Emilio Fantin. Laboratori

Dolls made to the Waldorf school in the course of the manual arts teacher Patrizia Solina

"Give credit to the quality of the soul in times of suffering and evil, means arm yourself with courage to face the inseparable companions of death: fear and despair. Well, there are not any scientific evidence but we can all verify that it is imperative to create those special conditions for a peaceful and full of love place and how this can affect the health of patients and their caregivers. These forces are the ones who more than any other discipline art can convey in his condition to be constantly focused on ethics and aesthetics". With these words, the artist introduces his project which involved the construction of a large illustrated book - actually
made and donated to the department and dedicated to the story of "The Bremen Town Musicians" - and a series of workshops for children in collaboration with the teachers of Maria Garagnani Waldorf school in Bologna (Meet the tale and represent it; Take care; Modelling with hot beeswax) that the artist's daughters had attended and that he himself had contributed to establish.
The book, 70x50 cm, is hand painted by the artist and dedicated to the tale of "The Bremen Town Musicians" chosen, as stated by Fantin, because it narrates the story of a special friendship among the four characters that will help them to overcome any obstacles in order to play together and finally get back home. This work has been realised, exhibited in Bologna and donated to the ward.
Fantin then imagined a series of workshops: the first one, Meet the tale and represent it, was a project addressed to AGEOP workers and presented by Patrizia Solina, handwork teacher at the Waldorf school Garagnani, with the collaboration of Catherine Caruso, after-school teacher at the same school.
The objective is to enhance the traditional fairy tale and its staging as an alternative to other forms of entertainment and games for children. The idea was to ask the teachers to create a series of dolls to be delivered to the operators so that they could have the opportunity to represent a show and modify it from time to time with the kids and at the same time give them directions on how to manufacture them. The project is based on the knowledge of the traditional fairy tale according to the criteria of the Waldorf pedagogy . For the realization of the project, Fantin created a series of watercolor drawings representing some characters useful to the narration of three different tales associated with some images of the Madonna of Raffaello (considered effective from a therapeutic point of view, according to some iconographic studies mentioned by the artist in the project file - Il mio progetto.doc). To document the proposal, attached there are also some imagines of dolls made at the Waldorf school in the course of manual arts of Patrizia Solina.
Take care was instead addressed to AGEOP operators and presented by Carla Borri, art therapist and teacher of painting and modeling at the Waldorf school Garagnani, in collaboration with Mara Medrano. The course was intended to address the fundamental exercises on the basis of "Essence of Color" by Rudolf Steiner and of the theory that shows the link between color and emotion and their relationship with the forces of the will. The course is therefore proposed to give the operators some important tools to approach the theory of color using watercolors with plant pigments, ox hair brushes, sheets and small boards of plexiglass.
The project was supposed to be divided into twelve meetings of two hours each (six dedicated to the fundamental exercises of "Essence of Color" by Steiner and six to the execution of exercises inspired by nursery rhymes focused on color) or alternatively in six meetings of four hours each.
The chosen technique was the watercolor on wet paper with vegetable dyes. The last workshop (which does not appear in the catalogue of the exhibition at GAM), called Modelling with hot beeswax, was addressed to AGEOP operators and presented by Carla Borri, teacher of painting and sculpting at the Waldorf school, with the collaboration of Catherine Caruso, after-school teacher. The goal, as illustrated by the artist himself, was "to rediscover the charm, warmth and grace of modeling the hot beeswax, coloring it with natural pigments. Beeswax is full of sun, of heat that helps to warm both the body and the soul and brings enthusiasm". The workshop aimed at providing the operators with the tools to investigate this technique, so that they could then teach it to the children.
The work can easily be framed into the artistic career of Emilio Fantin, devoted to the realization of collective projects of public and relational art based on interaction as well as, in particular, on the value of design and artistic expression of children and adults tested in several workshops realized by the artist himself (as in the recent Trees, cows, clouds and other subjects for the exhibition Recreations. Artists for Mirandola, Mirandola - Mo, 2013).