Welcome to Anne Sharlene McLearon Art Gallery

 MADAME BUTTERFLY is included in the actual Libro d'Artista 2021 exhibition to take place at the Palazzo Binelli in Carrara, Italy from November 24 to December 7 and later at the Palazzo Dosi Magnavacca in Pontremoli.  See below for the virtual exhibition.

Presentation by Prof. Ilario Luperini at the opening on November 24, 2021:

"Seventeen years ago - it was 2004 - Studio Giambo had a bright idea: to call the artists to reflect on a theme of undoubted interest: the book of artist, in fact. Those were years in which there was much discussion about the role and destiny of artistic research, after in the previous century, many movements and trends that had programmatically led artistic research towards the social and the politic. Just discuss, let's give space to creativity! This is the strong message that Studio Giambo launched. And there have been many artists who have enthusiastically accepted the invitation over the years. Thus a deposit of images of considerable interest was created, as evidenced by the catalogs, brochures and leaflets produced moment by moment. After the slowdown due to the explosion of the deadly pandemic, in this 2021, thanks to the foresight of the Cassa di Risparmio di Carrara Foundation, the event is renewed. The works presented, well documented in Giulio Mugnai's video catalog, reproduce the thematic nucleus around which the artists worked with widespread originality. The artist's book cannot be confused with the illustrated book, in which the images are completely subservient to the texts (see, for example, the old subsidiaries of elementary schools where the images were often not very congruent with the events described); and not even with the illustrated book in which the relationship between images and words is completely reversed, as in many examples of children's literature that makes extensive use of the double-page image. The illustrated book is an autonomous artistic object that can also contain words, but its characteristic is that it offers itself as a work of art in itself, as an artistic object, in fact. A famous precedent can be considered the Bolted Book by the futurist Fortunato Depero. In short, works created with different styles and languages, built with traditional techniques (from painting to sculpture) but also making use of the electronic image in its various potentials. A complex of works of considerable level: some entrusted to the constructive strength of color, others almost architecturally structured, still others the result of phantasmagoric interpretations. Here, around these themes the artists have developed works that tell about themselves, their vision of life, the role of culture in our complex society, the need to combat the addiction to ugliness to which the bulimic production of images of mass media has sadly accustomed us. And, certainly, this exhibition will not be a point of arrival, but, due to the value of the works and the cultural stimuli present in them, it will constitute an important stage in a progressive journey."