Kismet

K I S M E T

"Kismet" (detail) ©Diana Maria Rossi 2016

"Kismet" 23"x11"x3" glass and ceramic mosaic on wood with photos, text, blocks and #2 pencil ©Diana Maria Rossi 2016

"Kismet" was many, many months in the making. And on some level, this piece took years.
And when I finished making it, I had the sad feeling that maybe "this was it" --- maybe I had nothing more to say. This was the creation that referenced the key event and memory of my life that unearthed my desire to become an artist. What more was there? Thankfully, that feeling has faded, but my feeling of satisfaction in having at least finished this piece has not.

I struggled with this mosaic on many levels --- both the technical and the corralling of the content into a place where there was a center, or at least a spot of coherency. The technical difficulties manifested themselves in the actual engineering of the piece --- getting it to a place of strong construction. That is how/why the chevron type shape on the top appeared. I had no problem, however, with the color and in fact, had a good time making that aspect work.

"Kismet" [detail] © Diana Maria Rossi 2016

doors opening windows slamming shut a sometimes yes a sometimes not / I am playing the numbers and casting my lot with the mystery
[Text running across the top]

"Kismet" [detail] © Diana Maria Rossi 2016

Kismet

And if you are lucky
one night
a jerk will break into your
apartment
while you are sleeping

and you will wake to find
a foot creeping through your window
but your screams
will summon the neighbor
and scare the jerk away

but you will never be able
to return to that place
and so you will call your Parents
your tail between your legs
and reluctantly
say yes to your Father

who will borrow a van
and will drive
eight hundred and twelve miles
to move you home

and then for the next six weeks
you will work with your Father
and he will get to know you again
and you will get to know him again
and you will both discover

that all is as it ever was between you
but now at least
your Father
will not be so worried about you
and you will know

that nothing
that you ever would do
could ever make him stop loving you
but then
on a lousy Tuesday in March

your Father will die
all at once from a heart explosion
and you will just want to thank that jerk
who tried to come through your window
and ended up sending you home.

"Kismet" [detail] © Diana Maria Rossi 2016

Kismet. When that word came to me --- totally out of the blue, while speaking on the phone with another human being and I had the absolute urge to gratuitously interject that word in our conversation, that is when this piece found itself. That one word, Kismet, unleashed the other words of the poem that are displayed in the eight yellow rectangles. And that word changed my focus of this piece from the topic of resilience, or that which we use to rebound and that we can harness, control and activate, to the more passive acceptance of fate or chance -- maybe something beyond ourselves.The various content elements that I had been struggling with fell into place.

"Kismet" [detail] © Diana Maria Rossi 2016

The Die / The Pinnacle
The idea of chance was a big part of my memories of childhood. There was a quasi constant reference to betting and gambling -the numbers. There were important numbers, good numbers and bad numbers. Numbers were not neutral.

"Kismet" [detail] © Diana Maria Rossi 2016

Oh, what a balm it was to learn about the Fibonacci sequence! --- how comforting its formation. I delight in the mystery and the certainty of how a mathematical sequence underlies the formation of the natural world.
Perhaps?

"Kismet" [detail] © Diana Maria Rossi 2016

When my Father died suddenly, the first words out of my 89 year old beloved Grandfather was, "When God closes one window, He opens a door". Or maybe he said, "When God closes a door, He opens a window." (This is the kind of thing my mind jumbles, not necessarily only in memory.) That was my Grandfather, that was his essence, his wisdom that he was trying to impart. I loved him even more for that.
[This door, the portal in the middle, is a photograph (taken by me) from Picinisco, Italy, my paternal grandparents' hometown.]

And then, the next morning after my Father died, my Grandfather could not wake up -- he had had a massive stroke that robbed him of most of his speech and all of his mobility and independence. He died 3 months to the day, after my Father.

One of my Grandfather's favorite expletives was, "Oi, Oi, Oi!". He was the only person that I knew who said this. His "Oi, Oi, Oi's!" are preserved throughout this piece under broken shards of one of his schnapps glasses.

These tesserae are made from Claudia's vase, Babci's china, Jen's bowl, Poppa's schnapps glass -- all broken, beautiful and still useful.

I need to thank the people who supplied some of the crucial materials, as this was a piece that initially took its direction from those materials and from the idea that we really don't control the important bits of life. We make do with what is cast our way.

Thanks to Matt O'Callaghan (check out his wonderful waves) for his broken car window glass.{I hope that your beautiful spirit is riding a wave somewhere.} That is what got this mosaic rolling! Thank you to Jen Levinson for her beautifully colorful, broken ceramic bowl that was given to her by her Mom. Thank you to Donato Rossi, my Grandfather for his yellow schnapps glass and for his words of wisdom --- "oi, oi oi" and of course the real test --- his making sense of losing his son . And thank you to my cousin Drew Kordas for packing Poppa's schnapps glasses so badly that a couple broke. Thank you to Claudia Marlowe and Bill Grubaugh for the lovely oriental vase that did not last intact with me for more than 4 months. Thank you to Babci, for her broken dipping bowl from her elaborate set of china. (And thanks to Cousin Kathryn for saving Babci's china and to Matt for driving it to me.) Thank you to my daughter, Rosa, for her lucky no. 2 pencil and thank you to my son, Arturo, for posing for those photos, the re-enactment of feet coming through windows!
And lastly, but never leastly, thank you to my Dad -- Arturo Lorenzo Rufino Giuseppe Rossi. Did I get it right? Or is it Arturo Laredo Rufino Giuseppe Rossi?

classic Greek and Roman wave pattern under Matt's broken car glass ---- thank you Matt!