Isotta Page ‘14

Isotta headshot photo by Cristina Matacotta

What brought you to Rome, and what are your memories of your time as a student at St. Stephen's?

I moved to Rome when I was a young kid. I had been living in Northern Italy. My parents are American. My mom is originally Italian, but my parents grew up in the U.S. We moved to Rome for their work when I was six. St. Stephen's was a natural choice as an international school, and my brother went there. Some of my fondest memories are of being in the art room with the legends, Mrs. Clink and Mrs. Stewart. The IB program allowed me to do art full-time as an HL subject, and that felt like the best thing in the world — getting to do art during the day instead of math and science. Studying the history of art with Ms. Nicholson was also a vital memory; she inspired me to love art history from a new angle. Growing up in Rome, I was a tour guide in the summertime, something I did for fun and to earn money. Taking Ms. Nicholson's art history class revitalized the history of art for me and made me realize it was current and vital. I graduated in 2014 and went to the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. Before Brexit, it was still accessible for EU students; I earned a double bachelor's in history of art and fine arts and earned my master's. Edinburgh marked an extensive department in my work. Previously, I had always studied painting, since I was young. I trained with an oil painter in Rome, beginning when I was nine and into my teens. Eventually, I worked with her as a studio assistant. When I got to university, I was in a different environment and decided to pursue sculpture.

Edinburgh has a fantastic cast collection, including the Elgin Marble casts. Growing up in Rome, I had always been intrigued by Baroque and Renaissance sculpture, and when I saw the cast collection in Edinburgh, I knew that was what I wanted to study. Granted, the art we did in Edinburgh was very conceptual and non-figurative. There was an emphasis on thinking and theory and a departure from the strict regimen of oil painting I had been taught. It was also a departure from the guidelines of IB art and a natural move into the ideas around art. During university, I also participated in an exchange for one year in California, where I was in a completely different art environment based on craft and making. That sparked my interest in making artwork for the outdoors. I made a sculptural installation for Burning Man and, as a result, could work outside in the sun. It was very different from Scotland. So, many things coalesced during my time in university, leading to what I do now.

Isotta Studio Shot photo by Cristina Matacotta

You've continued to work in sculpture, and recently, you have begun working in marble. What has that been like, and, specifically, what's it like to work in Valencia — has that influenced your artistic practice?

Growing up in Rome, I was surrounded by marble sculptures and was curious about them. However, I only thought a little about pursuing it, mainly because it always seemed like a historical media, something other than what is being done today. As I find my footing in marble carving, I'm discovering that many people do it now. It's a small world and predominantly male, but it's cool. I've enjoyed having the freedom and flexibility to pursue my passions and double down on things that interest me. One piece of advice I received from a mentor of mine was to reinvest in your work and your practice continually. So, after completing a big project, I decided to invest in a course with a master marble carver in Italy. I went to study with him for some time, and this was very much a prize for me, a fun thing to do; I wanted to learn something new, and I had no idea that marble would become the new direction of my work. I just wanted to try something different. I was also drawn to the concept of learning a new craft. I found a carver on Google, went to study with him, and was surprised by how intense and physical the process is. In just ten days, I made a small tabletop sculpture. It was amazing to watch the transformation of a piece of stone from start to finish; it was just geology, a piece of the earth, and it was utterly transformed. I am very interested in materials. I have worked with recycled materials for past projects but have always worked with chemical and artificial materials like resins, fiberglass, and metals. The thing that's so cool about working with marble is that there's no waste, just powder, and also, it's a rock so that it could end up with other stones. It's never going to become trash. There's the tiny footprint. I find it so interesting to work with a material like that and something so ancient — marble has been around longer than humans.

As I've begun to work in marble, I've departed from traditional methods. There are norms that most marble carvers follow; for example, most marble sculpture is a copy of a work done in plaster or clay, and the job of the marble carver is to make a full-scale, meticulous copy in stone, and that's how it has been done since the Enlightenment. What I love about marble carving is how fast you can transform a piece. The process is very gestural. Our tools are limited and have stayed the same: hammers, chisels, air hammers, and pneumatic tools that use compressed air. Tools like saws with diamond blades can transform a piece rapidly.

