Professional Practices(ART 399)

The blending of cultures and the fusion of art mediums are both integral components of contemporary art culture. High art, low art, sculpture, fashion, graphic design, animation, traditional drawing and digital illustration are all coming together in today’s world in interesting and unique ways. This parallels my life growing up as an Italian American, one side of my family being from Italy and the other half from America. Growing up, I was inspired by my love of comics and cartoons as well as my frequent trips to Italy and visiting my nonno and nonna. Italy is considered ‘old’ and America is considered ‘new’ in the greater context of history and both pull inspiration from each other in our current day. My work aims to combine the best of both worlds by blending traditional methods of creating art, primarily illustration in the form of comics, with the ease and convenience of technology and digital tools while incorporating influences from American popular culture and Italian art. This can be seen in ‘Thank The Heaven’s Issue 1: Plate of Bones’ where I have created an issue of a comic inspired by the older style of weekly publications such as that of Casper The Friendly Ghost or Archie while having it set in Europe in a vaguely distant time period . Some of the artists that inspired this work include italian comic artists Angela and Luciana Giussani, the creators of the italian black comic ‘Diabolik’, and comic book artists and writers Frank Miller and Dave Gibbons, creators of the comics 300 and Watchmen respectively.