From a very young age Flavia drew and painted. She was always asking everyone around her for paper and colours because drawing was her language and her refuge. It was her way of processing everything that happened to her, much as some people use writing.
Flavia is inspired by her childhood and her work often ends up being self-portraits. Even if she tries to invent different characters behind her pieces, they always end up being her.
Flavia is fond of working with wood and says that although there are similarities between wood and marble they have subtly different languages. She describes how wood, being easier to handle and able to be moved around without asking for help, makes it a material that guarantees her more independence.
Flavia co-founded La Polveriera, one of the last remaining studios in the centre of Pietrasanta, with her childhood friend Veronica Fonzo. But when the building was sold to developers, Flavia set up a new studio on the edge of Pietrasanta called Tre Luci. Here she and a handful of colleagues can work in peace without complaints about noise or dust.
The founding members each have an inside studio to show their work and create dust-free pieces, and an outdoor workshop for everything else. There are also some outdoor spaces available for guests to rent.
As a child Flavia Robalo dreamt of flying. She dreamed about it at night as well as in the day. She says that being imaginative always entailed living a little in the clouds.
From a very young age Flavia drew and painted. She was always asking everyone around her for paper and colours because drawing was her language and her refuge. It was her way of processing everything that happened to her, much as some people use writing.
Flavia is inspired by her childhood and her work often ends up being self-portraits. Even if she tries to invent different characters behind her pieces, they always end up being her.
Flavia is fond of working with wood and says that although there are similarities between wood and marble they have subtly different languages. She describes how wood, being easier to handle and able to be moved around without asking for help, makes it a material that guarantees her more independence.
Flavia co-founded La Polveriera, one of the last remaining studios in the centre of Pietrasanta, with her childhood friend Veronica Fonzo. But when the building was sold to developers, Flavia set up a new studio on the edge of Pietrasanta called Tre Luci. Here she and a handful of colleagues can work in peace without complaints about noise or dust.
The founding members each have an inside studio to show their work and create dust-free pieces, and an outdoor workshop for everything else. There are also some outdoor spaces available for guests to rent.
A podcast where artists tell their stories through the materials they choose.
Sarah Monk:
Hi. This is Sarah with another episode of Materially Speaking, where artists tell their stories through the materials they choose. Today, we're in Pietrasanta Northern Italy, and we're meeting Argentinian born artist Flavia Robalo, who cofounded the studio's La Polveriera the story of which was told in Veronica Fonzo's episode. I first met Flavia at La La Polveriera Studios before the pandemic, then again late in the summer of 2021 for an update. You'll hear both Flavia and her childhood friend, Veronica, during this episode.
Sarah Monk:
And as they prefer to do the interview in Italian, you'll also hear Anna Stella, my translator.
Sarah Monk:
La Polveriera Studios is tucked behind Musa, Pietrasanta's virtual museum of sculpture and architecture. Inside the heavy gates are a row of corrugated metal workspaces. Other artists who featured on Materially Speaking also work there, including Rita Meier, Jim Hager, Jake Cartwright, Neil Ferber, and, of course, Veronica Fonzo.
Sarah Monk:
The huge square windows of the historic building are adorned with ivy and Virginia creeper. And looking up, you'll find classical figures and a coat of arms flanked by 2 angels, all in bas relief. Flavia shares a large studio space with Veronica, and her half is packed with wooden sculptures of small girls in motion, dancing, leaping, tiptoeing. They perch on a wide variety of plinths made of corten glass and wood. Some of her smaller sculptures are on circular wooden bases covered with glass domes, giving them a nostalgic charm. On the walls, paintings depict flying children on soft blue backgrounds with arms outstretched before them like swimmers in the air. Laughter . Anna asked Flavia where she was born and a little about her childhood. She was born 46 years ago and as a child, always had a tendency to draw. It was her game, she says. And if she went to someone's house or was with friends, at some point, she had to sit down, pencils and colors in hand with sheets of paper.
Sarah Monk:
She always asked everyone for paper and started drawing. For her, it was her language. It was also her refuge, and she remembers drawing things that happened to her as a way of metabolizing everything. All her experiences had to go through being drawn in the same way that some people express themselves through writing. Flavia says she still does this to this day and that she finds sculpture in expressive form, which allows her also to metabolize experiences.
Sarah Monk:
Then at the age of 7 at her grandfather's house, she remembers her parents discussing sending her somewhere to learn to draw. So she went to a place where a teacher taught many children. There were thousands there, and it felt great. She particularly liked it because she did it alone, something separate from her sister, because Flavia always followed her in everything. This was something that was really hers and her space.
