Etna ash on your terrace? Time to get creative...
ADVERTISEMENTMount Etna, on the Italian island of Sicily, erupted last weekend, spewing out high lava fountains and large black clouds of ash and smoke.
It is Europe's largest active volcano and one of the most active volcanoes worldwide. It has been going through an especially active period for the last five years.
For the inhabitants of the surrounding cities and towns, the frequent eruptions mean a regular battle with the layers of black ash that thickly carpet streets, cars, terraces and gardens.
Most spend hours sweeping up the dust...But some creative residents have found another use for the ash.
Terrace artworks with Etna ash go viral
A few years ago, some people started arranging the piles of ash on their terraces into designs.
The artworks went viral on social media and in the Italian press.
Artist Angelika Antonella Finocchio from Catania swept the ash into a giant face with wide eyes and wavy hair.
“It seemed like a shame to clean it up, every time I see a bit of ash I think of all the images that can be produced,” she told the media at the time.
Another post on social media shows the black dust formed into the Sicilian symbol known as the Trinacria with the head of Medusa in the centre and three bent legs sticking out.
“And this time too, there are those who have managed to transform a huge inconvenience such as the fallout of ash and lapilli caused by the eruption of Etna into a spectacular work of art,” the post reads.
Sicilian artist Giulia Pulvirenti, instead, created a delicate image of a mother swallow feeding her chicks while Daniela Marino made a homage to Catania’s patron saint St Agatha.
Artists using Etna’s volcanic ash as a medium
There are also local artists who make permanent artworks with Etna’s ash.
Giusy Mintendi makes pieces that are somewhere between painting and sculpture - dubbed by the artist ‘pittoscultura’.
She fuses ash and lapilli into the surface of the painting to make it richly textured.
She collects ash from her own garden and asks friends to bring her bagfulls while for the larger stones she visits the volcano.
ADVERTISEMENTA lot of her works depict Etna itself belching lava and smoke.
“I am Sicilian, my land nourishes me,” she told Italian website Il Vulcanico. “My works of art are made with the lava ash of the Etna volcano. I am like the magma in continuous transformation.”
Catania-born Giusy Trovato also began experimenting with the black dust that covered her house. She now sells ash drawings of Sicilian subjects like St Agatha or male and female Moors’ heads.
Moral of the story: When life gives you ash... Make ash-tounding art.
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