Cianne Fragione

Alex Lee: How would you describe your work in general?

Cianne Fragione: I am primarily a painter, but I also do assemblage and drawings. I draw all the time. As a younger artist, I kept these mediums separate before realizing that’s not me. So I use whatever tools and materials that are needed to make the work happen. The oil paintings, collages, drawing, and assemblage start talking to each other and it becomes a relationship. Sometimes it happens really quickly, and at other times it can take months or even years for a work or an idea to really settle. That’s probably why I work on multiple bodies of work at a time. I know my process. I work with it and it takes time. This [work in progress] may look like I just threw it together, but it is not causal. It has been here for a couple months and I am looking at it all the time. Eventually, I’ll know how the paint will have a relationship with these fragments on the floor, and at that point it will all start to come together

Lee: So process is an important aspect of your work–are there any other themes or philosophies you consistently use?

Fragione: There are certain things that I always interest me. I love archaeology and ruins. Sunflowers are a favorite motif—they’re very figurative. Other motifs? Other ideas? I love poetry, clotheslines, Renaissance art, music. A lot of things seem to flow in and out of my life that I find interesting, an ebb and flow of experiences that can inform and inspire me. Many years of experience as a professional dancer inform my use of different media, which often rise physically from the surface of the canvas or paper. I went to Italy when I was sixteen and saw Michelangelo’s Moses, and I instantly recognized the potential for pulse and movement in sculpture, and how dance and visual art could merge, a theme I continue to explore. I build painting and it is my desire to blend and combine elements of painting and sculpture that connect the dancer and visual artist with the painter and builder, each moving through the others.

Rhythm and time have always been important to me. Heaven and earth are dressed in their summer wear is a body of work that came about basically because I love gardens, textiles, vintage clothes–they are all so full of history, personal histories, the lives invested in them. The clothesline itself is a magical place. It has so many associations, and in the series, it becomes the dividing line between heaven and earth.

The vintage clothes and textiles are the portal that lets you into this world and its rhythms. The paintings are individual and can stand by themselves, but they are also meant to hang together, literally edge to edge, to create a totalized environment in a gallery.

Lee: Did your family life influence how you think about dance and art? Were they more casual about it, encouraging you to dance and paint without any particular goal in mind or did they want you to be trained?

Fragione: It was natural. In my family, everybody seemed to make things. There was no pressure, just do my best. But there was a definite belief that if you’re going to do something and be a professional, you need to know the basics, be trained and educated, to keep learning, and maintain your curiosity about what you’re doing. Being a woman and a second-generation Italian, they were cautious and worried about how I would make a living, but they didn’t discourage me either ¾ they paid for dance lessons when I was young. While I was working on my MFA, my father, who is a master ironworker, shipped equipment to me while I was doing steel sculpture. It may not have always been monetary, but there was always support

Lee: Right, you don’t want to be stagnant, especially when you grow older.

Fragione: If you grow stagnant, you drop back into a status quo, but that has never really been my nature. I always seek challenges and ways of extending my practice. It’s not good to always stay within a particular level of skill, or with the same methods and materials. You should always keep growing. I started making my own paints because I was dissatisfied with the paints that came in tubes and I couldn’t afford the colors I was really wanted. So I asked myself: how do I deal with this problem? I can’t afford pure lapis lazuli in a tube, but I can afford the pigment, so I learned how to make paints and I love it—it’s like cooking

Lee: I feel like that ties back into how master Craftsmen are really interdisciplinary.

Fragione: In the past, yes, they had to be. Today we might be in the studio alone, but we use other craftsmen—photographers, framers, writers— to help us get where we want to go. I make my own tools if I can’t find what I need. I use my feet, my shoes, forks, whatever will help me get where I the works need to be. I like to collaborate, and I am sure that comes from being a dancer first. I find inspiration in combinations that are fresh for me, whether from different media, other disciplines, or from a variety of people, experiences, and histories around me. When you make, you are always learning, or you should

Lee: What difficulties did you face as an artist? How did you break out into the art scene and how do you support yourself?

Fragione: Breaking into the art world can be difficult. But first and foremost, one must do the work. There seems to be a greater tendency among young artists today to put their careers first, without really developing their work, which can take time, often a lot of time. Get into the studio every day, no matter what your form is, work on your discipline, and learn your skills and materials. When you have gained a certain level and what you’re doing is solid, then you start to show and build your career. You don’t have to be selling and showing your first year out of school. It is not a lifestyle and it is not glamorous. It is work.

