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April 27 - May 4,2003 |
Best of Two Worlds
Duality of heritage, interests mark the work of Del Giudice
By Mark Curtis
Originally Published: 2003-04-13
Our daily lives are often a careful negotiation between opposing forces and for Veronica Del Giudice, these pushes and pulls manifest themselves in her work as a designer and intern architect.
Although she loves the creative, intellectual exercise that is architecture, Del Giudice is also attracted to the more immediate hit of designing functional ceramic objects. So on most Saturdays, after a full week of work at Levitt Goodman Architects of Toronto, Del Giudice sequesters herself in a west Toronto studio in search of "moments of immediate design expression".
"It's like I'm unlocking the destiny of what the clay wants to be," the 28-year-old Del Giudice says of her ceramic work. She began working with the material four years ago and the gift shop of the Art Gallery of Ontario has recently begun to sell her designs. Working with both high-fire and low-fire clays and glazes (the high-fire approach yields more intense colours), Del Giudice wants to create work that is both functional and beautiful. Her recent designs include pitchers, vases and sushi plates with built-in wells for soy sauce and grooves for chopsticks. (She's a big fan of Japanese culture.)
"I try to take a humanistic approach and really think about how your head interacts with the piece," she says. Her approach is modelled after the exceptional work of Finnish design masters Tapio Wirkkala and Juhani Pallasmaa. Del Giudice was able to learn about Pallasmaa's work first-hand when she studied in Finland in 1998 during her fourth year in the University of Waterloo's architecture program. She also admires the work of Japanese-American furniture designer George Nakashima, whose wood designs made prominent use of natural textures.
The Finnish experience was of particular significance to Del Giudice, whose father Ermanno emigrated to Toronto at age 18 from Terracina. Her mother Salme is from the Finnish town of Puumala. (The couple-to-be met at a New Year's Eve party in Toronto in the early 1960s.) In a wonderful bit of luck, Del Giudice's Finnish study, which included work with a Helsinki architectural firm, was preceded by four months' study in Rome in the fall of 1997. "Being able to confront my two halves simultaneously was really quite powerful," Del Giudice recalled recently over a latte macchiato at Bar Italia on Toronto's College Street. She lived with fellow students in an apartment overlooking the Gianicolo botanical gardens and on a few occasions travelled to her aunt's home in Terracina where she remembers comforting meals such as fresh fish from the sea. She also recalls hill towns such as Gubbio, Orvieto, Todi and Perugia as "absolutely breathtaking". Her favourite Italian architects include Carlo Scarpa and Renzo Piano.
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