She weaves plots of love for the sea and passion for creation

Today I will tell you a unique story, a story of courage, of love for their land and for craftsmanship. I'm not sure how many people today would be willing to leave everything to follow their passion, well Paola Costanzo did. Only those who grew up on an island can understand the love for the sea, the attachment to their roots, to their own culture. With a training in Tourist Marketing she could have continued to work in Milan and have a life and career there, but shortly before the quarantine and hurricane Covid she decided to return to Lipari where she was born.

She accidentally met a French weaver who lent her an antique loom to cultivate her recent passion for her. So last summer she decided to move to Alicudi, the island that she would inspire her creations.

Alicudi is the westernmost of the Aeolian islands with a hundred inhabitants and donkeys as a means of transport. Paola has a workshop and is surrounded by different looms and, inspired by Aeolian and island themes, she makes the ancient manual weaving dialogue with contemporary design.

Someone in an interview asked her why in 2021 we will still have to use a loom, her response was extraordinary, an answer that only those who have the sensitivity to approach craftsmanship and handmade work can understand:

«Weaving takes time, patience and dedication. Weaving is also study, composition, harmonic and mathematical thought. I am deeply convinced of the enormous cultural, social and therapeutic value of craftsmanship, and in particular of weaving. Opening the doors to this world, to ancient and contemporary slowness at the same time, is a great adventure of spirit and thought. In this strange and immobile time to which we are gradually getting used to, I believe that being able to express oneself with dexterity, through touch, a simple sense that is forbidden to us now, can represent a small gift; a small luminous buoy "

Thinking that you can use touch to create something unique and once again get closer to others certainly conveys a message of hope. Paola in her atelier offers individual and group workshops and insists on spreading this art for therapeutic and social purposes for fragile subjects and for this reason the textile warehouse project was born, a laboratory for women who are confined to the prison universe.

The Messina Gazi prison welcomed the project to the support of the Anymore Onlus association and helped cover the expenses, and Kano social tailoring, which instead made bags with fabrics made by the inmates. The proceeds from the sale of the bags were entirely donated to the women's section of the Messina prison ”.

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