Isabella Pagnanelli - fragments of self

We all tend to regard our teachers - I’m talking about your middle school teacher here - as someone who was just that: a teacher. I’m sure we have never tried to imagine the multidimensional life of those adults we’ve only known giving us lectures and marking papers.

My experience of Isabella Pagnanelli was the opposite: I was magnetised to her artist-self so much I couldn’t imagine she is actually a middle school teacher by profession. 

And so this led me to rethink all my teachers I so harshly deemed boring, suddenly I wonder: who were they outside of the classroom? The same way I now imagine Isabella entering her official space filled with curious and bored young souls.

Isabella entered my life - or rather the IN HER GENIUS club - on a random day I was in Rome for 24 hours. My day was packed with meetings and book presentations, so on my way to one I walked by an artistic lab and was stopped by gorgeous mosaics in the window . I couldn’t fully understand why but I just felt the genius was in action creating those mosaics. I took her card to contact her once back in London, I wanted to discover the woman behind that art.

Tanya Gervasi: I have never met an artist in the modern age whose medium is the mosaic. Actually when I think of mosaics my mind travels back in time and to places such as Pompei and Ercolano, which I visited when I was little. And I have always always wondered if it’s a lost art… so you can imagine my absolute wonder in discovering you. I want to start here: how did you start doing mosaics?

Isabella Pagnanelli: It was really love at first sight with the mosaics. Art is not even really my profession, however art has always interested me and I have always dedicated myself to painting and many other things. To me working with hands is really important, it’s good for my spirit and my mind. I would say I stumbled upon the mosaic art and I fell in love with this technique, so I started to study and do some courses - I even got a diploma. I paint with watercolours so the two seem very distant realities, watercolours being so transparent, light and almost evanescent , while the mosaic, I always say,  is a job for bricklayers because I work with the cement, the hammer, the cut. The stone is heavy.

Nonetheless I find many points of contact between the mosaic and the watercolours. They look far apart, for example watercolours is a very fast technique nevertheless it requires patience because it only looks fast. I would say it’s a technique where you have to think a lot because the moment you make the first gesture, you do something you cannot change. Whereas the mosaic also requires patience but it has some elements of surprise because the moment you apply the grout the end result is always something different from what you expect it to be. I met mosaic artists and that’s when I fell in love with this technique, which is very material. I love this job! A lot of things happen when creating the mosaic, in fact there’s a planning process as well as the cutting of the pieces all the way to the application of grout or cement. It’s a very long and articulated series.

What is your relationship with the element of surprise that is every present with this type of work? And also how do those who commission you a mosaic deal with this? Despite there being a long planning process and hoping for a certain specific result, you have to stay open to the possibility of getting something completely different. 

In the end I believe that all artwork has this partially unknown aspect. The people who commission me a specific work are aware of this. I mean, stones are never the same… there is not one stone equal to another. The stone is a natural element and I work with stone, not the Venetian enamels - which are typically Byzantine, created by man therefore artificial and they make it possible to create infinite shades of colours.
On the contrary, when you work with stone you need to adapt your work to the raw material. So when I am commissioned for a particular job, I always show the material I got and tell them that I have no idea what I will get when I buy in great quantities stones. I might find that colour we want, but I can also find very different shades. This is what mosaic is, and this is the beauty of this technique: the product must adapt to the material.

I love this. I love this because here the artist/the artisan must bend to the will of this element, there’s a component of surrender in the process. 

Let’s say it’s a relationship based on exchange. I’ve always been fascinated by this topic you brought up, an artwork is always an exchange. It can never be exhausted the moment you do it, for there is also the moment of fruition. Moreover when you look at an artwork you project things that are your own, you receive and give in a way. It’s in that moment that the meaning of the artwork is created, in the moment when someone uses it. This is why artwork is made, to meet with someone else. The artwork is always open, always open, and I think that the artist must also surrender to its users. 

When I work on commission I do what I am asked. However I mainly create my own art which consists of fragments. This motif of the artwork onto which other elements apply itself has always fascinated me. I have always been attracted to fragments, although I realised it much later in my life. I started looking at old photos I have shot and I noticed how I have always photographed pieces of things, fragments. And this idea of the artworks that have been violated by time, they’ve been used and destroyed… this 4-hands work - the artist and the time - holds an incredible beauty. I like archeological sites because I like to see that which is not anymore what it used to be in its origin, it is now destroyed and this destruction made it beautiful in another way. Like so beautiful! I love it because this work is even more present, there is also an element of chance - time is after all related to chance too - and in those fragments that arrived to us there is an even bigger projection from the observer who needs to imagine the whole artwork. Therefore you get to use your imagination and thoughts. 

Do you believe that the fragments that you create are fragments of your being? And that perhaps the person who buys your artwork in some way finds a fragment of him/herself?

I think so yes. I believe there is always a bit of us in anything that we do. For sure there is something of each of us in the fragments. We as people are in some way broken and put together again, the beauty of life is also this… we grow up despite the disintegration, the rupture, the wounds. Therefore there is a bit of my idea of life, and also the idea of life in general. I certainly find myself in what I do. I find myself even after some time when I look back at what I did. This is because I find my own imprint, all my artwork has a specific character, my paintings too have a character that is seen with the passing time.
I think I put my vision of the world in my work, but I say this without presumptuousness because I believe this is how it is for all of us regarding everything that we do, however in the creative act there is even more of us. I love working on the past, I love to give new meaning to things others have done. It makes me wonder whether we can invent something new today, sometimes I think not. Maybe all has been said and done and all we can do is give new meaning. 

