By: Clare Daly | Assistant Editor
Drawing ears had never been her strong suit, said Grace Parenti, ’22, but she thought that she might find success in sculpting them. She was right.
At the Best of Salve Students (BOSS) art show this past October, she was honored with the Best In Show award for a flat bowl with a detailed ear on each side entitled “The Listening Bowl.” Parenti was inspired by both her mother’s interest in ceramics and her own experience as a figure artist when asked to create a series of bowls following a theme in Ceramics II last year. Thus spawned a series of bowls with hands, noses, eyes, and, in her winning piece, ears.
In creating the bowl and the other anatomical pieces of the series, Parenti took note of how her mother learned how to sculpt anatomy. After she lost most of her eyesight years ago, she would feel her own face in order to interpret the lines and curves of its features. “So that’s what I did with the ears,” said Grace, “I felt my own ear, and I found it easier to go from feeling my own ear, than from just looking at a picture of it… so those are based on my ears, sort of.”
As a double major in cultural and historic preservation and art history, Parenti has always thought of her time in the ceramics lab as a way to unwind outside of her studies, never expecting to be recognized for her artistry.
“I actually talked to Dr. Mangieri, head of the art department, about it… and I told him how I felt like I shouldn’t have won it,” she said. Dr. Mangieri replied, “Well, that just goes to show that art history majors can do anything.”
Parenti certainly exemplifies that. Last year, she interned at the Newport Preservation Society, tasked with cataloging and analyzing the society’s archives— combing through never-ending piles of vintage party dresses, fur coats, the occasional bejeweled broach— all discarded by wealthy Newporters of summer’s past and eventually donated for tourists’ enjoyment. Over the summer, she worked day in and day out on an archaeological dig at the Newport Spring, run by a former Salve professor, with the goal of full restoration by 2022.
Ceramics professor Justin Gerace echoes Dr. Mangieri’s sentiment. He teaches with a philosophy that encourages trial and error, and imparted that to Parenti in her pursuit of the anatomy assignment.
“The reason why the bowls with the ears came out so successful is because she wasn’t married to everything she made,” said Gerace. “And when she had a failure, she assessed why she failed, and went on to the next one and try it again.”
Armed with tenacity, drive, and an award-winning art piece, Grace Parenti is a name you won’t soon forget.
