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PAX of Beatus, 3d porcelain ceramic ©FILIPPUCCI 2021
February 24, 2021

The Trouble with Pink

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Large Scale 3D Printed Ceramics

THE TROUBLE WITH PINK

“THE ORDER,” a 3d ceramic series begun in the Summer of 2020 during my complete isolation during Covid, was all black and white. It sprang from memories of being put into a French convent La Rochelle at age five.

When Biden became President, I was greatly relieved after all the tumult & ugliness for so long. I started seeing pink. That’s how things begin for me…I see a color or shape in my dreams, my walks, or doing something mundane like the laundry. 

I have an uncomfortable relationship with pink. Pink…the symbolic color of tenderness, affection, romance and peace. PAX, Latin for peace. PAX be with you. Pink the soother, has been definitively linked to toning down aggression, and its use in holding cells for violent criminals.

Pink for me however has another meaning: my mother, Beatrice. It was her favorite color and therefore I wanted nothing to do with it.

PAX of Beatus, 3d porcelain ceramic ©FILIPPUCCI 2021

PAX of Beatus (a different iteration), 3d porcelain ceramic ©FILIPPUCCI 2021

Pink is too frivolous for my pragmatic nature but far worse, painful. In 2018 I tried a few pieces in pink (you can see those on my Instagram feed: @filippucciart). Beatrice no longer walks the earth but when she did one could describe her as a wild boar in pink. A confusing dichotomy. You thought “pretty lady” but under the pink was a tough personality, a bristling, masculine Joan Crawford of judgement and meanness. The least maternal person you could imagine but there she was, a blonde in pink wearing pink lipstick.

Here’s why using the color pink in my work – with all its subtle iterations – helped me better understand her.

PAX of Beatus (a different iteration), 3d porcelain ceramic ©FILIPPUCCI 2021

PAX of Beatus (a different iteration), 3d porcelain ceramic ©FILIPPUCCI 2021

After creating numerous pink cloth studies over the last few months, some insight arrived. Not all at once, mind you. It kept tugging at me until I got it. My mother wore pink because that’s what she wanted to be. She wanted to be affectionate and peaceful and pink but because of an undiagnosed personality disorder, was the opposite. The total opposite.

I will only say this. Art saved me from pink, got me away from it, and then brought me right back to it. Finally, I did not look away. You could say that I found my inner pinkness. I am not afraid of pink any more. To Beatrice…PAX be with you.


Flying Nun, Summer 2020. 3D study for a large ceramic sculpture-FILIPPUCCI 2020
August 19, 2020

Contemporary Ceramics

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  • Under : Sort of An Art Blog
Large Scale 3D Printed Ceramics

SISTERS OF THE CLOTH

New work from the quiet isolation of the Spring and Summer of 2020. This Series is built upon the impressions of a five year old in La Rochelle, France, where – for awhile – I was put into the custody of nuns who lived in a medieval convent. 

Art Blog - Sandra Filippucci Aug 2020

Forgotten laundry in Santa Fe, New Mexico 2020

CORRIDORS & SHROUDS

Rag, Santa Fe NM Summer 2020 - FILIPPUCCI

Rag, Santa Fe 2020

The impressions began with walks in neighborhood cul-de-sacs where I noticed pieces of cloth. I would notice one, then another, and another. In New Mexico, many still put their laundry out to dry, often draped over a fence or stone wall. Sometimes, these are forgotten…left there to fade into the seasons. Couldn’t tell you why rags and laundry caught my attention but once you start noticing something, there’s a reason.

In the quiet of this pandemic, my dreaming revealed corridors and shrouds. My waking now held terrors. Abandonment, loneliness. I resisted remembering until those terrified little girl memories of flapping cloth creatures emerged forcefully, impatient with all the waiting. From bundles of rags, I “saw” fabric – copious, flowing, mysterious – rise into form.

As a 5 year old, I struggled to grasp that real women were under all that drapery. I could ask nothing for speaking was discouraged. Other than the perpetually seated Abbess, this community of French nuns was always in a hurry, dashing and darting with bundles, parcels and mops. Incessantly toiling. Like household gods, each was a silent expert at what they did. You said little, did much. They were frighteningly beautiful blurs, smudges of white and black. Everything in its place, everything in order.  

CERAMIC | The Novitiate - Sandra Filippucci 2020

©Sandra Filippucci 2020

Wearing different habits to denote their status, there was a distinct hierarchy within this community, and you quickly learned who was at top, and who did the laundry. They all commanded their space wherever they were or whatever their assignment was – all knowing, all powerful but in fact, many years ago nuns had little to no power within the church. I’m not sure they even do now. These obedient women were consecrated worker ants, always minding the time, polishing and starching as they noiselessly prayed.

