Paths of Life

The word “path” inspired me for this edition of “Red Shoes“, dedicated to violence against women, in which I imagined these “eternally suspended” lives represented by threads that also invite us to feel intimately bound and united in solidarity, reaching out a hand even to those who are not used to asking for help. 
Also for the upcoming “Forme e Colori” event, which this year will be held only online, I thought I would introduce myself by highlighting my logo, “Percorsi Artistici“, where my initials, placed as mirror images, form a footprint into which I have inserted my name. As a ceramicist, the footprint impressed in the earth symbolically represents the first form of human identification, and from that moment it becomes the plastic material with which humankind begins a historical production process, through which every civilization has told its story and recognized itself: this is how ceramics becomes the “guide fossil” in the evolution of all humanity. 
In my logo I wanted to “tell” the difficulties that life spares no one: the possibility of losing yourself, sometimes seeing only a footprint and feeling alone. Looking at them again now, I recognize myself, my strength, which through my love for my work has never stopped me from moving forward, often with the insecurity of ever reaching a goal, but with the certainty of the aim I believe in: following the emotion. In this moment when everything is suspended, when that emotion arrives it overwhelms us with the intensity of an extraordinarily normal event. 
 In this historic moment, when footprints represent, more than ever, the drive never to stop in front of anything, I would like to present to you the Tree of Life project, a universal historical symbol, which I have paired with the 22 “Arcana of Faul”, already awarded a prize in one of the aforementioned editions. The branches of the path of life are 22, as many as the Arcana; if we look at the numbers of this ending year, removing the two zeros, we find the number 22, whose digits add up to 4, a number that symbolizes stability as well as the totality of the 4 natural elements that make ceramic creation possible: air, water, earth and fire.
The design placed both on the trunk and inside the leaves recalls the maternal womb, through which all of us, wrapped in the darkness of the womb, passed to see the light of life for the first time; this tells us that being born is not enough to say we are truly living — we must cultivate our “Tree” so that it bears the best fruit. It is no coincidence that to tell our own story we use the family tree: our roots, which sink into the darkness and depth of the earth, the trunk, and the branches that reach upward in search of light, including spiritual light.
Still on the theme of thoughts and paths, I designed an extreme stylization of the oak leaf, the quintessential medieval plant symbol, in which, in the sinuous outer outline, my logo “can be read”. This same observation, starting from two very simple horseshoes, became the occasion to invent a project: “Your step is history”, dedicated to the pilgrims who cross the Via Francigena and, more specifically, Via San Pellegrino. When they come into my studio they have the opportunity to add their signature, free of charge, inside a footprint I have prepared on a fragment of glazed peperino, which, once fired at high heat, will be ready to become part of a path. 
Our momentarily suspended lives give us the chance to celebrate the normality of a footstep, because now more than ever we know how precious an encounter can be. In my workshop I have hosted a great many pilgrims, and each of them made me “travel” with them: I sensed their tiredness, their emotions, joy and wonder; their “thank you” was worth more than anything else. To these pilgrims I gave the emotion of immortalizing their footstep, and they gave me the joy of sharing it. 
There are many ways to educate and pass on culture; sometimes a simple gesture is enough, made with the tools of always — a brush, an oxide, a little clay, and a moved hand ready to recognize itself in an imprint, in a footprint. Our city, which proudly boasts an ancient ceramic tradition, allows any wayfarer, tourist or pilgrim to live an emotion today and “crystallize” it, just as is done with a piece of ceramic. 
This year the word “path” has taken on a very deep meaning for many reasons; like a guiding thread it led me to stop, and like all of us I travelled through myself, the way one does on an autumn afternoon in a city you think you know, until you feel lost — but you understand that this is the only way to find yourself again: by retracing your own steps. 
A “path” with no end, but whether in COLOUR or in black and white, it is our artisan hands that give life to FORMS that would otherwise remain trapped in ideas.