THE FIRST SHELF: the review column in ornotmagazine.
Ateliers: the places of thought and creation.
There are places suspended halfway between the idea and the form. Like the silence before the first music note, like a stargate leading to other worlds, like the tunnel that Alice fell into. They are the white page towards which the pen heads and on which any story is still possible; the empty sheet music when everything can be created; the canvas before the paint colors. They are the places of the transformation, of the becoming, of the creative act.
That’s what the artists’ ateliers are, that’s what the writers’ desks are. Entering these places is not something to be taken for granted and you always have the feeling of being an intruder. Elisabetta Orsini does it whit the respect due when searching out their meaning. Like the ancient Rome’s poet Virgil, she takes us to the door, without entering those rooms, without any voyeurism, telling us what happens in the room that lies beyond that door, where heaven and hell are sharing the same space. Where Jekyll becomes Hyde. Where the past gestures and those yet to dream live.
Creating means playing seriously, exactly like children do; it means killing in order to be reborn; it means praying in one’s own way. The artist’s mind becomes space going through that place that widen its physical borders; there the artist’s mind extend itself, and brushes, sheets and keyboards come to life, become a living part of it.
This is the reason why nobody should be allowed to enter these places. They are private and exclusive and they shall not be revealed and contaminated. Places that we would be better to destroy rather than to profane. And this is exactly what this book explains us: the creative process and the respect it deserves, the distance existing between the observer and the observed. In an age of exhibitionism and sharing, the author reminds us that creation is a private, intimate and personal gesture. She reminds us that creation is the result of a unique path as the life of each of us and that the places where the creative act takes place are only empty boxes without the gesture and thought.