Artist In Residence: Building a Clay Bridge

One of our goals at Esperienza is to sustain and celebrate the amazing art and culture in the Emilia Romagna region. What better way to do so than providing new opportunities to aspiring and talented new artists!

2024: Reviving and Expanding our Artist In Residence Program!

Art has the power to transform our lives, and our new Artist In Residence program will foster and support the creative process of artistic expression and excellence across two distant but connected communities in America and Faenza, Italy.

Focusing in ceramics art, the artists will not only share their knowledge and expertise in the host country, through workshops and interaction with local students, but will also bring their experiences and new knowledge back to their local communities. With this program, we’re building a clay bridge from Italy to America!

Thank you to all who have supported this program!

Read on to learn more about the artists and our program.

About the 2024 Artists

Born in Veneto, Fiorenza Pancino has lived and worked in Faenza for over 20 years. She is passionate about ceramics, which she says resembles her because like her is sensitive to sudden changes in temperature. Fiorenza’s art explores the deep and complex dynamics of interpersonal relationships, human frailties, the unconscious and the relationship with the social environment. Recent projects include an International Ceramic Residency at Jingdezhen Ceramic Institute, China and at Ceratekno, Toki, Japan.

Fiorenza was in Minneapolis from June 4-July 17, 2024 for the first half of the 2024 artist exchange. She participated in the local community of ceramics artists at Forma Community Clayroom. Read more about her experience here.

Based in Minneapolis, MN, the ceramics work of Kelly Newcomer draws inspiration from relationships of caring between humans, earth systems, machines, and the electromagnetic spectrum. Her colorful, painterly works on paper and her ceramic figures are inspired by the non-dystopian potential of our shared future on earth. Her work is influenced by theorist Donna Haraway, “Technology is not neutral. We're inside of what we make, and it's inside of us. We're living in a world of connections — and it matters which ones get made and unmade.” (The Cyborg Manifesto, 1984). Kelly has exhibited widely and also licenses her work as a commercial illustrator. 

Kelly will be in Faenza in August and September 2024, where she will learn from local artists and participate in Argilla, Faenza’s bi-annual international festival of ceramics.

About the 2018 Artists

2018: Experienza celebrates our first Artists In Residence!

Esperienza and the town of Pennabilli are excited to announce an Artist in Residence program intended to promote Pennabilli to a wider audience and inspire further exploration of this fascinating artistic village in the heart of Italy.

Photo credit: Maria Chiang

Visual artist Eyenga Bokamba was in residence in Pennabilli September 5-21, 2018. Eyenga Bokamba (Minneapolis, MN) is an artist whose abstract paintings and installation art express a rare and translucent beauty. She is the founder of Future Tense Gallery in Minneapolis and holds a B.A. in Interdisciplinary Studies from the University of Minnesota and a Masters Degree from the Arts in Education Program at Harvard University.  Her work has been exhibited in Boston, Minneapolis, and Milwaukee, as well as in Miami in 2018 during Art Basel. Most recently, she had a solo exhibit titled "What will I do with all this freedom?" at The National Association of Women Artists (NAWA) in New York City. "My greatest desire," says the artist, "is to create work that advances our collective consciousness about what it means to be alive, thriving, and empathetic in today's world.”

For more information about Eyenga’s work, visit her website (https://www.eyengabokambapaintings.com

Banner image & artwork by Eyenga Bokamba.

 Lisa Venticinque is a photographer based in Saint Paul, Minnesota specializing in portraiture & documentary storytelling.  With an M.A. in Media & Communications from Goldsmiths University of London, her background is in documentary media and Cultural Anthropology.  In addition to photography, the spectrum of her work has included shooting and producing documentary shorts, working as associate producer on national print & video campaigns, event production, graphic design and more.  Lisa is currently in the midst of a research and portraiture project entitled We Are 25, in which she is exploring the Venticinque name: its origin, its storyline, and the people who carry the name. 

If you are an artist and you’d like to be notified about future opportunities to apply for the Esperienza Artist-In-Residence program, click here.