Decades later, I remember those figures of cloth rushing down ancient corridors, making sounds like the sails on fishing boats in the La Rochelle harbor.

WHY CERAMICS

The shrouds in corridors became sculptures of cloth. Since I work with 3D programs, I began assembling fabric in an abstracted manner but still figurative. Joan of Arc has been my primary subject matter for so long that this different way of working startled me. The work just became. And it wanted to be ceramic. This is what led to that.

I’d been to a lecture in Taos at the Harwood Museum in 2019 organized by Ann Landi of Vasari21.com, on the Evolution of Art Criticism, which included panelists Peter Plagens, Laurie Fendrich, Lucy Lippard and Garth Clark. Garth Clark is a distinguished writer, curator and lecturer on modern and contemporary ceramic art. I was galvanized by his understanding of this medium, which I never seriously considered. I bought his 2003 book, “Shards,” and wondered when and how I would produce ceramics.

CERAMIC | The Worker - Sandra Filippucci 2020

©Sandra Filippucci 2020

This new body of work, “Sisters of the Cloth,” can only exist as 3d printed ceramics. Some pieces appear simple, but are in fact, quite complex. Created with 3d software, they are well-suited to 3d printing. The process will involve clay extruding to the largest size, and then combining the sections into life-size sculptures. They will be fired like pottery, and then hand-glazed. They can be constructed with permeating resins for outdoors, hung on walls, suspended from ceilings. Editioned smaller pieces will come first, because when working this way, each side must translate well.

Ceramic always suggests fragility. These iterations of fresh novitiates, postulants and weary old nuns wearing extraordinary hats no longer exist in the real world. The habits they wore have virtually disappeared. These are the impressions of shapes – sometimes apparitions – from a five-year old mind. I have harbored these windswept impressions over a lifetime and, like the statuary that filled their Medieval convent, these pieces are a kind of vesper, a chant from the sanctuary of dreams. 

The Abbess - Sandra Filippucci 2020

The Abbess – ©Sandra Filippucci 2020


SORT OF AN ART BLOG
  • FILIPPUCCI UPCOMING EXHIBITION: Ukraine Flower Series - The Power of Defiance 2023
    ART REVIEW of Ukraine Series February 27,2023
  • Ukraine Flower Series: Theatre Rubble II. June 2022. Mixed media on custom wood panel, 42 x 60 inches
    What Rubble Really Means June 4,2022
  • NFTS - CLOTILDA OF CHESS | The Red Bishop ©Sandra Filippucci 2022
    My Blockhead Adventures with Blockchain Art, Part Two July 7,2021
  • NFT Red Queen from Chess Collection - ©Filippucci 2021
    My Blockhead Adventures with Blockchain Art, Part One July 6,2021
  • PAX of Beatus, 3d porcelain ceramic ©FILIPPUCCI 2021
    The Trouble with Pink February 24,2021
Study for a sculpture. 2024. JOURNEY: “Into the Study for a sculpture. 2024. JOURNEY: “Into the Red of War, of Love, of Life.” Building the physical Journey work is going to be interesting. @filippucciart #red #womenwarriors #contemporaryartist #contemporarysculpture #journey #armor #contemporaryfigurativeart #figurative #soldier
As some of you know, my primary subject for decade As some of you know, my primary subject for decades has been Joan of Arc. I view her now in 2023 as a Journeywoman - always on the move. She - like us - wears expectation, defeat, triumph like evolving armor, adapting with each step. I have Long Covid and am adapting with every step. My armor is different than Joan’s but the intent is the same…defend and continue. @filippucciart #joanofarc #joanofarc #journey #journeywoman #armor #contemporaryart #3dartist #ceramicsculptures #longcovid
“Calypso,” 2023. New Limited Edition (ed 30) p “Calypso,” 2023. New Limited Edition (ed 30) pigment ink print work celebrating collective joy through palette. This joy is inspired by the bravery of the people of Ukraine, and the fierce female soldiers. @filippucciart #ukrainewar #ukraine #womensoldiers #red #redflowers🌺 #joy #bravery #contemporaryprints #pigmentink #instagood
Happy Spring, Easter Bunnies. Time to let in some Happy Spring, Easter Bunnies. Time to let in some candy bean light. “Fiesta,” 2023. @filippucciart #easter #spring #springflowers #springtime #flowerstagram #flowers #contemporaryprints #contemporaryartist
“Mardi Gras,” 2023. New Limited Edition (ed.30 “Mardi Gras,” 2023. New Limited Edition (ed.30) print work celebrating collective joy through palette. It’s been a long winter with Long Covid so color brings joy. The war goes on in Ukraine but I’m full of Hope. @filippucciart #color #joy #spring #flowers #contemporaryartist #contemporaryprints #instaartist
Bakhmut, 2023. 40 x 60. It has been heartening to Bakhmut, 2023. 40 x 60. It has been heartening to hear how many of you have donated on the WCK.org site (World Central Kitchen) to help Ukraine survivors. The Ukraine Flower Series and Copper Tritscheller’s bronze horses are up until March 11th at Five Points Gallery in Torrington. @filippucciart @coppertritschellersculpture @fivepointsartsct @ukraine.ua @artistsofinstagram #ukraine #ukrainewar #wck #bakhmut #nowar #flowers #bakhmut #bakhmut_news_
ART REVIEW - One year to the day when the war star ART REVIEW - One year to the day when the war started.  FRACTURED GARDENS: Filippucci’s response to war in Ukraine highlighted at Five Points by TRACEY O'SHAUGHNESSY REPUBLICAN-AMERICAN
February 23, 2023
 
