“The human heart is as a frail craft on which we wish to reach the stars.”
– Giotto di Bondone

My practice is inspired by place and is informed by my encounter with the beauty and wonder of the everyday world. I seek to give shape to familiar yet enigmatic experiences through my engagement with ideas, methods, and materials that find expression in practices of drawing, printmaking, book arts, and sculpture.

The presented works entitled La Via Stellata (The Starry Way), are from a series of twenty-eight books, created during a residency at The Civita Institute located in the village of Civita di Bagnoregio in central Italy. This series reflects my time investigating the architecture and landscape of Civita as a place of exchange between antiquity and the present.

The hilltop town of Civita with its striking location atop a plateau of volcanic tuff overlooking the Tiber river valley, it is a place of fragile beauty due to its unstable foundation that often erodes. It owes much of its unaltered condition to its relative isolation. The only access is a 500-metre suspension footbridge suspended over the Valle dei Calanchi accessible only from the nearby town.

Steeped in mystery and mysticism, the town is noted for its architecture and rich history. The settlement was first established by the Etruscans in c.500 BC. It fell under Roman rule, was conquered by the Lombards, passed onto the Franks, became part of the Papal states, and in 1140 AD became a free commune. Once known as Balneum Regis – ‘King’s Bath”, for the Lombard King Desiderius who had his wounds healed by the hot springs of the area, Civita di Bagnoregio is also the birthplace of St. Bonaventure.

My investigations found expressions in the form of large-scale rubbings of the foot bridge. This relatively simple process, which combines elements of drawing, printmaking, and sculpture- generates sophisticated and unexpected compositions that capture both the physical and the more elusive properties of objects.

Each day for the duration of the month-long residency, I went to the bridge before sunrise to document the bridge via drawing through the process of rubbing. Beginning at the start of the bridge, with each step forward, I would lay down a 12” x 1” strip of paper and create a rubbing of that section. The next day I began where I had left off the day before, continuing this process until I reached the top of the bridge, the threshold into Civita, Porta Santa Maria. The finished series of twenty-eight books provide a concrete and physical form to my investigations, which made manifest my journey, a pilgrimage through an enchanted and enigmatic place, that blended the physical and the spiritual into a unified experience.

Series Information: La Via Stellata 2019-2022
Various media on paper, board, dyed cloth, gold ink, Series of 28 books, dimensions of each book: 12″ l x 1 3/4″ w x1/4″.

Claudia Sbrissa has exhibited nationally and internationally including shows at The Museum of Anthropology, Santander, Spain; ArtVenice Biennale, Venice, Italy; Birmingham Museum, Birmingham, UK; AC Institute, New York, NY; Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Canada; Museo Guillermo Perez Chiriboga, Quito, Ecuador; Herzen Galley, St. Petersburg, Russia; Islip Art Museum, Islip, NY; Kentler Drawing Space, Brooklyn, NY; Kuppelhalle der Dresdner Bank, Leipzig, Germany; Mabel Smith Douglass Library Galleries, Rutgers University, NJ; Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, North Adams, MA; Newport Art Museum, Newport, RI; Proyecto ace, Buenos Aires, Argentina; Smack Mellon, Brooklyn, NY; Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts, Grand Rapids, MI.

Sbrissa has participated in residencies including, NAT Art Residency, Cantabria, Spain, Civita Institute, Civita di Bagnoregio, Italy, Giorgio Cini Foundation, Venice, Italy; Salem Art Works, Salem, NY; Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts, Ithaca, NY; Women’s Studio Workshop, Rosendale, NY; I-Park, East Haddam, CT; Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, Skowhegan, ME; and Malaspina Studio, Granville Island, Vancouver, Canada. Her work is in the collections of The Columbus Museum, The Dan Donovan Collection, Toronto, Canada, Museum Guillermo Perez Chiribiga, Quito, Ecuador, the Museum of Contemporary Art, (MACRO), Rome, Italy and numerous private national and international collections. Sbrissa’s work has been written about in Sculpture Magazine, New York Times, Art in America, ARTNews, ArtForum, and many other publications. Sbrissa lives and works in New York City, USA. She is a Professor of Fine Arts at St. John’s University.

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UWE Bristol, City Campus at Bower Ashton, Kennel Lodge Road, Bristol BS3 2JT.