Moths Watched Me Paint

More pictures of the signs I made for Foreverland, a new art store/space opening in Marshall NC.
I want to do more outdoor painting. If you want me to paint figures on a wall or sign, contact me at lucadipierro[at]yahoo[it]

Store Signs. Steinberg

A few days ago I was asked to paint two store signs. I never did anything like that before, and the store will sell great vintage stuff and art in downtown Marshall, NC: two reasons to say yes. Also, I love store signs and all kind of signs.

I started painting on Wednesday. More today. It's such a different physical experience than sitting at a table. You don't have a place where to rest your arms. Also, there is the sun. In my studio, I have shades to keep it out.
I was surprised of how natural it came to draw and paint on a large scale. I was worried about the lines, the creases of hands, bellies, necks, that they wouldn't show up. To my surprise, they do. A wall is a big sheet of paper, with more texture. In fact it's not a wall I am painting on, but wood. And paper is made of wood.




Saul Steinberg said great things about store signs in Reflections and Shadows, a book that I never get tired of reading. It's one of those books that I often consider keeping under my pillow, instead that on a shelf.

"Much of Magritte derives from sign painting, especially when he has to depict a human figure. The whole Surrealist school tries to show man as a cliché, the standard figure copied on signs from the fashion journals of the day."

Steinberg considered himself a writer who drew instead of writing. I love that. I love the way he did not write what he did not write.

Steinber wrote letters though. There is a great volume of letters to Aldo Buzzi, Lettere a Aldo Buzzi 1945-1999, published in Italy by Adelphi.

Screening in Lugo with Amuleto

On July, Friday 23, in Lugo (province of Ravenna, Italy), as a part of the 6th edition of Lugocontemporanea, there will be a live show by Amuleto with a screening of my animated films.

Amuleto is the new incredible musical project of Francesco Dillon and Riccardo Wanke (the name is inspired by a Roberto Bolaño book). If you are interested in impro/experimental/drone music, I highly recommend their new CD, put out by Die Schachtel.

The theme of this year’s Lugocontemporanea is "Inferni: strategie di sopravvivenza," which means something like "Hell: Strategies of Survival."

I am honored that Francesco and Riccardo of Amuleto asked me to screen my work to go with their music. I edited a 45 minutes flow of images, old and new work, including segments of a never-screened-before animated series called Prestidigitazioni. The show starts at 9.30 pm at the Area di Chiesa di S. Onofrio.

The whole festival is pretty amazing: music, visual art, poetry, installation. Check out the program.

Art for Pank

I worked on a bunch of art for Pank Magazine in the past two weeks. I submitted a picture story called This Bird Can Kill Us and it'll be printed in the next issue and if you want to read it you have to buy the magazine. There will be a lot of great work in it. Pre-orders here.



I made the cover of Pank 5. too, which I can't wait to see printed.














Also, I made the cover for a new book they are publishing (in the Pank Little Books series), which is one of the best things I have read this year, Our Island of Epidemics by Matthew Salesses. I never felt that close to the world of anybody I made art for. You really need to get this book. It's surreal, imaginative (in a wonderful minor key), and written in a language that is both lyrical and dry. It has the deadpan quality that I like in things. It's the Television Personalities and Cyrano de Bergerac together. Preorder it here.

Art for Mostly Spinach

I made this art for the cover of Mostly Spinach, a collection of poems by Joseph Goosey, available from Virgogray Press.

The Need To Shut Up. On Why, How and What I Draw.

1) My art starts from my obsession with books. Books are objects. They are maps of the world containing pictures and words. To me, pictures and words are very close. Michel Butor writes: “Painting is also something we read… literature is also something we look at.”

2) My art is small. Reduction multiplies space. I draw and paint on paper, then cut out the figures and glue them on discarded book covers or found boards. My cut-outs are often so small that I need tweezers to move them and a lens to see them: minuscule teeth, nails, eyelids, drops of blood or sweat. The best way to look at my art is to get as close as you can and to read it like a book.

3) My art is made of figures. These figures come from other figures. It’s thirty-seven years that my eyes collect images. My head is full of them. My figures are mostly faces. They are made of paper, but somehow they have a sparkle of desire of not being made of paper.
There are bodies too, and things that come out of bodies’ orifices: words, farts, smoke, breath. There are houses, and there are animals and masks. All figures are cut-outs because I don’t see the world as a whole and I don’t want to represent it that way. Nothing is a whole. Everything is in pieces. Our bodies are in pieces. I like to put the pieces together.

4) I like paint, glue, ink. I like art that you can see with your fingers. In my work, texture is the trace of the work: the pressure of the pen in my hand, the position of my body on the chair, my time spent, the imperfections of paper, the smudges of ink that my thumbs leave. Texture is when figures come from different sources, when figures look, to the fingers, different.

5) I am not a painter. Often my pieces are referred to as “paintings.” They are not paintings. There is paint on them. But the figures are drawn before they are painted. The main influence of my painting technique are children’s coloring books. I haven’t found a good word for my pieces yet. Maybe “cut-outs.” I like “drawings” too, because everything starts form drawing.

6) I started using my art to make animated films when I realized that animation is the core of my art-making process. In constructing my pieces, I move the cut-outs on the surface, looking for dynamics, narratives, until I find a placement I like. My animations document the way I make my pieces. I wish my pieces would keep moving like my animations, instead of being the same all the time. Ultimately it’s my pieces that document my animations.

7) My work as an artist is strictly related to my work as a writer. My drawings are illustrations for unwritten stories. Illustrated books (and I don’t mean only comics or graphic novels) are for me one of the highest examples of the possibilities of combining words and images, literature and visual art. Illustrations seem to be just a comment about the text, but in fact they are a parallel text. Illustrations cheat: they seem to tell the same story as the words, but in fact they open other possibilities. Illustrations remind me of the presence of the unwritten world waiting right outside the border of the page. My drawings live in the blanks of language – they are a sort of anti-language, of anti-literature. I need to draw because otherwise I would collapse under the weight of my own words. I make art when I feel the need to shut up.

"A dead bear was found in the stream."

I made this animation for Jessica Anya Blau's new novel, Drinking Closer to Home. Coming January 18, 2011 from Harper Perennial.

Music by Mahmoud Guinia.
Art and animation by me.

Biscotti neri

My book of fictions Biscotti neri will be published in Italy by Madcap at the beginning of 2011. March, probably. I am happy and honored to be part of the Madcap family. I love those guys. I wouldn't want my first book to be anywhere else. Biscotti neri is a declaration of love and a fuck-you to the beauty and complexity of my first language, Italian.

There is a cover already. The illustration is by Paolo Moretti, who is an amazing artist and musician and a good friend. Also, I got two great blurbs for the book and a third one is on the way.
If you read Italian, go here.

Brother Would Never Leave

I have a picture story in the Summer issue of JMWW. It's called Brother Would Never Leave. Look at/read it HERE.

The flash fiction sections curated by John Madera and Dave Erlewine are fantastic: work by Robert Coover, Kim Chinquee, Jeremy M. Davis, Brian Evenson, Lily Hoang, Tim Horvath, Joanna Howard, James Iredell, Brian Kiteley, Norman Lock, Robert Lopez, Sean Lovelace, Stacy Muszynski, Ken Sparling, Terese Svoboda, J. A. Tyler, Jane Hammons, Jensen Beach, Ryan Ridge, Bonnie ZoBell, Jon-Michael Frank, R. A. Allen.