I met Somerville artist Denise Penizzotto at the Tatte cafe in Harvard Square. Penizzotto is new to this area and is studying for an advanced degree at the Harvard Divinity School. For a woman with an impressive and long resume she presents herself in a decidedly unaffected way, and has the sensibility of a serious, working artist … with a good heart.

Somerville artist Denise Penizzotto.

Penizzotto, who is originally from Minnesota, has lived in New York City for the past 30 years. Recently, she got a Mellon Foundation grant to explore what makes art sacred, with contemporary art and sacred space in mind. Penizzotto said, “Historically, art has expressed faith and religion. At times in history, when a lot of folks didn’t read, art provided the narrative and the message of the Bible, Koran, etc.”

Before our interview, I looked at her art on her website. One of the many pieces that interested me was a picture-based storytelling project that Penizzotto calls her Chicken Book. Penizzotto explains, “The book has watercolor paintings of a beautiful-looking chicken. This unfortunate bird eventually loses its feathers, and without her beautiful plumage, well … the center does not hold, and the bird falls apart. This is an apt metaphor for a world that is losing its own ‘beautiful plumage’ to climate change, and other sins of our fathers, and our sins as a whole.”

Pictured here is a beautifully, evocative painting by Pennizzotto titled 12 Birds of Extinction that has in some ways a similar theme to the Chicken Book. The reader sees that behind all this floral fecundity, there lies the birds of extinction … avian messengers of impending disaster.

Although Penizzotto has a definite social message in her art, sometimes … well … it is – what it is. In one intriguing painting, Penizzotto imposes her own expressive face in the John Singer Sargent work Daughters of Edward Darley Boit (1882). She told me she simply wanted to feel what it was like to inhabit these flowing dresses, these undoubtedly corseted bodies, of these very privileged women.

Penizzotto’s “12 Birds of Extinction”.

Penizzotto, also told me she has worked at Riker’s Island, the notorious prison located in New York City. In her workshops there, with 17–21-year-old inmates. After a bit of trial and error she found success with her students by having them create portraits of each other. According to the artist, this made her classes far more interesting and fun for her charges. This is not to say that it was not a frightening environment. There were many scary things to encounter while working in a prison, such as the time the prison was locked down because of violence and Penizzotto had to wait for over six hours before she could leave. She reflected, “It was a very powerful and emotional time for me, but I am convinced that art can be a rehabilitating experience.”

An eclectic woman, Penizzotto has done work in the theater. She talked about her stints at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, where she worked on a joint project with England’s Old Vic Theater. She oversaw the set design construction for these Shakespeare productions and traveled around with the company.  Later Penizzotto worked with BAM’s Harvey Theater, where she worked with the restoration of the plaster-work of its walls to give it, as she put it, “that oddly, romantic and decrepit feel.”

The artist told me she is also at work in the Hell’s Kitchen section of New York to restore the only Arnold Belkin mural in existence now, Against Domestic Colonialism.

Penizzotto told me that her main focus is finishing her studies at Harvard, and to also find studio space in Somerville. She also wants to connect with our rich motherlode of artists that live in our burg. We heartily welcome her!