Sarah Monk:
At home, it was the thing that made her different. It was only she who draw and had this passion for art, and from then on was always involved in everything to do with drawing, painting, and in time, with sculpture. She first tried sculpture at the age of 10 in classes that she did in parallel with elementary school. And at 17, she took up lessons with the sculptor from Querceta, who taught her and Veronica how to work marble and introduced them to Pietrasanta . When they started with him studying the first steps working with marble, it was exciting as it was something that was almost impossible for a woman or even a girl, especially in Buenos Aires where almost no one worked marble.
Sarah Monk:
Although it seemed very normal for them to carve marble, it was actually quite rare. Flavia then studied psychology as it was something she enjoyed very much. And then when she graduated, she decided to travel with her friend, Veronica, to Pietrasanta, the place which they had heard so much about. Pietrasanta made us fall in love in some way because coming from a city as big as Buenos Aires, you get here, and even walking a 100 meters, you meet friends. At each corner, there is a bar, a friend, another artist, a craftsman who's taught you. It was all here.
Sarah Monk:
Which are your favorite materials right now?
Sarah Monk:
Right now, it's wood. She feels more comfortable with wood. And although there are similarities between working with wood and with marble, they are actually 2 different languages, subtly diverse.
Sarah Monk:
There is the practical matter that wood is more easy to handle, while marble is heavier, and she always has to ask for help when she needs to move it. With Wood, she's more independent. And since she likes doing everything alone from beginning to end she knows with Wood that she can do it, and she feels more independent and that she can do anything she wants. Furthermore, you can attach stuff to wood. So if she wants to attach an arm or a leg or add a piece, she can do.
Sarah Monk:
While with marble, it's a little different. Anna asked Flavia about her inspirations. In general, Flavia is inspired by her childhood. As a child, she always dreamed of flying. She dreamed at night and also daydreamed about it.
Sarah Monk:
Being very imaginative, she says she's always lived a little in the clouds. In general, her pieces are self referential even if she tries to make different characters or invent other stories because every sculpture has a story. When she is creating, she always has to make up a bit of history to get inside the piece to understand who it is she is creating. And in the end, she says, it's always me. It's always my self portrait.
Sarah Monk:
Anna then asked Flavia how she approaches the block of wood or marble when she starts a new piece. She will have an image in her head, which is only partial. It won't be the whole of a sculpture, but rather a glimpse, a corner. The movement of a hand or a gesture with the head. From there, she starts.
Sarah Monk:
And if she arrives immediately on that specific gesture, the work is almost completed right at the start and only needs touching up. If she doesn't get what she's looking for that early, she knows right away that the sculpture will have problems. It'll be difficult to finish and hard for her to like, and it won't be what she had hoped it would be. In addition to working with gestures, Flavia also talks about her love for working with the wind and all that that means. The wind is an element, the air in general.
Sarah Monk:
So usually, she says, her characters fly, and they play with the wind, and there's always this element present in the sculptures. The wind is something she finds herself playing with when she creates her pieces and finds herself having fun creating stories around it. With the wind, she adds, there are other more profound things. She looks around for the words. I don't know, she says.
Sarah Monk:
I work with femininity, with the depths of my being, with my shadows, and work for me is also a way to minimize or liberate myself from the weight of these shadows. And when I work, I realize that these shadows are my greatest strengths. They are my shadows without which I couldn't make a sculpture, could not paint, would not be able to make art to exorcise my fears.
Sarah Monk:
Sadly, La Polvierera did close at the end of 2020. But as the saying goes, when one door closes, another one opens.
Sarah Monk:
So this summer, I caught up with Flavia to see her new workspace, Tre Luce. It's on the outskirts of Pietrasanta tucked beside the railway line which runs from Pisa to La Spezia. Artistic touches struck me even outside their gates, a bench made of breeze blocks and planks topped with pots of aloe vera, A tower created with crescent shaped terracotta bricks, artfully arranged with a flamboyant red geranium on top. Tre Luce lives in a large, long industrial building, which was formerly a car mechanics. It exudes contemporary industrial chic, with 2 enormous gray hanger style doors set within a glass surround, a large corten sculpture outside, and its name, Tre Luci studi d'arte, crafted in welded metal.
Sarah Monk:
I catch sight of 2 trestle tables with benches and a tempting hammock on the front driveway. Next to it are pots growing chunky tomatoes. It's clear dining together and hosting friends is still an important part of their community. Alongside the building are a handful of neat outdoor workspaces with corrugated iron roofs and walls, each furnished with a cavalletto or workbench, electric power points, and a stool. Further back are 6 larger ones, one for each of the permanent members of Tre Luce.