There are always difficulties entailed in balancing time and money. Well, you can end up doing a lot of different jobs. I’ve taught and built fine art programs in various schools, including private prep schools, and I’ve taught in colleges. When I was younger, I taught art for eight years in a nationally known prison program called Arts in Correction, in the California state prisons, and eventually I became the director at one of the institutions. I ran a staff of six professional artists who taught the inmates there. We did music, writing, printmaking, and paintings, as well as some public pieces. The program significantly reduced violence within the walls. You write a lot of grants and sometimes you work in non-art jobs. Once I worked as a divers’ tender in the bay near Oakland. I had a studio in a building where there was a construction company underneath me and they offered me work. That was the 1980s, a period when being a woman made it a bit harder to develop to career, but I went to grad school, studied with some of the best artists in the San Francisco Bay Area, learned my craft and developed my eye. But most of all, I did what really needed to be done, which was the work itself.

Lee: How did you have the energy to come back from your jobs, take care of your kids, and work on your art?

Fragione: I guess I just had a lot of energy. Part of it was determination and discipline for sure. There were easy days, days that were not so easy, and days when I got support from friends or family. It’s like dancing. You’ve got to practice, and it doesn’t always mean that you like it, it doesn’t mean that your body doesn’t hurt or get sore, but you stretch and push yourself, and you achieve by doing. As I said before, it’s not a lifestyle. It’s a life. Once you accept that, you do what’s necessary because you love what you do.

Lee: What are your thoughts on the role of art in society and in life?

Fragione: For me, beauty is really important. And in society, in the world, we have always needed opportunities to experience the kind of beauty and harmony that art can provide. When a piece achieves deep harmony, it allows the viewer to stand in front of it and dream. It takes us somewhere and allows us to be transformed in special way. For me, that’s what a work of art should do—it’s a direct, immediate, intuitive experience for the viewer, and there’s no right or wrong about it. I’m not trying to dictate the viewer’s experience, but if it changes you or does something to you, then it has done its job.

Lee: How would you describe your artistic process? I see you have these fragments pinned up and laying around, but when you say you have a work of art in mind, how does it evolve throughout your process?

Fragione: The work is abstract, but I do begin with something real. This gives me a starting point, a space from which to proceed as I enter the painting process. It is a substance that connects eye, hand, imagination, and of course the paint itself. Maybe I could say that whatever starts an image is seeking its own process and form. Motifs can certainly come from direct experience, often from a specific place, its landscape and light, its atmosphere or quality of life. These are things that touch something inside me, and when that happens, they enable me to develop the visual energy and direction that will drive the work.

Because I do make many of my own oil paints, using both natural and historical pigments, I have been able to produce a very personal palette. As a matter of formal invention, the figure may appear in my painting gestures, wiped away areas, or surface accretions. Assemblage and collage works rely on worn objects from ordinary life as poetic materials, adding their own associations, and, I hope, a palpable sense of history and place. And of course, as a material texture, they extend the surface of the work into the space in front of the painting.

When I was living in Italy, I used to go to an archaeological dig. It was right on the coast in Calabria. You couldn’t see it from the road above the beach and dunes. To get to the beach, I’d going down a couple hundred stone steps surrounded by grass taller than I am. In the beginning, I didn’t know the ruins were even there. They were hidden by all the grass. After I’d been there a while, I came one day and the grass was cut down and I realized that I’d been walking on ancient ruins, almost at the edge of the sea! It was amazing. Where did this come from? I think about the lives that are underneath the stone. I’m not trying to make paintings that look like this place, but the site and my memories stimulate me.

Over there, on the other side of the studio, I have this altar. Back in the 1990s, I was able to get pieces marble and copper from a nineteenth-century cathedral that was being renovated at that time. I paint on it, change it, made series of works from some of the pieces, and sometimes I like to just look at it. I also save the bones from meat after meals, bleach them, and then bring them here. I soak them in oil paint and use them as drawing tools. The world out there can provide you with all kinds of unexpected tools and materials and points of departure.

I also love poetry–I read haikus and I especially love Italian poets. I actually like to read them in Italian, because that help direct the rhythm and mark-making. They’re all ways of jump-starting my imagination. Language is often one layer of my process. Sometimes words appear in the work or accompany me in the studio like music. I like fragments. I’ll go through poems and choose words that have some association. Those can start a work. Music is important, too, and I listen to all kinds. The tarantella is a southern Italian dance form that I like. Flamenco is good for me, too. It has its own rhythm, very strong, very distinctive, a certain sound and movement. Jazz, Baroque, opera. I’ve been listening to Vivaldi for years. Once you get those rhythms in your body, you don’t even have to listen to the music anymore. It’s muscle memory, and it comes out in the work. It’s ingrained, like the dancer and the dance.

Lee: Do you think maybe your studio is another type of altar and is what gives your artwork such cohesion?

Fragione: Yes, look at this place! I don’t change this particular window because I draw from it. It’s cracked and broken, and I have layers of plastic on it. The plastic covering keeps the studio warmer, of course, but when the light goes through it, it’s just gorgeous. The morning light tends to be too bright here, and by diffusing it like this, I get a soft light that is lovely. When I work at night and the lights are on, the darkness from the window is like a soft whisper. My environment affects me. I don’t try to control that.