Hi Domitilla, tell us a little bit about yourself and your background.
Hello. I’m born in Rome and graduated in Milan in graphic design. Spent 20 years as self employed digital designer (some awards and magazines), founder of a visual communication studio in Milan. Then in 2011 I started feeling myself uncomfortable in that job, my dad died, making me think about many aspect of life and so, slowly even without being conscious of it, I committed myself to practicing sound healing and, parallel to this, the path of art begun.
Have you always been an artist and how did you decide to make this your career?
I’ve always had an artistic nature. Since I was a kid, I remember I could apply creativity to every aspect of my life, and loved to draw. I spent hours and hours drawing alone. But I moved to Milan to study to become an art director (for commercials, actually, was my initial plan) … I never imagined to make a career out of “art” in the classic meaning… Graphic design, yes, but I ended up becoming a web designer anyway, so quite far from “art” as it can be considered my technique at the moment.
Describe your style as an artist. What medium do you use?
Art is, for me, a magic journey, in each piece I witness and from which I receive a lesson for my personal awareness.
Paper Poetry - as I called it - it’s an inspired art process which starts from my practice of harmonic sound healing. On thick ivory paper and in meditative state,
I simply cuts and lifts, patiently, cuts and lifts with the help of a scalpel only… Without any previous design, just letting it flow, harmony appears.
The quantity and quality of harmonic frequencies that my body contains do really influence the output: the higher the frequencies, the more spiralic patterned is the aesthetic ... and the slant of light makes the rest, gifting the miniatures with tree-dimensionality.
Each piece is inspired, unique, unrepeatable and always… a surprise!
Time is the only ingredient unknown.
Where do you find inspiration?
I spend a lot of time taking care of my connection, through yoga and sound healing. This let me be extremely sensible to whatever source of Beauty I see all around me.
Music is anyway my preferred medium of inspiration: I can be so fool to put on loop a song and listen to it for hours or days until I’ve received the intuition I felt it contains.
What’s a typical workday look like for you? Tell us about your process.
I practice yoga for a couple of hours. Check email and tidy up a little the house. Then I focus on preparing appropriate food and/or share lunchtime out in a good company. In the afternoon I carve for 1-2 hours and/or offer a sound healing session and then carve after it. In the late afternoon work on the computer for all the things that are necessary for self promoting and stuff. On the evening and some weekend I go to offer my healing art during conscious dance workshops of others teachers.
Who are some of your favorite artists? Musicians? People that inspire you?
I can really be inspired by famous people such as perfect strangers that I meet around the city (I’m, in fact, in the beginning of writing a book titled “Lessons from Unknown Teachers”). I’m very changing, so unless I got maniac of an artist and start deepening every aspect of his/her production, I really listen/watch many many different styles. What drives me is the power that their artwork has on turning my mood to very good :-)
Among those well known, instead, I do love few Italian songwriters from the ‘70s (Fabrizio De Andre above all and Afterhours) but also Bijork, Pink Floyd or Philippe Glass. Or the oldies or the classic jazz from the ‘60s … I do really move a lot, depending on the period, and mood.
Cinema and music videos is another form of visual art which I love: Wes Anderson, Hayao Miyazaki, Coen brothers, Michel Gondry…
Or I do love designers that are life teachers like Bruno Munari.
I’d say I love artists that put their personal experience into their preferred art technique… the stories they narrate are what inspire me.
Recently I’m listening with very much pleasure Anders Holte, a singer whose voice contains special frequencies… like those in the spirals that appears in my miniatures.
What are the next steps in your career?
At the moment I’m studying how to move my technique on porcelain and really struggling with the result of what comes out after the firing… It will be a tough new beginning but I hopefully will manage to obtain a tree-dimensional object for the deadline of Collect.
On the other side, I’m about to begin a collection of jewelry too, ready for November 2018.
Where can we see your art?
Online: my website www.paper-poetry.com or on socials (Pinterest / Instagram) @domitillabiondi
In person: at fair Collect (@ Saatchi Gallery, London, February 2019) with ESH Gallery or in my place in Milan, whenever you like from September to June.
Thank you so much Domitilla! We loved getting to learn a little bit more about you and your craft and will definitely be following you and your career. I'm so thrilled to have recently worked with your wallpaper collection with Area Environments and can't wait to share the project photos here on the blog!
Learn more about Domitilla Biondi, visit her online gallery or a commission a piece for yourself by visiting www.paper-poetry.com. And check out “Domitilla Biondi's Paper Poetry technique” video to see her process!
xx