Grief, loss, and mourning are central to life and Isabella Saraceni's work. As she explores the fragility of life through various materials of the same nature, she hopes to create navigational aids to move through life and its sorrows. Isabella's art is currently on view in the lower gallery of Urban Arts Space's downtown gallery. This is part of the MFA thesis exhibition, Desire Lines, featuring twelve other artists, which is on view until March 15.

This piece has evolved over time and in its duration at the gallery. Would you be able to describe the process of creating, installing, and showcasing your piece? How have changes to the work affected the meaning behind it?

The installation of my kite sculptures evolved quite a bit in its duration in the gallery, much of which was somewhat beyond my control. Initially I had planned to suspend the sculptures from pulleys attached to the ceiling. It was important to me that these structures be suspended—to me, suspension speaks about something being held in an in-between state, being held up in order to look at it differently. Making work about grief, I am thinking about the ways we try to hold on, sometimes too tightly to what is no longer here in the form we once knew. 

During installation, we discovered that we could not drill into the ceiling as planned, so we developed an alternate plan to create a structure that could hold all of the sculptures and be suspended by the pre-existing pulleys in the space. With help from Koen and the interns in the gallery we were able to suspend the work from the structure, and it was up for a few days. Somewhat mysteriously it came crashing down in the middle of the night before the opening reception. A few pieces had broken, the structure splintered, and all the kite lines were scattered around the space. I knew seeing the broken pieces that I couldn’t, and didn’t, want to mend this. I didn’t want to pretend that it didn’t happen. I needed to let it be seen in its collapsed state because that is the reality of the loss. 

While it was heartbreaking for me to see the work in pieces, and difficult to accept a new iteration of it, in the end, it felt like the most poetic way for this exhibition to evolve.

Assuming the Mantle and Web of Acknowledgement are both mixed media pieces. How did you decide on these materials? In what ways do the chosen materials reflect the deeper meaning of your piece? 

My material choices are often made from a place of desiring materials that have a fragility to them, that can be brought through multiple stages of transformation, and that can remain in some state of flux. Assuming the Mantle consists of handmade paper, the the pulp made from notes, mail, sympathy cards, drawings, and writing accumulated from my studio and from my family over the past year. I recycled the paper into a new form, which I then incorporated threads, pennies, silver, and photographs.  The paper as it dries and cures begins to change shape, shrink, and contort; it is affected by the atmosphere of the room it is in as it dries.  

I wanted this piece to feel like a meteorite or a chunk of ground from a strange place that had been unearthed and lifted up for us to see. The images and materials embedded are reflective to me of a way of noticing or trying to hold the significance of things—a way of paying attention to life in connection to our shared mortality. The Web of Acknowledgement functions similarly in this way of taking account of things but in a way that feels even less permanent. This piece is a cyanotype on muslin cloth that has been bleached, stained with natural dyes, and rinsed, then images are transferred on top of the cloth. Being a cyanotype, the imagery burned into the surface is in constant flux, impacted by the sunlight, which will continue to change the piece over time. I think of this piece as a web trying to capture moments of life, the hole in the center emphasizing this way that we can never really hold on to anything. 

Grief and mourning are central themes to your artwork. How do personal losses inform your work?

My personal losses are what brought me fully into the work I am creating now. I have experienced a few losses in my life in addition to witnessing the collective grief of my hometown (Newtown, CT) after the Sandy Hook shooting in 2012. Most recently, the sudden death of my older brother Nico two years ago continues to be the guide I keep the closest as I lean fully into my own experiences of pain and suffering so that I can better understand the suffering of others. His death was an acute experience of everything being pulled out from under me. It felt like all the structures that once held me came crumbling down and within this revealed the power and significance of the simplest everyday moments. This ever-present nature of life and death is so infused now into how I create my work and into how I move through the world.

Desire lines are physical manifestations of choice, and they act as a symbolic connection between people, places, and things. How does your piece fit into this framework, and what path does it carve for yourself, others, and those no longer with us? 

For myself, my work carves a path to keep me connected with my own grief and sorrow, build a relationship with it, and let it guide me.

For others, I hope my work carves a path for them to connect to the reality of their own mortality, that death is walking with us throughout our lives.

For those who are no longer with us, I hope my work carves a path for them to know that we still remember them, that we long for them and try to keep them present. I hope wherever they are that they remember us sometimes too.

As your time at OSU comes to a close, what have been your biggest takeaways from the MFA program, and how will they affect your future art?

There are so many takeaways, and I’m sure I will continue to have more lessons emerging for a long time. One of the strongest takeaways for me is the way the structure of this program and all the people in it have helped me find new footing when death turned my world inside-out. My time here as a student, artist, and instructor created a container for me to embrace art making in an entirely new way, a way of necessity, survival, and the deepest form of connection. As we all know, when things fall apart we rely on artists to help us find meaning again. I am so grateful to have been able to piece things together again with the support of other artists around me—this has created a chord of strength within me and my work that I know will only strengthen more as I continue making work beyond this program.

Desire Lines continues at Urban Arts Space through March 15.