Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Flavia Lovatelli. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Flavia, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Did you always know you wanted to pursue a creative or artistic career? When did you first know?

I can’t remember a time where I wasn’t creating or inspired to create something. My creativity was all over the place, I made things constantly. As a child I made paper dolls and their clothes, I made jewelry out of anything and I remember vividly designing a line of clothing when I was 10 years old. It was all on paper, never having the chance to create the pieces at that age. While I was naturally inspired at an early age, I also had parents who, while encouraging my endeavors and sponsored all my early on ideas, they also discouraged following my dreams as far as a profession. At the time I was too busy materializing my creative ideas so I didn’t see that my upbringing was nothing but a dichotomy. Being a woman I wasn’t offered to bother with higher education because back then women were still leaving their careers once they started a family therefore… on the same token I was told not to pursue an artistic career because art is not a career and artists make no money. I never stopped to think that if I was to marry I could have easily pursued my artist career since I wasn’t going to be working anyway. Oh well, what is done is done and I strongly believe that what you are comes out at one point or another! I never stopped being a creative, not ever, but I embraced the artist in me full on when the housing market crashed and there were no jobs available where I lived. I had already been organizing art crawls in my community for several years and participating in various shows so I just amplified my efforts and continued pursuing that. Delving full into this path evolved my work and fine tuned it into what it is today.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

Paper has been alluring me since before I can remember. I collected paper as a child, presumably to use to draw on or make my paper dolls etc. That passion never ceased and it lived through many experiences you may have with paper like decoupage, collage and so on. Coiling was a domino effect that started with rolling the edges of all the paper I came in contact with that wasn’t making the collection cut, like shopping receipts, tickets, book corners I was reading etc. in time the rolling turned into coiling. Fast forward a decade the coiling turned into a craft and that craft then turned into what I do today. I was turning magazines into vessel sculptures for over a decade, using my coils & quills into my paintings too and loved coming up with ideas and designs where to inject or use my paper. The pandemic actually helped me evolve the coils into the cones, domes and tentacles I create today. The art calls I applied to were farther away and shipping my larger sculptures was becoming not only expensive but risky for my work was somewhat delicate. So I came up with the spores. A paper maché base to which I attached my coils or quills. After making a good number of them in every possible combination of colors, coil/quill mixture and all I lost the drive to duplicate them and wanted to keep changing them up, I am not into duplicating my work exactly, as in, I don’t like to make the same thing over and over again, I like to be inventive and keep moving forward, that desire was the impetus that drove the vision of the dome, my first paper manipulation, the cone was an easy next step followed by the tentacle. I believe what sets me apart from other is my infinite patience and my love for paper. Both those strengths are the driving force behind my creations, it takes dedication, patience and discipline, most of all patience to do what I do and those things are there for me only in my art, especially patience… I am very impatient with everything else in my life; traffic, queues etc. I can’t have plants or make gourmet meals. But coil and manipulating paper is something I do from the moment I wake till I go to sleep at night.
The hardest part for me is the prepping of my work, cutting the paper in the different shapes tests my patience but it has to be done, the seeds are the hardest. I have to slice the paper into very think long pie shapes and that takes time and precision. I timed myself once on the process of slicing the paper, rolling, coiling, gluing it in shape and it took me 2.5 minutes to make one. My larger pieces require thousands of coils so you can imagine the time.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

My latest body of work are several structures I built with plant branches, wire & paper maché. They are structures averaging three feet in height. My first one took about 42 days to make, working a full days work, creating the coils at night while I sit in my living room watching TV and during the day I glue the coils in their desired shape and then adhere them to the structure. The second one took a whopping 62 days to make because I decided to make a sculpture entirely out of seeds instead of coils which demands a much larger volume of bits to complete. I envisioned the branches covered in seeds entirely. When I set off on this journey I was over the moon with excitement for my vision, three days into this very project I realized I was going to need millions of seeds to cover the structure and maintaining the resilience to continue onward demanded all my mental acuity on a daily basis so it became quite taxing. Within a week I had to struggle to sit down and spend the time necessary to forge forward. I had to talk myself into taking the first step every day, and I would get stressed about the massive undertaking, so I would have to talk myself off the ledge and dredge on, one bit at a time. The glory moments where seeing a small section completed. That gave me the impetus to continue forward… That lasted four weeks! About three days before I completed this project I stopped fretting because I knew the end was in site and the beauty of this piece was mesmerizing. I saw that all this work had been more than worth it. I absolutely love the finished piece and more so the whole ensemble of corals together are magnificent.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

Primarily my drive is internal and personal, I have these ideas pop into my ‘consciousness’ all driven from my life’s work, inspired by the preceding piece and the life around me. These ideas have to materialize in order for the next one to come forth. I do that for me, because I love what I do and I do what I love. Years ago, I decided that the one thing I can truly gift my kids is a legacy of sorts. So that became my goal, do what I do and try to make it known. I started organizing art crawls and shows in my area and started expanding my reach. I organized several art crawls in North Carolina around Charlotte areas, Mooresville, Cornelius, Davidson all towns surrounding Charlotte and including Charlotte. In 2011 I started creating trash-ion Trash Fashion, wearable-non functional clothing out of paper, plastic, metal, you name it. I brought in a couple of artists friends to create with me, next thing you know we created an incredible trashion show in Charlotte and Columbia called ecoFAB Trash Couture that lasted 9 years and had a lot of notoriety. The pandemic put an end to it and I lost the momentum so that one is going to be a short story in my journey. But the same pandemic changed my art exploration and took me to creating my formidable coral pieces. The work I have been doing the past five years has been in pursuit of my legacy, about ten years ago my goal formulated and became clearer, I want to see my work in museums so I have been perfecting it with that in mind.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.flavia-lovatelli.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/filovatelli
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/flovatelli/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/flavia-lovatelli
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/flavialovatelli
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuLGtKWKSWZX7Mlm4vDH-wQ
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/user_details?userid=B_itFKA-XWUihwo1t8mC0w