Linda Lappin

Linda has taught writing workshops for the American Library of Paris, Centro Pokkoli (Italy); the Aegean Arts Circle (Greece); Christian Albrechts University of Kiel ( Germany), USAC study abroad programs ( Italy); Feltrinelli International Rome, the Kenyon Review Italy Program, and many more venues. She has been a guest lecturer at the University of CA Santa Cruz writing extension program and a guest blogger for the University of Plymouth travel writing program (UK). She is a former lecturer in English language and literature of the Sapienza University of Rome and Fubright scholar. She has collaborated with Canadian artist Janice Mason Steeves' Workshops in Wild Places project and with performance/ installation artist Sandra Binion. Her books have been featured in bookclubs across the US and Europe, including the Da Vinci Art Alliance bookclub

In September, I teamed up with Canadian abstract painter, Janice Mason Steeves, organizer of Workshops in Wild Placesto welcome her group of painters to  a medieval village in Tuscia, near Rome.

This area of Italy called the Tuscia remains untouched by tourism. Here the local people still live by ancient trades: wood cutting, tending sheep, producing wine and olive oil, quarrying and carving peperino, the volcanic stone which has provided the town's livelihood for centuries.  Beneath the quiet meadows blanketing the countryside lies a honeycomb of tombs extending for miles on end. Under the Etruscan shade lies a realm of mystery and eerie legend. 

For ten days, my little writing studio with its large, luminous workspace and tiny monk's cell posed over the gorge, was transformed into an artists' atelier. Desks and bookcases were pushed aside, more worktables borrowed, assembled, and covered in plastic-- the old red cotto floor papered over. All was made ready for our visiting artists.

Our goal was to seek out the soul of place in the natural surroundings and architecture of the village: its verdant gorge and old stone towers; its houses built of tufa and peperino; its olive and hazelnut groves, habitat of hoopoes and wild boar, and in the strong flavors of its cheese, wine, olive oil, bread, grapes. All this to be translated into color, images, words.
The group arrived on a sunny afternoon when the vendemmia was in progress and the heady odor of pressed grapes wafted from old cantinas into the cobblestone streets.
Observing the landscape, the painters started off by preparing color charts at different times of day -- capturing the nuances of stone, brick, lichen, leaf tips, night sky, rainy cobblestones, dawn clouds.The painters referred to my place-writing guide The Soul of Place: Ideas & Exercises for Conjuring the Genius Loci for their writing exercises, including Reading the Signs of a Medieval Village, Synesthesia exercises, and Deep Maps.

See my blog for a full report: https://magiclibrarybomarzo.wordpress.com/2023/10/07/painting-the-soul-of-place-in-vitorchiano/