It has been attractive to research and learn from the old masters and learn about more industrial processes while giving myself time and space to experiment. Recently, I have enjoyed working with Spanish marble, which is different from Carrara marble, which is quite famous. Every stone has a different geological story and composition. Living in Valencia has been excellent. It's a beautiful, affordable place to live. My partner and I are both self-employed, and we needed to maintain a high quality of life and invest in our work. There's a lot of space available here for artists. I work in a reclaimed factory space, an industrial warehouse parceled into spaces artists can rent. It's much more affordable here than other global centers for art like New York, London, or even Rome. There's a lively, creative community here, with a big emphasis on craft. There's a festival here every March that the whole community participates in, where they build and burn gigantic effigies. Artists form groups and make these giant papier-mache-esque statues, all burned in a big party. Working in space, I've sourced marble from a large marble quarry near the border with Andalusia.

centrale montemartini

You mentioned earlier that there's an essential difference between Carrara marble and Spanish marble. When you work with different types of marble, does that require you to change your artistic approach?

I was surprised by the differences. Spanish marble has a much higher quartz content, glistens, and shimmery. It also flakes more, but I use the same tools. The craziest thing is that, when you're working on a piece, you don't see the quality of the stone until the final phases because the tools you use to scratch the surface so deeply and create so much friction. Everything looks very white. Only after hours of sanding and polishing can you see the marble's color and veins. I was working on a piece recently and only knew it was full of grey veins at the end. I thought it would be much whiter. So, working with marble brings a lot of surprises.

I also wanted to ask about one of your recent outdoor commissions in Umbria. For this commission, you were not working in marble but instead using recycled materials to complete a large outdoor installation. How did that project come about, and what was it like to work with diverse, recycled materials?

I took on the project for private clients for over one year with a beautiful estate, Eco farm, and vineyard in Umbria. They were looking for an installation of sculptures to cover a plot of land that's an island of trees. This young, quite dense oak forest contrasts with the agricultural, meticulously maintained land surrounding it. As part of their estate, they built a stunning wine-tasting room with a talented architect, Scott Hughes, who incorporated giant, reinforced concrete arches into his design. To pour the concrete and create the arches, he used large Styrofoam molds, the negatives of the arch, and large half-moon shapes. Upon the termination of the building, the Styrofoam was removed and became waste. Styrofoam is a challenging material because it always exists. It doesn't biodegrade. So, the owners and I decided to give this material a second life, where it will live forever as art.

At the time, I had been exploring sculptural installations with resin and fiberglass, which are industrial materials mainly used to make cars, motorbikes, and boats. For the sculptural installation, I decided to carve the Styrofoam using hot wire tools to create a sculpture just as you would with clay, and then I added layers of fiberglass on top, covered with resin. The effect built on the surface was like the texture of a surfboard or a boat, making the material hard to the touch, completely transforming the Styrofoam from a soft, flaky thing into a hard surface. I treated the surface of each sculpture differently. I was interested in the idea of material illusion, so I also used various metal powders, marble dust, and patinas to age the surface of the sculptures, giving them a shiny, metallic surface and then sanding them with steel wool to remove the plasticky later on top, exposing the copper or bronze powder underneath, as if I were rusting the metal but, in my case, I achieved this effect through the use of a resin and a process called "cold casting." I studied casting at Edinburgh, but cold casting was something I learned from YouTube, which has been a great font of information for me. I worked on a large scale; the giant sculpture was almost three meters tall. At first, the sculptures were lightweight, but twenty kilos of metal powder and resin made them quite heavy.

Ultimately, the material was transformed into ten sculptures connected to a different element. I was significantly influenced by the sustainable ethos of the estate and the idea of the functionality of land. One of my favorite pieces is an anvil, a symbol of work and craft, suspended between two trees, as it were weightless, a large bronze oxidized blacksmithing tool. It moves with the wind. My fascination with industrialism and its relationship to art and nature can be traced to growing up in Rome and visiting places like Centrale Montemartini, where white, classical marble sculptures are showcased against the background of a decommissioned electrical plant. This outdoor sculpture commission was one of my first experiences carving and working with marble using marble dust. It was an excellent opportunity.

So, you practice art and spend a lot of your time thinking about what it means to be a creative person today. One of the ways you do that is through your successful podcast, "Art Is." How did that podcast come about, and what has it been like to create and curate your own podcast?

