Antonia Contro Digital print, 2014
92’ x 27’
My art and yoga practices share many similarities. In both, the ideal state is flow, a suspension of critical appraisal and an immersion with the experience itself; a non- critical engagement with the action at hand. Time is arrested, the mind is freed, and I move forward with a confident and delicious abandon. One can serve as the metaphor for the other, and each informs the other.
My most recent project was to create artwork for a tower on a building designed by Wheeler Kearns Architects at 1611 W. Division that houses Intelligentsia Coffee’s newest store. Titled Scorza, it is a 92- by 27-foot digital print adapted from a watercolor painting. In the heart of Chicago’s Wicker Park neighborhood, Scorza is a visual counterpoint to this urban intersection.
Scorza is Italian for bark or skin. The word both refers to the literal source material for my painting and alludes to the piece becoming a skin of the building. I aimed to create a contrast between the geometric architectural design and organic form, between manmade and natural.
My art explores the human yearning to name, interpret, and organize the worlds around and inside us, and plays with the nuanced relationship between fact and truth. Scorza invites the viewer to look, engage and decipher.
Antonia Contro is a multi-media artist who exhibits locally and nationally. She is also the Executive Director of Marwen, a non-profit organization which educates and inspires underserved young people through the visual arts. View more of Antonia’s work at AntoniaContro.com
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