Word: nivola
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Sardinian-born sculptor Costantino Nivola has contributed two works to the uncompleted commons wing of Quincy. His graffito--a combination of fresco painting and engraving on white stucco--adorns the west wall of the main dining room, while a Nivola bas-relief covers the wall separating the stairwell from the dinning room...
...graffito, which the artist and his 15-year-old son Peter completed in one day late in August, is 30 feet wide and 16 feet high. Working behind a team of plasterers who spread a quarter inch of white stucco over the black wall, Nivola first outlined his figures in paint with a thin brush. Then he and his son filled in the outline with solid blues, yellows and orange. Finally Nivola scratched deep lines through the colors and plaster to the black wall...
...relief, 17 feet wide and 30 feet high, was cast earlier in the year at Nivola's studio in Long Island and was shipped to Cambridge in sections. Construction workers then mounted the sections on the wall with cement and brass wire ties...
Solid Sand Castles. What makes the contents of Nivola's pocket economically feasible is a technique of his own invention. While amusing his children building sand castles on the beach at East Hampton, he conceived the idea of sculpting in damp sand and casting directly in concrete. A certain amount of sand sticks to Nivola's concrete casts, providing color and texture plus an odd feeling that the bas-relief, once erected, may slide away like sand at any moment...
...avoid "the invasions of the birds," Nivola keeps his bas-reliefs fairly flat, but the play of sunlight and shadow over their pocked, planed, humped and dovetailed surfaces gives an illusion of depth, elaborate richness and almost of motion. Their apparent coolness is partly compensated by an underlying Sardinian warmth. Sculptor Nivola's most abstract conceptions are based on careful sketches of his wife, his children and their dog; they hint, vaguely but happily, at life in the flesh...