Description Sometimes, driving through the streets of the country in South Italy you will be amazed at the sight of these ancient forms. The centuries-old olive trees have extraordinary shapes. Their trunks are twisted, bent, drilled, almost as if they were provided with will of their own, and through decades have made themselves a natural form of magnificent art with faces, forms of animals, of human bodies, silver and celestial light, and lush green moss. This trees are extraordinarily strong, can constantly reborn, after the flames, after the frost, after being headed.They reborn over what is left of themselves with incredible grace and moving splendor, becoming over the time like giant guardians of time itself. Sometimes walking in the fields between these fantastic presences, it is so peaceful that time seems suspended. Timelessly you have the feeling of being in another distant age, and you understand why in the past, the olive trees were sacred trees. Also valuable for its fruit and the precious 'juice' they make, the olives, when are still flowers, since the dawn of the times, are called even today by the old farmers 'little bells of gold'..
Alessandra Andrisani, Palo Alto Member Since March 2013 Artist Statement Alessandra Andrisani was born in Matera, Basilicata, South Italy. The fifth of six sisters, daughter of non-immigrant parents, she herself emigrated to the United States in 2003. She worked as a chef in California for a number of years, then returned to Matera to help a friend open a restaurant. Not fully satisfied, she turned her attention to painting and writing. Needing to settle on a path for her future, but unable to decide which of these three passions she wanted to pursue, she decided to put them together. Thus began this adventure in composing painted recipes in connection with anecdotes of her life. Her paintings are slowly gaining favor with the public and can be sampled with the first chapter (published on amazon) of her first upcoming and unique painted cookbook, which is part of a memoir that relates her childhood in Italy with the celebration of food and the art of living!