The Folktales of Picinisco Collection
This collection of artworks was made while I was on a residency in Italy. They are inspired by folktales I collected from local people during my residency, folktales that had never been written down or recorded before.
I collated these folktales into an artist’s book with etchings made on zinc plates, prepared while I was still in London and taken out to Italy with me. As I was transcribing these stories I made sketches onto the plates, which were processed when I returned to London.
The New Shoes
At the Hen House
Mario and His Horse
The Three Bad Boys of Picinisco
Peppino the Good and Honest Church Worker
A Good Liver Stew
La Serpa
How many brothers does Settefrati have?
Dedicated to Giovanni Vittorio Faccenda and to the many other migrants who left this land for a better life - but couldn’t stay away. The Folktales of Picinisco are stories originating in the popular culture of Picinisco around the 1800’s, typically passed on by word of mouth. These stories were told by local people to Liliana De Felice Mancini-Ventura, who was born in Picinisco before the Second World War. She emigrated as a young girl with her parents to the United States, but returns frequently. Angela Paola Rossi, the artist who created the prints based on The Folktales, is the granddaughter of another migrant. Angela trained to be an architect at the Mackintosh School of Architecture in Glasgow. She is now a practising artist and has completed her degree as a Master of Fine Arts in September 2019 at Middlesex University in London. She has returned to the area every year since she was born. Angela’s grandfather, Giovanni Vittorio Faccenda was born in 1917 in La Rocca - a small mountainous hamlet of Picinisco. He contracted pleurisy as a child and was not expected to survive and so convinced was the family they even had a suit made for his burial. He obviously survived but was left with a weak heart. He spent much of his childhood tending his family's flock of sheep. His mother died while he was still young and he was brought up by his sister Lucrezia with whom he maintained a close relationship throughout his life. He had little education during these years as the family was too poor to buy him shoes to walk down to school in the nearest village of San Gennaro. With the outbreak of the Second World War and Italy's subsequent involvement he was conscripted and posted to the island of Sardinia where he remained for seven years. It was here working for the captain of his unit that he gained an education and was later put in charge of the army stores. He had a natural intelligence and learned quickly. At the end of the war he returned home and married Angela Felicia Arcari from San Gennaro. They went on to have three children, Aldo, Maria Zelinda and Angela’s mother Teresa. Determined to escape the hard life of his parents, Vittorio, after the birth of his first child, Aldo, emigrated in search of a better life. He took his family to Glasgow where three of his wife’s sisters had already settled. In order to gain naturalisation papers he worked on a farm in Ayrshire for two years before going to work in his sister- in- law’s café and shortly after opened his own café business in Nitshill. He proved to be a shrewd and hardworking businessman and went on to open many more businesses in a relatively short span of time. He was liked and respected by both Scots and Italians and was known for helping the Piciniscani who followed him to Glasgow. On retiring from business, he and Angela’s grandmother had just started spending more time at their much-loved new home in San Gennaro when he died in 1979 aged just 62. He is buried in the cemetery there. Angela likes to think of her Nonno Vittorio still playing boccia in the piazza and her Nonna Angela enjoying her home and friends in the village somewhere in their ‘other life.’
The prints are made from etchings which are made on a zinc plate and they are the substrate for the intaglio print. Plates are etched in acid and engraved using particular tools to make detailed designs that can be inked and reprinted over and over before the images begin to fail. This set of etchings is set to a print limited edition of twenty-five. The Aquatint process is also used on the etchings to produce areas of tonal shading resembling a watercolour. This process is made by etching a zinc plate with nitric acid and using resin and varnish. The texts are set into an embossed area on the prints. The text is then printed on the paper with an inkjet printer. There are eight stories in this collection. They are printed on Arches Velin 100% cotton paper 300gms and are 483mm x 329mm.
For further information and if you are interested in purchasing a single print or the set of prints please contact Angela Rossi here
