ANNA EVA RADICETTI: mother of a teenager, an important commitment in the UN Organization which has brought her around the world, and a passion for handicraft…
Creativity needs courage, they say. And you, Anna Eva, have shown plenty of it. Though, when and how did you begin this precious and multiform activity?
It’s not easy to mark a starting point, as a number of phases have crossed one each other. I can say that I started to invest in my handmade works, that means searching and buying tools and materials, when I began painting… or, better said, when I began to blend colors on canvas, creating very colorful paintings.
Then the curiosity for a new material and different creations…
Then I developed an interest for the paper, a kind of material that I love: whence the production of big papier-mâché vases, to be painted afterwards as they were pictures. At last (but not least) the most recent creation of jewelry, that is maybe the synthesis of the first two phases, because it encompasses the canvas work on paper frames.
But you didn’t stop there, your creativity turned to other forms of expression.
The idea to create jewelry took shape during the lock-down in New York City, in a totally casual and unforeseen way, by the attempt of infusing new life into unsuccessful or unfinished paintings or paper proofs. I had a lot of stuff packed away, always thinking that someday it could have been useful, and so did it. Each piece of jewelry is absolutely unique, because it comes from a different canvas patch. Jewelry, like vases, is nothing else but a declination of colors, the same I used to practice in my abstract paintings.
For sure color is the first element to draw attention, astonishment, wonder, and remains one of the stronger characteristics in your handworks. What meaning and emotional condition do you attribute to it?
Recently a friend of mine has dedicated to me a Picasso’s quote: “Colors, alike face features, follow the emotional changes”. I think it perfectly suits to describe the dialogue between me ad the use of color, that defines the final creation. Just as an emotion makes face features change, the color changes the lines which will shape my handwork. It’s not the vase which is painted in red, but it’s red that becomes a vase… if it makes sense.
Due to your job, you’ve had often to move to different homes in different countries. How has the contact with so diverse cultures influenced your creativity?
A lot! Each country has brought its influence both upon the color palette (red, ochre, orange are the colors I use the most), and upon my art experiments, subject also to the materials availability, the space at my disposal. In Afghanistan I used to play a lot with fabrics. In Belgium I devoted myself to painting. And now, in New York City, crafting jewelry has stepped in. It requires little room… the kitchen table has become my new laboratory!
Horizon is a texture for all colors, what phantasmagoria in your future?
I love the thought of keeping on my experiments. Finding new shades, new color blends and material combinations, new creations, be they paintings, vases, jewelry, embroidered quilts… in quest of whatever may inspire and attract me. A passion for colors and a curiosity for the material to be painted, that I’m certain will be suggesting me more and more ideas.
A concrete project?
In the future I’d like “something” that may combine my creative production, the possibility to travel in order to find new inspirations and continue my social commitment. Maybe a workshop, which will host, somehow, all these extents… work in progress, as we say here in New York City.
Anna Eva Radicetti
https://www.annaeva-radicetti.com/