet. Wafaa explained that women like to show off their new clothes, no matter where they live. But in Saudi Arabia, when you go out of the house, it’s not realistic to think you will have opportunity to show off your new jeans and a blouse--but you can show off your new abaya.
I spent the afternoon in Ivy Leagued Harvard Square--mostly in the Harvard College quadrangle--hoping I might get smarter by osmosis, just by strolling among the elite, the gifted, and the buildings that house extraordinary collections of books, and visiting the Out of Town Newsstand.
Boston Artists Bo Petran and Christine Palamidessi discuss their upcoming show--Wabi-Sabi, Febraury 2019-- and the intent behind the Abaya project.
During the past 16 days many people have asked why I am not covering my hair when I am wearing the abaya and the veil. I thought it might be interesting to bring in an expert: the wonderful and lovely Saudi woman who is mentoring me during the abaya project.
Today I talked to Wililam DeLove, a homeless person. When I told him I was an artist experiencing 21 Days in the Abaya. He said, "I thought you were a nun."
The Indian statue at Sunrise Park on the Mohawk Trail greets the Great Spirit and reminds us: Love. Love. Love. Other people. Your fate. Your obstacles. Love it all. Because it’s the only way.
Beauty is glad to come and go freely at the Corning Museum of Glass in Elmira, New York
Since today is the anniversary of the Saudi Arabia's royal decree allowing the government to issue drivers license to women, and I'm in Watkins Glen (car racing capital) , it is also a good day to pay tribute to a woman’s right to drive her own car; say what she needs to say; stand up for herself and her country.
A busload of Chinese tourists at a Massachusetts rest stop were trying so hard to buy chicken nuggets and hamburgers and I decided to help them out with pictures and sign language.
Not many people know much about Muslim women and their garments. Most of us think it is an ancient way to dress. In fact it is not. The outfit I am wearing, and the full black ‘cage’ is a new fashion in Middle East. Prior to the late 70s, early 80s women were not required to wear the body covering garment. They might wear head covering as simple as a scarf and dressed modestly. The change came when the religious fundamental cleric class made the laws regarding women’s clothing.
During my subway ride, a woman stared at me as if i were an insect. When I got up to leave she followed my movement out with her eyes and even turned around and looked at me through the window as the train pulled away, as if she wanted to be sure I was gone.
Today, at the subway station, had to deal with the logistics of wearing abaya--like how to keep hem clean, how not to get it caught in the elevator steps and how to hold onto the veil when its slip sliding off the head.
Our instincts push us towards the comfortable. And I think that seeking to be comfortable can be dangerous. I am an artist, and a good one. If I stayed in a comfort zone, I might be making a different kind of art, a polite art. That’s not my intention: there are enough people doing nice art. I’d rather provoke thinking rather than feeling.
You just can’t keep a girl away from her tools and her power of observation. It's really hitting home that people don’t pay much attention to what’s going on around them. I suppose this human condition is what criminals, terrorists, and cheaters count on: operating in the realm of other’s unawareness.
When a woman in an Abaya is seen on the street with a man let’s assume everyone figures he is related to her and that the man is Muslim...and if he is Muslim, he is the person who has requested his wife, daughter, sister cover her body in public.
I stated Day 3 feeling a bit like an interloper until two women said "excuse me" in Arabic as they brushed past me and their polite, expressed respect, and kindness made me cowgirl-up, shifting my mood.
New England artist Christine Palamidessi shares experience of wearing abaya, a garment that evokes a particular sensation and mind-set, a way of looking and being looked at--owning the gaze.
Artist takes the reader through the steps in artistic process: going from Greek Goddess of Victory, which was an investigation of antiquity vs. modern life; to hearing news about the silencing of Senator Elizabeth Warren in the US Senate; to sewing Nike's lips shut; to dropping a black hood over the head of the goddess and exploring the silencing effect of a black hood.
