Marble orchards bear no fruit

This accordion book was inspired during four months spent studying in Florence, Italy and traveling throughout Europe. Despite the number of masterpieces housed in Florence, ranging from painting to sculpture and architecture, some of the most beautiful and moving pieces of work I saw during my time there were in cemeteries and were made by unacknowledged craftspeople. Reoccurring motifs or small details caught my interest and provided a puzzle of design and tombstone trends to be unraveled. The role of cemeteries in Europe felt very different then the cemeteries back home in the United States, as religion plays a bigger role in burial practices in the Catholic country of Italy. I visited various graveyards as an observer and an outsider, trying to understand the culture I was immersed in through an alternative route. The design of the book is meant to take the imagery out of the context of the cemetery, and to frame the pencil images in a stark and modern layout. The goal, in part, was to separate the art and beauty of the graveyards from the death and despair that they may represent, intending to focus on the beauty I saw there.

Featured in the SACI Fall Gallery Show - Florence, IT 2016