Podcasts have always been a massive source of knowledge for me. I'm a curious person, and while I was in university, working in the studio, I often listened to podcasts on various diverse and sometimes bizarre subjects. When I graduated with my MFA in 2020, during COVID-19, I felt lost and decided to make the kind of podcast I wanted to hear as a student. Working on the podcast allowed me to reflect and realize how much I appreciate open dialogue and conversation. I was offered the opportunity to participate in a fellowship program called "On Deck," based in California, that taught me everything about podcasting over ten weeks while living in Valencia during COVID lockdowns. At the end of the program, I started my show. That was 2021, and it's been a fantastic experience so far to speak with different artists and creative professionals. Since the beginning, the show has emphasized the importance of learning from beyond the traditional art world. I've long been interested in the intersection of art and technology, so I've spoken with people who work in tech but are also passionate about art as artists, collectors, or fans. Over time, I've realized how community can be fostered online and the fantastic connections one can make digitally. I've also become a better conversationalist and active listener. I'm not interested in becoming an expert or teaching people; I share what I learn. The "On Deck" fellowship introduced me to the concept of peer-to-peer learning, and I've realized how much you can learn from somebody who's on your level or just slightly ahead. I came from a traditional educational background and discovered much to gain from nonhierarchical learning environments.

Studio Shot 2 photo by Cristina Matacotta

Have there been conversations that you've found particularly meaningful or impacted how you live your life or practice art?

Every conversation makes an impact in some way. The most meaningful connection I've made has been with an incredibly talented woman named Lauren Hill, a coach for creatives. We met online in 2020. I heard she was a coach for artists, someone who helped artists make money doing what they loved. I had never heard of anyone doing that before, so we connected. I interviewed her on the podcast as a fan but then hired her as my coach, which has leveled up my skills and helped me check in with the whole business side of being a self-employed artist, something never addressed in art school. Lauren and I had such a good connection that I asked her to co-host the new season of the podcast with me. I went to California one year ago, and we recorded the season, diving into ten to fifteen topics that interest us and that we know are top of mind for creatives. It was a phenomenal experience. The season I was just wrapped a few weeks ago.

Thank you for sharing so much of your journey as an artist and a working professional. Your passion for art is so evident, and clearly, it's been a lifelong passion. You've been an artist for most of your life, and I wonder, looking back on your artistic career so far, do you feel things have unfolded as you imagined?

Definitely not! There have been a lot of changes and pivots, the most dramatic one being the pandemic. When I finished my five-year degree in fine art, it was meant to conclude in a degree show, a pinnacle moment where an artist showcases their work, gallerists attend, and it launches you into the art world. In my case, that show was canceled at the very last minute in May 2020. It was supposed to be the catalyst, the moment that would determine everything that came next, and when it was canceled, I felt completely unprepared and unsure of what to do next. It was devastating. That moment put a lot of minor disappointments into perspective. I realized the importance of validating my work and checking why I was doing what I was doing; I realized the importance of assessing my art according to my guidelines, not just those of an organization like a university. It was valuable for me to understand the importance of self-validation early in my career as an artist. I continue to learn how important it is to overcome the enormous obstacles and everyday challenges, not holding onto anger and distancing myself from rejection. Negative criticism is everywhere, so, especially as an artist, you must celebrate the small wins and keep the highs and lows of every day in perspective.

Your point about the importance of learning how to deal with and bounce back from negative criticism is essential for artists and something we all must learn and become better at putting into practice in our daily lives. Is there any other advice you would like to share with the St. Stephen’s community?

Don't compare yourself to your peers or anonymous people you don't know online. And that's valid on a personal and professional level. You don't know what anyone's situation is, and comparing yourself against standards you can't control is unhelpful. Productively, you can only compare yourself to your past self. It's essential to set goals and recognize your successes. I love setting long-term, five- and ten-year goals. I like checking in along the way and realizing that some of the things that I thought were important when I graduated high school, for example, are now entirely uninteresting! It's also satisfying to look back on a goal you thought would take a long time to accomplish and realize you've already completed it.

When setting goals, it's helpful to visualize them and think about what it would be like to achieve them. So many young people develop their goals based on the experiences and careers of other people instead of thinking about what they would like. Then, along the way, they may realize they've been working towards goals they don't care about, which aren't authentic. So, check in with yourself; it doesn't need to happen daily. Another tip is to learn to share your work meaningfully; this can start on a small scale with just one person or a few people and then expand online through a medium like Instagram. Building authentic connections and hearing even just one or two people respond to your work and tell you how it resonated with them can be meaningful. For example, I've started sharing my work through a newsletter with an audience of people who are interested in what I'm doing. It gives me a place to share the background of my work, the updates on my pieces, and how I'm thinking about working without having to explain my work to thousands of people on the internet. I've found it helpful to take an inventory of who's interested, see who's paying attention, and keep a record; it can even be a list on your phone of interested people you can dialogue with and stay in touch with forever. It's okay to scale things back. There is so much urgency to do everything; my favorite quote is, "Misguided urgency is the enemy of progress." I think about that daily and remind myself to enjoy this freedom and flexibility to do what I love.