Sarah Monk:
And these have a hoist, hook, and chain for the artist to hold larger work at a convenient height. Inside the building, there are 6 studios with floors and wall divisions made of recycled wood. Flavia's space hosts a delicious red armchair, a desk for sketching, and beyond, a larger studio with huge windows. Amongst her recent pieces, I see a sculpture of a child asleep on a pillow held high by a tangle of roots. A girl carved in marble caught at the moment of striding forth, with roots emanating from her head.
Sarah Monk:
And on the walls, large paintings of girls floating in the sky. When I point to the girl carved in marble, she says, when a plant grows roots, normally they go into the ground, but roots could grow from the head and look towards the sky. Why not? Of another work, she says the original was made of wood, but she has made reproductions in bronze and in cast iron. And she's always changed something and given it a different reading.
Sarah Monk:
Whilst Flavia made me coffee in a stove top moka, she asked for a moment to find something to collect the dregs of the previous brew. It turns out she uses them as a patina for the wood. I asked her how she's finding working in the new studios, and Flavia said that they took the space in October last year and moved in in January 2021. And there had been a lot of work to do to fix up the space. So it's only been since March that they've really been able to restart creative work.
Sarah Monk:
But now she's happy. Everyone has their own space, and there's a lot of room to move around in, to do work, and to exhibit art. I asked her in what way it is different from La Polveriera. The place is bigger and also more secluded because now they are in the country side with no houses around them, so they're more free to make noise and dust. This is a good thing because La Polveriera was in the historic center.
Sarah Monk:
And because they were starting to annoy the neighbors, their freedoms were increasingly limited. Here, they have more freedom but are still close to the center. People can even walk here, and there's parking outside. I asked how many people work at Tre Luce. There are 6 of them, founders, you might say, who each have a studio inside and an external workspace.
Sarah Monk:
Inside, they can show their work and create art that doesn't make much dust. Outside, they can do everything else. And there are also 3 outdoor places to rent to short term guests.
Sarah Monk:
We met on one of the last days that refugees were being evacuated from Kabul Airport, and this was on our minds when I spoke with Flavia about the themes in her work and whether they had changed since the move. They were the same but had deepened.
Sarah Monk:
Her strongest themes being migration and flying and being a migrant or a child of migrants. Perhaps, she says, it's a very current issue because we are, let's say, guests in the places where we were not born, in foreign places. And so the theme of migration is very strong, perhaps currently more than ever. Her characters either fly or walk or swim. There's always movement, often change, always an element that transports them in either water or wind.
Sarah Monk:
The theme of roots has always struck her and nourished her in some way. Roots are important, she says, because they allow one to move without leaving home, give you the freedom to move your culture and your history, which is paradoxical because roots should hold you to the ground. But we can also take them with us. When I asked Flavia if the pandemic had changed her work or her thoughts, she reflected that it didn't feel that it had changed anything because in one sense, artists were quite well prepared to deal with the situation. She felt artists responded well because they always had a need for resilience and patience and creativity.
Sarah Monk:
So they were in some ways better prepared than many who found themselves feeling uncomfortable. I was fine because I had a home to stay in, she says. I understand that many people are obviously not in the same situation, and the discomfort was more thinking about this. For her, it was a moment of introspection and self care, of thinking a lot, of doing things she never usually gets to do. It gave her the gift of time.
Sarah Monk:
And, of course, as well as taking care of herself, a time to care for others. At first, everybody thought a little bit about this, but then everyone reacted differently, she says. And it brought out the worst in some people and the best in others. Inevitable in all critical situations in humanity.
Sarah Monk:
Birds are also present in her work, and hands are important as are things that come right from the heart.
Sarah Monk:
Once when she was working on this theme, a knot of wood appeared in a sculpture right where the heart would be, leaving her speechless. Flavia talks also about her upcoming show in Florence, which is on the theme of enchantment and is based on womens' spells. She has been observing what women inherit and hold inside. The elements that concur, solve, and caress. Some of these things that are carried inside also hurt.
Sarah Monk:
But we can give them a positive meaning and modify them in a poetic way. Of course, she adds, men carry these things inside them too because the feminine side is present in every human being. We all have femininity. So her characters in some way are always in motion or playing with the wind, but they will have something, perhaps in their hands or coming out of their heart. They may have something that comes from the outside, but there is always a bond with the divine, with magic, and this ability to transform the ugly into the beautiful.
Sarah Monk:
So thanks to Flavia Robalo. You can see her work on her Instagram @ FlaviaRobalo , or on her website, Flaviarobalo.com. Thanks to Anastella, who was my Italian voice when I had none, and worked on the translation. And thanks to you for listening. As with all episodes, you can find photographs of the work discussed on our website, materiallyspeaking.com or on Instagram.
Sarah Monk:
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