An artist's road leads to 'Oz'
Work celebrates 70th birthday
Angelo Aversa is not in Kansas anymore.
Neither tornado nor yellow bricks have led the Italian-born artist to the second-floor loft of the Walter Baker studios, where since June he has worked and lived with his wife, Mary Gallagher, a native New Englander, and their 2-year-old son, Cosimo.
Love, chance, and a search for a place to make a living as an artist have taken Aversa down roads that pass through Italy, France, New York City, and, now, Lower Mills. Despite his newcomer status, the painter-turned-woodcutter is happy to identify himself as a Bostonian in a fine arts show sponsored by Warner Bros. to celebrate the upcoming 70th anniversary of the movie "The Wizard of Oz." His woodcut-produced print, "Dream Oz," will be the only work by a New England artist displayed at this year's Art Basel Miami Beach, the prestigious sister-event of the international Swiss art show, Dec. 4-7.
Creating a Dorothy that was at home among the women featured in many of his 500-plus woodcut collection was the real challenge for Aversa, 39, who is not bashful about giving full play to an erotic moment in his art. On a recent Thursday night, he took a break from an open studios holiday event to discuss his work. A partition separates bedroom and studio, but many of the prints that line the workshop wall undo that barrier.
"Yes, it's a nude Dorothy," said Aversa with a laugh, "but her arms are covering her breasts." He leaned into the print on which he spent "20 long days" and pointed out some of the liberties he took with the film image of Dorothy.
"You see the dragonflies?" asked Aversa. "I used them instead of the flying monkeys; they were banal."
Aversa situated his Dorothy among short-stemmed poppies, implicating the narcotic flower in reverie more than disorientation. Beneath Dorothy lies a pool of gold, which Aversa had originally tried as brick-road yellow before deciding on the cooler metallic hue whose reflections evokes self-smitten Narcissus.
To see "Dream Oz" among Aversa's oeuvre invites speculation of wife as muse, rather than Judy Garland.
"No, no," said Aversa. "This one was not Mary." He paused. "That one was," he said, pointing to a print titled "Lovers of Ravello." His eyes moved a fraction. "And that one, and that one," he added. "Well, maybe it was Mary, but it's not Mary."
Aversa surveyed the wall again.
"It's strange, my wife is everywhere, but not my son," he added. "Well, not yet anyway."
The physicality of art is key for Aversa, who said he grew up in Pozzuoli, Italy, with parents who could build anything with their hands. Mentored through his 20s by renowned Italian painter Giuseppe La Mura, Aversa sharpened his skills with oils, developed discipline, and discovered the nuanced beauty of common objects. The experience of a lived, felt medium was missing, though.
Serendipity led him into a xylography class taught by Maria Rosaria Perrella at the Academy of Fine Arts in Naples, Italy, an institution Aversa contemplated leaving soon after arriving. In that first class he had discovered his medium: a process that prized the tangible. Aversa relished the way that xylography moved from inspiration to wood selection to pencil drawing to ink drawing to carving and cutting to ink and paper selection to hand rubbing the Japanese paper that absorbs the ink.
"No two prints are alike," said Aversa, who created five prints of "Dream Oz," which Warner Bros. will auction off to raise money for the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation.
Encasing the carving in resin to ensure a limited number of prints is the final step in xylography and an invitation to Aversa to dream anew.
He pointed out a self-portrait done in New York in 2003, which bore his signature motif: a shooting star.
"I was born on August 10, the night of San Lorenzo and shooting stars," Aversa said. "I've seen thousands and wished on them all."
Asked if he had seen one in Dorchester, he said no.
"But," Aversa added, "I'm still looking up." 