When I was artist-in-residence in the town of Otranto, Italy, I became intensely attracted to the Ottoman weapons (Cannonballs everywhere!) perhaps because my father and uncles had been in the armed service by the sea--Iwo Gima, Siege of Rome, Battle of Dunkirk, the Philippines-- and this combination of sensations and memories called me to make art from the weapons.
The bombards, cast from bronze, hurled huge stone balls, weighing up to 1,500 pounds, several miles. After one shot, the barrel had to be cooled in oil to be fired again. The cooling process took over two hour and was frustratingly slow.
To capture the essence of war in her sculptures, artist Christine Palamidessi used weapons from the 1480 siege of Italy.
It was a conceptual idea that lead the artist to cast the cannonballs form the 1480 Ottoman siege of Otranto Castle: to embrace not only the texture of the cannonball but also to capture the essence of the weapon, the energy embedded within the material, and to transfer that energy into her sculptures
In- process, the artist discovers images and meaning that are not the original intent.
The Pandora Light is fashioned from sidewalk print of the Harvard Science Center.; the outside walls are painted with sea creatures, the perceived underworld; the inside is painted with images of germs, the unseen underworld.
The Prometheus Lights are made from sidewalk prints of the sidewalks around the Harvard University Science Center at the foot of Oxford and Kirkland Streets in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Prometheus stole a gleaming ember from a sacred hearth on OYLMPUS and carried it down to earth so that humans could have fire, giving them not only warmth and safety but also the gift of science, because now they could dream and imagine.
Wondering what goes on behind the artwork in The Prometheus Lights--carpentry, elecricity-- that holds it on the walls and lights up like the fire within us all?
After making plaster casts of the sidewalks with fascinating patterns; sidewalks where Nobel Prize winning scientists as well as science students marched and pondered, I let the plaster dry in the summer sun. Plaster cures as it dries and becomes stronger,... Continue Reading →
Cambridge artist noticed the patterns in sidewalk near Harvard University Science Center and set out to make street art from them.
Wall sculpture pineapple is Sacred artistic container for the Divine, a firm-fleshed juicy Brazilian fruit, and an avatar to keep away demons.
The artist's 'how-to' for making an Aphrodite sculpture by joining two torso's, male and female, using arte povera technique of cartapesta and plaster.
Series of summer watercolors done in-and-around Rome, Italy.
To date I have cast over 50 yogi teacher torsos. My intention is to capture inner energy, breath and the atman of the teacher. It is an ongoing project. This atman, (inner body /inner self) imprints the plaster of the mother... Continue Reading →
Time Breath and Evidence is a multi-sensory sculptural installation that gives expression to the inescapable adventure of human mutuality. It begins as frontal torso casts of twelve American yogi. The plaster casts are gently highlighted with ritual colors from India, then... Continue Reading →
ONE DAY I SAW THIS MAN IN OTRANTO. A WONDERFUL GREY CAT SAT ON HIS LAP. I ASKED IF I COULD TAKE A PICTURE. HE TOSSED THE CAT OFF HIS LAP.
Romero Britto is a Brazilian Neo-pop artist, painter, serigrapher, and sculptor. He combines elements of cubism, pop art and graffiti painting in his work. I was happy to find this on line and filled with camaraderie for fellow artist who... Continue Reading →
I am an artist and yoga teacher. My yoga practice keeps my interior world polished, so, as the Upanishads say, as to be ready for lightening when it strikes. Yoga came to me to support the artist. The artist in me existed long before the yogini.
Preview of Christine Palamidessi's cannonball pastels on painted pages of La Gazetta and La Repubblica.
When Gaia separated from Uranus, the conditions of the world as we know it came into being. Otranto Castle installation portrays this moment.
Visually visit Christine Palamidessi's ongoing cannonball installation at Castle of Otranto.
Tortoise torso wall sculpture molded on body of Brazilian woman.
The first Pineapple Torso sculpture by Christine Palamidessi.
Sculpture--also a piece of wearable art-- pays homage to Japanese fashion, Pune yoga and Greek ideals.
palamidessi.blog 