Palimpsest Journal
Welcome to our "Food" issue of PALIMPSEST.
The title for this second issue of PALIMPSEST refers first of all to the recent body of sculptural work by James Zingarelli (chair of the Visual Arts Department at Gordon College and veteran teacher in the Gordon-in-Orvieto semester program). HOST & HUNGER is Zingarelli's title for a group of twenty open-mouthed heads carved from many different types of stone and wood from around the world. These hungry heads are featured in an exhibit at the Gallery at Gordon College's Barrington Arts Center during September 2008, and are the subject of an essay by Bruce Herman in the most recent issue of IMAGE: Art, Faith, Mystery (#58).
Zingarelli's figures are certainly relatable to Orvieto, where issues of food and eating can strike one as the pervading undercurrent of the entire life of the community. Ah, the food of Orvieto.
Carrara 1
Carrara marble (Italy), 8"h x 6"w x 4"d, Jim Zingarelli
JOHN SKILLEN
HOST & HUNGER: Recent work of Jim Zingarelli
In his essay published in the Summer 2008 issue of IMAGE, Bruce Herman locates Zingarelli's recent carving in a middle zone between Formalism and Pop, his open-mouthed heads evocative in equal measure of the monumental sculpted heads of Easter Island, with their epic gravity, and of the cartoon heads iconic of anti-epic Pop culture. But Herman also notes how Zingarelli's sculpted heads "draw near to the mystery of the Eucharist and its underlying connection with the fundamental human need for both physical and spiritual nourishment."
Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe granite (Africa), 18"h x 6"w x 4"d, Jim Zingarelli
NICHOLAS WOLTERSTORFF
How did Eschatology get linked with Eucharist?
Nicholas Wolterstorff concluded a distinguished career in the world of academic philosophy as the prestigious Noah Porter Professor of Philosophical Theology at Yale University, acknowledged by his peers for a rigor of thought strengthened, not diluted, by Christian faith, and notable among the historically-iconoclastic Reformed tradition for his defense of the work of "art in action."
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Little Indiana
Indiana limestone, 6"h x 6"w x 3"d, Jim Zingarelli
AGNES HOWARD
Why Cook Dinner?
Agnes Howard writes wittily of the "heavy burden on the mother trying to feed her family. The whole weight of environmental pollution, cruelty to animals, energy politics, the side effects of fossil fuels, if not the whole global economy, plus the health of her family, bear down on her whenever she reaches for a package of boneless, skinless chicken breasts."
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Willow
Willow (New England), 13"h x 9.5" w x 9"d, Jim Zingarelli
THOMAS JONES
A Spasso con Gusto' and the Slow Food Movement
Thomas Jones is an associate editor of the prestigious London Review of Books, where the following essay first appeared in Jones's regular column "Short Cuts" (November 1, 2007). Jones lives in Orvieto with his wife Emma, herself a journalist covering medical and scientific topics, "commuting" through cyber-space to offices in London while sticking close to the earth amidst vineyards and olive groves in a city carved out of ancient volcanic tufa. His essay highlights the "political" elements that perhaps inevitably surface from the social and ecological dimensions of "living [and eating] well."
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Big Indiana
Indiana limestone, 14"h x 13"w x 12"d, Jim Zingarelli
Palimpsest is the technical word for an ancient or medieval manuscript on which earlier writing was scraped off the animal-skin pages in order to reuse the vellum for another text. But often the earlier writing can still be deciphered, shadow-like, beneath the more recent over-writing. In fact, several ancient texts have been preserved only through their under-written traces in a palimpsest. Hence, the erasure of earlier writing represents both a destruction and a mode of survival.
In Italian, the word palinsesto is commonly used with the wider sense of any sort of historical layering in which older stages still peer through later changes or renovatons, leaving fragmentary tracks and traces and echoes--as in the architecture of towns such as Orvieto where the outlines of medieval window frames may still be visible in buildings remodeled in Renaissance styles. Palimpsests can offer tantalizing clues and inspiration whenever people wish to reconnect with earlier moments of a tradition that seems in danger of dissolution, decay, fragmentation.