Visiting Artist: Tiziana Meneghel-Rozzo
On most days at Avon Old Farms, students learn from an array of incredibly knowledgeable and driven teachers, but there are some days throughout the year when members of our faculty invite visiting instructors to campus to allow students to learn from experts in their field.
From Sunday to Tuesday, thanks to a joint effort from visual arts educators Cristina Pinton and Carty Campbell, students taking Darkroom Photography, Digital Photography, or AP Photography had the opportunity to learn from Boston-based, Italian photographer Tiziana Meneghel-Rozzo.
Tiziana had a very unique pathway to the photography profession. Born and raised in northern Italy, her focuses in high school were divided between science and art classes. While still in Europe, she began studying neuroscience. She received her bachelor’s degree in natural science from the Max Planck Institute in Germany, and continued there as a medical researcher and head of confocal microscopy.
When she moved to Boston, she worked at Harvard Medical School and in a nearby children’s hospital, but continued to exercise her underlying passion for art by teaching an art history course at a local school. She eventually received her MFA from Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, but rather than transition her career completely from science to art, she found a way to merge the two.
“Her work bridges the gap between science and art,” Mr. Campbell said. “Her photographs explore and mystify the mundane through abstraction.”
Tiziana explained that when science and art combine, we get a deeper connection to what makes us all human, and that when she incorporates science into her photography, it allows her to play with elements of perception and illusion. Some of Tiziana’s past work even explores how photography can be performed through scientific means—without a camera.
One method of doing this, which she taught to students in Mrs. Pinton’s AP Photography class and Mr. Campbell’s darkroom and intro to digital photo classes, is called cyanotype printing. Rather than use a camera, students utilized chemicals, water, and the sun to create their own image on a canvas.
Tiziana said the goal of her time with Avon students was to teach them that there is much more that can be done in the field of photography if you escape usual methods and embrace creativity.
“I hope they can be exposed to different techniques,” Tiziana said. “It opens a new way of thinking.”
It’s clear that for students like Alex Green ’23, her instruction had an impact.
“Tiziana is someone who looks at photography with wonder, using what she knows from her background and using it to carry through some of her projects. She made me think about what photography is and how I could experiment with it to suit me or the image I could create,” Alex said.
For Mr. Campbell, Tiziana’s instruction was important to show his students that people in the field of art can be successful in different ways.
“She shows that there’s different ways to be creative,” Campbell said.
While Tiziana’s visit had a strong impact on the AOF community, the community had an equally strong effect on her. She was blown away on her first visit to Mrs. Riddle’s campus.
“It’s amazing. I don’t want to leave,” Tiziana said. “The view is stunning, and I love the feel of the old buildings, but from a human point of view, the people here are incredible.”
She said she was especially impressed with the students who were kind and inquisitive right from the start of her visit, which consisted of a Q & A session in the Brown Auditorium on Sunday evening.
“These kids are really bright. They aren’t afraid to take risks in their work, and the questions they asked were very insightful,” Tiziana said. “It was really fun working with them.”
She has exhibited her work at the 2019 Boston Art Book Fair, at the Penland School of Craft, Danforth-Art Museum, The Griffin Museum, Lesley University, and Colgate University. Her work can be seen in her book series Interstellar Ice, as well as on her website.