“On Top of Within and Around” is a book I created as a final project while studying abroad in Italy summer of 2009. The book is composed of photographs, sketches, writing, and graphics created while traveling in Italy and organized around a central theme: the balance between Italy’s spatial history and the lives of contemporary people living there today. The history is always there as a base, and Italians and tourists (like myself) have found ways of being and living a modern life “on top of, within, and around” this history.

Shown below are pages from the book- it can be viewed in entirety here.



Book Forward by Katherine Tincher

Italy exists in many ways at once, because vastly different civilizations have been living and creating there for centuries. Parts of all of them remain. We find museums that were formerly mansions or various governments' buidings, and Catholic churches built on top of pagan spiritual sites, next to Roman ruins. Luxury apartments built inside former horse stables. The structures of previous civilizations were built to withstand war and time - and they have. People now work with the shells of the past to create new lives and cultures both uniquely theirs and reflective of the history within the place. They take history and create on top of, within, and around it.

The reclaiming of space and creation of culture is seen most directly in interior design and in the contemporary arts - especially sculpture and installation pieces. But subtler forms emerge as part of everyday life in the modern world, such as advertising posters and graffiti. Artist of not, every person has the ability to create, and they do so consciously and subconsciously. Our culture is a product of every person's humanity. Many of us find it easier to identify culture and style from an outside perspective than to apply the same critical eye to our own lives. This book culminates two months of travel throughout Italy looking at contemporary and historical Italian culture and design, and adding my own American designer-artists' perspective.