Clara Gazzarri Illustrator from Volterra, Italy

Clara grew up in Volterra spending most of her childhood in Via Porta All’ Arco, an artisan street where her parents have an etching workshop, running, creating little objects with fabric, strings and cardboard and drawing with the other artisans’ children. She had an eventful course of study starting with a scientific high school and going on with a degree in Psychology and a specialization in Cultural Anthropology. But in all these years she has always reserved a special place for her passion, art. She attended an illustration course in Firenze and she has always collaborated with her parents’ workshop making her personal illustration projects. In 2022, thanks to the lucky meeting with Cornelia and the Fraggina world, she found in her the strength to realize her dream: she’s now an illustrator by profession, creating images and picture books with her invented worlds, atmospheres, characters and stories. She also enjoys creating felted wool puppets and giving consistency and three-dimensionality to her ideas and feelings.

We had this interview with Clara in 2022.

Website

What brought you to your art?

The context in which I grew up certainly meant a lot. I have a very nice memory of my childhood’s summers in Via Porta all'Arco, spent playing, drawing and creating objects with the children of the street, surrounded by creative and welcoming artisans, ready to take you into their worlds made of care and attention, ingenuity, fantasy and imagination. I think that in my children’s illustrations I try to bring back all that warmth and freedom that I experienced in that period.

Plus, my parents, in addition to making me part of an artistically rich environment, have always supported and cultivated my creativity and manual skills by providing me with all the tools I needed.

Finally, what led me to my art is the love for lines, shapes and coloors, for their ability to communicate stories and emotions in such a strong, profound and direct way.

How did you get the opportunity to participate in Cornelia's 'Artists in Residence Program’?

I must say that I was particularly lucky. I have not lived in Volterra for 10 years, but every now and then I go up the hill to visit my parents. It was on one of these occasions that, thanks to Inger, a friend of my mother and previous owner of Fraggina, I learned about Cornelia. At that time I only knew that she was a German writer and illustrator who had moved to Volterra some time ago, but nothing more; I had neither an idea of her worldwide fame, nor of the marvelous situation she had created in Fraggina! Inger gave me the contact of her and, driven by my passion for the illustration world, I asked Cornelia to meet, just to get to know each other and to see how she worked. She was extraordinary welcoming and we spent some very emotional time in her magic library. I showed her my works and Cornelia invited me to participate in her Artists in Residence Program. It seemed impossible to me that in Volterra I would find exactly what I had been looking for so much elsewhere!

How did you like your time at Fraggina? Did you find inspiration there?

Fraggina overwhelmed me! A totally new situation for me, full of stimuli and wonderful artists, a place where the sharing of a passion and certain values, support and mutual understanding gave me the necessary strength and everything I needed to being able to believe that I can realize my dream of being an illustrator by profession.

Working on your projects surrounded by kindness, hospitality, curiosity and creativity, together with people with whom you can exchange ideas and points of view both on your artistic path and on life in general is something extremely precious.

The context of Fraggina then gives a lot of inspiration; its peace, the nature in which it is immersed, the books everywhere, the drawings and the little hand-made objects of which it is full, make that dreamy, stimulating and warm atmosphere that is all one needs to grow as an artist.

What did you take home from there?

From Fraggina I bring with me something of great value: a new perspective on my life and my future, a lot of inspiration and the warmth and courage of beautiful people.