The
Narrative
Animal

Here are some of the questions that come up during studio visits, and our best attempt at answering them:

Who might you be?

Elena Pascuzzi was born and raised on Long Island, New York, and moved to the Midwest to attend college. Sandro Corsi was born in Rome, Italy, raised in various places, and moved to the Midwest to complete college. Albeit totally unplanned, this turned out to be an excellent formula for getting together.

In 1987 Sandro and Elena picked his-and-her MFAs from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago as wedding presents. Or, put another way, they celebrated their graduation by getting married.

Ever since then, Sandro has taught higher-ed art full-time. Elena went on to a second graduate degree, this one in Library Science, and has held cataloging and reference positions ever after in university, art museum, and public library settings.

Where are you?

Most of the time in vibrant London, some of the time in sunny Southern California.

All of the time: narrativeanimalsanedraw.com.

What is a narrative animal?

If you have to ask... then you already have the answer: just look in the mirror. Other animals show evidence of thinking, emoting, and communicating, but humans alone are compelled to find the story behind the incidents of life.

While it took us a while to notice, the narrative impulse is the common thread between our two stylistically different bodies of work.

Who is the Particle Bard?

It's a codename for the poet Lucretius, an author Sandro read in his formative years, and re-discovered anew while working on his most recent series of drawings.

In his De rerum natura, Lucretius tells us that everything in the universe is the result of random and provisional combinations of atoms. This is an uncanny notion, considering that he wrote ca. 50 BC, expounding an idea first conceived four centuries earlier by Democritus and, later, Epicurus.

If art manifestos were still in vogue, this series of drawings could signal the emergence of a movement called, in the bard's honor, Visual Atomism.

What is Visual Atomism?

It's the process of detecting picture particles within a chaotic pattern and drawing connections between them--until imagery suggests itself to the viewer.

Kinda like the atoms of Epicurean physics, occasionally hooking up as they course through the void, thus giving rise to the varied stuff the Universe is made of.

Try it on your own: just look up at the clouds and start picking out shapes. Then let the shapes suggest a story. You're making your narrative species proud.

Where do you find your visual atoms?

In a field of visual noise (a semi-random pattern) that I define in a computer program, then print on the sheet to be used for the drawing.

How do you draw connections between visual atoms?

The imagery emerges as surrounding detail is suppressed thru a technique I call visual noise cancellation. The final picture is not forced upon a blank sheet. Rather, it is a response to perceived hints in the existing pattern, and naturally blends in the noise field--creating the opportunity for the viewer to elaborate further on those same hints.

You spew a lot of sci-tech lingo on the subject of your work--is it still art?

It better be--as science it would be pretty darn uninteresting.