I resonate with this so much! Before jumping on the call with you I was creating a collage and thinking to myself that perhaps I wished I could paint something anew, however I think I am one of those people who takes what is already out there and makes something new with it.

Yes me too. 

I always tell people how much collages have a great meaning, this is truly my vision of life in my art: life is to be invented and created using this bit and that bit, choosing only the pieces we want out of a magazine instead of the entire publication.
Isabella, why are you not an artist by profession?

It all comes down to life choices. You know my greatest passion was restoration. I would’ve wanted to be an art conservator but life sometimes puts you in a different unplanned direction so I ended up doing completely other things, I’m a teacher. Nonetheless I have always cultivated my passions, always since I was a child. And I have to say that right now I’m happy, I like to have this alternative resource to my job.
Like two parallel roads occasionally meeting. 

What do you teach?

Literature to middle school kids. It’s a lovely age, I like it.

Do you remember the first mosaic you have ever created? And also the first painting you painted?

The first painting I can’t tell because I started painting very early in my life. Whereas one of the first mosaics I created was a reproduction of the mosaic that is on the floor of Otranto’s Cathedral. Those are my favourite mosaics, I adore them and I think they are the most beautiful mosaics in the world. They were made by a monk and look very naive and child-like. So I started by reproducing mosaics that already exist, and now I experiment with other materials and create things that are between mosaics and sculptures. 

You are born in Rome, a city so incredibly beautiful. The last time I was there I spent the day walking with the nose up in absolute awe. How does it feel to be born surrounded by beauty? Do you think it has influenced you?

I am sure it had an impact on me. Beauty is essential to education of all senses, not just for aesthetics. It’s important, those who live in degradation cannot mature beautiful thoughts. I don’t know how exactly it influenced me but it for sure did, I remember my parents also drew and it was my father who got me into this artistic passion. They were not artists by profession but were very passionate and they shared this passion somehow routing me. I have very strong memories of my father taking me to museums and inviting me to draw, you’re now awakening in me this memory. I have always thought that beauty educates but I never applied this concept to myself.

What is beauty to you?

I don’t know. I think it surely has to do with life, with ethics, with community. I think studying art gives us the tools to be better people, not only from an aesthetic point of view but also from an ethical, moral, social point of view. It gives you a sort of social responsibility, which is something I am very sensitive to. I don’t know how to describe beauty but what I know is that those who grow up without having known it loses a fundamental aspect of oneself. 

I think beauty is more of a feeling, such as love, more than something that could have specific standards. Children are proof of this, notice how they react when they see something beautiful. It makes me believe it’s something intrinsic to the human being, so natural to us. 
What do you like to read? You look like someone who writes, do you write?

(She laughs) I write for myself. Being not so young I have the need to secure on paper my thoughts and emotions. Perhaps I also write for my children.
I read mostly historical books and lately quite a bit on archeology. I like fiction too and I’m currently reading the novel of an Afghan female writer, and at the same time I’m reading a historical book on the Medieval women. Usually I read 2 books at a time!

If you had a magic wand, who would you be?

What a tough question! You know to be honest I don’t think I would want to change myself. I would mind being someone else. I find pleasure in being who I am, with all my flaws and fears. I would not want to change who I am. I like being Isabella. 

And what are Isabella’s three qualities?

I’m a very reflective person. I give much thought to things, it comes natural to me. I have a rich internal dialogue thus I reflect on myself and the world.
I am curious. I find myself curious about human nature and so to discover and understand people.

Lastly, but I am not sure it’s a quality for I sometimes find myself a little bit imprisoned by this… I am a very rational person so I always need to understand. I’m not sure whether it’s a quality or a limit. However, my creative self opens other channels in me which are less rational. 

Do you think you apply this rational side of you to being a teacher?

I think so because it’s a job which requires a solid planning, you cannot improvise it. Nonetheless because it is based on the relationship with the other, it also carries an element of spontaneity just like art. So even in a classroom there is a space for an improvised creative act. 

I have to admit this story on the fragments fascinates me a lot and I will sit on it.

Oh! It was such an illumination in my life when I realised I was interested in the fragments. Did you see the photos I sent you? I wasn’t sure what to send you and I opted for some photos that I took for a photographic project on walls: I photographed pieces of walls. There, too, the concept of the fragment is ever present. The fragment is beautiful! It’s beautiful because it allows you to discover the details, for when you look at a whole piece of artwork you don’t notice them. With the fragment is like you zoom in with a camera on a little part losing the whole vision. This is what I like, to lose the completed form. My last work has been on this, I fragmented some Mycenaean frescoes from Akrotiri (Santorini - Greece) - an incredibly fascinating culture where space was given to women. These frescoes were all representing women priestesses and I fragmented them in a way that the original forms aren’t recognisable. 

You seem to be doing Time’s work before It is given a chance. However, your fragments hold the essence of the whole artwork.

Yes, there’s the remainder of an invisible trace and it allows you to create a new meaning.