The flower stems in Sandra Filippucci’s mixed media works are dark. So pitch, they are nearly invisible. They move upward with a crumbly impotence toward a blood-red background. Wherever these flowers are blooming is an obscure, agitated space, filled with violent lashing blacks and dribbles of sooty gray. The blossoms themselves seem synthetic and unraveled, like shiny, shredded strands of mylar balloons. The feelings they evoke – joy flogged with fear, innocence shattered into disintegration, are of a garden despoiled. Filippucci’s searing “Ukraine Flower Series: The Power of Defiance,” now at Five Points Gallery, is the artist’s response to the war in Ukraine. Many titles – Kyiv, Zaporizhzhia, Kharkiv – reference specific sites or events. Occasionally, Filippucci will annotate them, in graphite cursive citations of dates and devastation.
Yet, most of the works speak for themselves, flower-like shapes of Ukraine’s pulverized garden. The works look like paintings, large, broad expanses of paint. Flower petals take the form of the cornette of a nun’s wimple, or the mashed remains of a vibrantly colored balloon. These motifs are often crushed together and mangled, picking up pieces of material like a tossed wad of gum. Here is a tube. There is a ribbon of netting. Over there are dagger-like shards of glass. All of them fuse into gobs of the flora and fuselage, a nasty but captivating clump of the natural and the martial.

In “War Babies,” Filippucci’s most colorful indictment of the war, a flower blooms with improbable vividness against an inky black background. (Excerpted from a longer article)
@filippucciart @coppertritschellersculpture @fivepointsartsct @ukraine.ua #ukraine #interiordesigner #artcollectorsoftheworld #worldkitchen #war #warart #contemporaryartist #connecticutartist #nwct #kentchronicles #cornwallctartists #fivepointsarts
Love to the shattered. Love to the sad. We all nee Love to the shattered. Love to the sad. We all need the strength of Love. @filippucciart #love #redheart #valentines #sad #hope #strength #heart #brokenheart #shooting #ukraine #ukrainewar
Opening last night in MINUS 4 degree weather! Than Opening last night in MINUS 4 degree weather! Thank you to all who braved the icy blasts and purchased prints to support World Central Kitchen. @wckitchen @filippucciart @coppertritscheller @fivepointsartsct #cornwallartists #cornwallart #ukraine #ukrainewar #ukraine🇺🇦 #ukraine_beauty #ukraineua #torrington #connecticutartist #defiance
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3d ceramics 3d printed sculpture 3d sculpture 12 demos Abbess Abbey Armor Dress Art Blog autobiographical art blockchain art Cloister cloth figures consecrated women contemporary art contemporary ceramics cost of war cryptoart Filippucci flower metaphors flower series French nuns Kyiv La Rochelle Mariupol Mariupol Maternity Hospital Monastery NFT art NFTs Nifty Gateway non-fingible tokens Nunnery nuns primary colors Profane Love sanctuary shrouds Sisters of the Cloth The Order The Podesta Room trauma Ukraine flowers unprovoked war vespers vows War in Ukraine
SANDRA FILIPPUCCI

Contemporary American artist based in Connecticut. 3d printed sculptures, painting, drawing. Part of a group of New York artists working with technology since the mid-eighties and was the first artist to have a digitally based solo exhibition at The Museum of American Illustration in Manhattan.

