Help me promote my artist friend Ariela Böhm

In November, I went to Italy to visit my family and I had a chance to meet a couple of times with my old friend Ariela Böhm. Ariela and I went to high school together. The year we graduated from high school we went on a camping trip through North Europe (Germany, Belgium, Denmark, and the Netherlands) with her brother Emanuele and his girlfriend. It was the first big trip I took without my family. Since then, I’ve always thought of Ariela as my travel friend.

Ariela and Antonella in 1979 during their North Europe trip.

A couple of weeks before my last trip to Italy to visit my family, Ariela wrote me an e-mail. I had not seen her for more than 20 years. She found my website and sent a note with her contact information so I wrote back and proposed to meet during this visit to Italy.

I told my sister I had plans to see Ariela in Rome. My sister said: "Good. Ariela is one of the few high-school friends of yours I approve of." (Yes, this is how my younger sister talks to me.)

Ariela is the daughter of a painter and a mathematician and she has always been passionate about science and art. She also has much more dedication and perseverance than I do. In high school we attended a pottery-making class. She continued to make pottery and I stopped (well, I moved to another city, but this is part of the pattern). In our last year of high-school we worked together on an essay on the origin of life on Earth. As I remember it, the essay was hundreds of page long; it examined every theory on the origin of life ever developed. She stuck with the topic of life by studying biology in college, I started my wandering life of things half-started and never mastered completely (which included yoga, agriculture, pottery restoration, meditation, journalism, macrobiotic cuisine, history of cinema, movie scripts, and eventually psychology).

After college Ariela worked with Nobel Prize Rita Levi-Montalcini for a few years (yes, she is really smart. And pretty. And talented. And engaging. OK, I’ll stop here.). She later decided an Academic career wasn’t for her. She focused on art but never abandoned science. Water, life, and biological structures play a crucial part in her work.

I love what she does. She still works with ceramic, especially raku, but she also work with metal, silicone and other materials. She has a fascination for water (this is why she found my website, by the way. She was googling on water crystallization and found my sister’s post on Masaru Emoto).

A series of beautiful pieces on the birth of writing.

Her work using the "shadows of light" technique is among the most fascinating. Ariela and a photographer friend started using a special transparent resin on glass. The final product is totally transparent, until one puts it under a spotlight. Magically, the resin reacts with light to create beautiful shadows on the wall. And the shadow is all you see. You must actually see it in person to understand the effect. It’s beautiful.

An example of Shadows of Light. You need to see it in person to appreciate the amazing effect.

You can see more of her work on her site.

Before leaving Rome I told Ariela I would try to find a way to sell her work in the USA. It was an attempt to maintain a connection that was lost for so long. It was also an attempt to demonstrate to myself that it’s possible to support oneself by creating beautiful things. I want her to be wildly successful, because her success would be the realization of my ultimate dream: the confluence of pragmatic and artistic, business sense and beauty, livelihood and expression. In a word, happiness.

Can you help? Send me suggestions. I am trying to look cool to my charming Italian friend here. I am trying to chase my dreams without risking my survival. Please help.

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