INSTAGRAM
Study for a sculpture. 2024. JOURNEY: “Into the Study for a sculpture. 2024. JOURNEY: “Into the Red of War, of Love, of Life.” Building the physical Journey work is going to be interesting. @filippucciart #red #womenwarriors #contemporaryartist #contemporarysculpture #journey #armor #contemporaryfigurativeart #figurative #soldier
As some of you know, my primary subject for decade As some of you know, my primary subject for decades has been Joan of Arc. I view her now in 2023 as a Journeywoman - always on the move. She - like us - wears expectation, defeat, triumph like evolving armor, adapting with each step. I have Long Covid and am adapting with every step. My armor is different than Joan’s but the intent is the same…defend and continue. @filippucciart #joanofarc #joanofarc #journey #journeywoman #armor #contemporaryart #3dartist #ceramicsculptures #longcovid
“Calypso,” 2023. New Limited Edition (ed 30) p “Calypso,” 2023. New Limited Edition (ed 30) pigment ink print work celebrating collective joy through palette. This joy is inspired by the bravery of the people of Ukraine, and the fierce female soldiers. @filippucciart #ukrainewar #ukraine #womensoldiers #red #redflowers🌺 #joy #bravery #contemporaryprints #pigmentink #instagood
Happy Spring, Easter Bunnies. Time to let in some Happy Spring, Easter Bunnies. Time to let in some candy bean light. “Fiesta,” 2023. @filippucciart #easter #spring #springflowers #springtime #flowerstagram #flowers #contemporaryprints #contemporaryartist
“Mardi Gras,” 2023. New Limited Edition (ed.30 “Mardi Gras,” 2023. New Limited Edition (ed.30) print work celebrating collective joy through palette. It’s been a long winter with Long Covid so color brings joy. The war goes on in Ukraine but I’m full of Hope. @filippucciart #color #joy #spring #flowers #contemporaryartist #contemporaryprints #instaartist
Bakhmut, 2023. 40 x 60. It has been heartening to Bakhmut, 2023. 40 x 60. It has been heartening to hear how many of you have donated on the WCK.org site (World Central Kitchen) to help Ukraine survivors. The Ukraine Flower Series and Copper Tritscheller’s bronze horses are up until March 11th at Five Points Gallery in Torrington. @filippucciart @coppertritschellersculpture @fivepointsartsct @ukraine.ua @artistsofinstagram #ukraine #ukrainewar #wck #bakhmut #nowar #flowers #bakhmut #bakhmut_news_
ART REVIEW - One year to the day when the war star ART REVIEW - One year to the day when the war started.  FRACTURED GARDENS: Filippucci’s response to war in Ukraine highlighted at Five Points by TRACEY O'SHAUGHNESSY REPUBLICAN-AMERICAN
February 23, 2023
 
The flower stems in Sandra Filippucci’s mixed media works are dark. So pitch, they are nearly invisible. They move upward with a crumbly impotence toward a blood-red background. Wherever these flowers are blooming is an obscure, agitated space, filled with violent lashing blacks and dribbles of sooty gray. The blossoms themselves seem synthetic and unraveled, like shiny, shredded strands of mylar balloons. The feelings they evoke – joy flogged with fear, innocence shattered into disintegration, are of a garden despoiled. Filippucci’s searing “Ukraine Flower Series: The Power of Defiance,” now at Five Points Gallery, is the artist’s response to the war in Ukraine. Many titles – Kyiv, Zaporizhzhia, Kharkiv – reference specific sites or events. Occasionally, Filippucci will annotate them, in graphite cursive citations of dates and devastation.
Yet, most of the works speak for themselves, flower-like shapes of Ukraine’s pulverized garden. The works look like paintings, large, broad expanses of paint. Flower petals take the form of the cornette of a nun’s wimple, or the mashed remains of a vibrantly colored balloon. These motifs are often crushed together and mangled, picking up pieces of material like a tossed wad of gum. Here is a tube. There is a ribbon of netting. Over there are dagger-like shards of glass. All of them fuse into gobs of the flora and fuselage, a nasty but captivating clump of the natural and the martial.

In “War Babies,” Filippucci’s most colorful indictment of the war, a flower blooms with improbable vividness against an inky black background. (Excerpted from a longer article)
@filippucciart @coppertritschellersculpture @fivepointsartsct @ukraine.ua #ukraine #interiordesigner #artcollectorsoftheworld #worldkitchen #war #warart #contemporaryartist #connecticutartist #nwct #kentchronicles #cornwallctartists #fivepointsarts
Love to the shattered. Love to the sad. We all nee Love to the shattered. Love to the sad. We all need the strength of Love. @filippucciart #love #redheart #valentines #sad #hope #strength #heart #brokenheart #shooting #ukraine #ukrainewar
Opening last night in MINUS 4 degree weather! Than Opening last night in MINUS 4 degree weather! Thank you to all who braved the icy blasts and purchased prints to support World Central Kitchen. @wckitchen @filippucciart @coppertritscheller @fivepointsartsct #cornwallartists #cornwallart #ukraine #ukrainewar #ukraine🇺🇦 #ukraine_beauty #ukraineua #torrington #connecticutartist #defiance
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“Captivated by the mystique of Joan of Arc,  Sandra Filippucci passionately creates iconic imagery that is relevant to the issues of our time.” –Linda Durham, Curator for Voices of Light Exhibition

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