Gadget ,wood assemblage
-Hugo, we'd love to hear your story and how you got to where you are today, both personally and as an artist.
If I think about an “origin story,” which I believe is what you are asking, then it has to be a family trip to our ancestral Italian hill town when I was eight. The memory endures. That visit to Calabritto impressed on me the many ways we use the term “artisanal” today in the making of nearly everything needed for daily life and survival, most in a communal setting, and in shops around a centuries-old town square.
What I took from the experience was the joy, and resourcefulness of making things, from shoes and bread to wine. I still look at the photos my father took walking those cobbled alleys. I then spent decades immersed in writing poetry, and running a bookstore and didn’t embrace the visual arts until much later. But that brief, early exposure to my Italian heritage informs all of my work. In recent years, I have explored traditional paper collage, paper-making, wood assemblage and most recently, Venetian plaster as a ground for new approaches to mixed media–-aggregating found materials like fabrics, ceramics, rusted metal and paper.
Driftwood Inn, wood assemblage
-You gather materials from streets, marshes, and beaches, all from places with their own history. How do you think about that memory or energy in what you collect?
Collecting is a pleasurable part of my process—like being an amateur archaeologist, with the surprise of turning up a colorful artifact in the dirt. On beach walks I find sun-washed sand fencing and bright, twisted buoy lines. The visible effects of time and weather are simply beautiful to me, evoking visions of an object’s original purpose, its story, and potential for a new life. Beyond that, the challenge is conjuring ways I might weave that story into an artwork.
Tangerine Bar, wood assemblage
-There’s so much presence in wood with grain, texture, weight, and surface. When you start a new piece, how much do you let the wood speak (grain, knots, cuts) versus letting your process determine the outcome?
Well, I certainly do let the wood speak, especially in any work with the character, the patina, of distressed or time-worn elements. We are discussing process, which I approach intuitively once I establish a few parameters like dimension, support and the artistic realm I set for myself. Then, as I say often, my process, no matter the materials, always comes back to collage in one way or another.
So materiality plays an outsized role for me, and color, highly important given its emotional impact, probably dominates my compositional efforts. In any case I strive for an authenticity that emanates from grain, surface wear and texture, as you’ve noted, as well as welcoming the accidental surprises when those features interact with each other. In work that I feel is most realized, I have sought an elusive element: making something new by reaching into the well of antiquity.
Rusty Gate, wood assemblage
-I love how time feels almost visible in your work through the layers of paint, the worn edges, the exposed grain. Do you think of your process as revealing time, pausing it, or giving it a new cadence altogether?
Thank you. And yes, time is central to my thinking about art. To be specific, all three aspects of time you mention find a home there, but the last, a “new cadence,” resonates most. That often-quoted modernist phrase “make it new,” attributed to poet Ezra Pound, comes frequently to mind. So yes, I do feel an urge to give a material’s visible marks of time a new life, where possible.
I would add one more idea here, that each new composition contains a road map of its own, if only I can discover it. This brings me to another poet, Robert Creeley, who once characterized his working method as “driving by looking in the rear-view mirror.” That captures my experience exactly.
Hockney Pool, wood assemblage
-What's the best way for someone to check out your work and provide support?
A range of my work can be viewed at hugorizzoli.com, Instagram at hugo_rizzoli_art, and Julie Heller Gallery, Provincetown, MA.
Also, I am always grateful for suggestions for new art venues, a trend to create exposure for artists beyond traditional galleries. I have begun to explore ideas myself and have been gratified.
Statement
My own perception of visual resonance relates primarily to color. In addition to form, line and edge, color relationship determines my direction. But for me collage is also tactile and I work to incorporate diverse surfaces, some time-worn, some freshly painted, into the process of collage-making. It is a process of continuous addition and subtraction, trial and trial, not unlike driving by looking in the rear view mirror.
This approach leads, as well, to continuous engagement with found materials such as antique papers, reclaimed wood and fabrics gathered from street, marsh, beach and yard sale. The resulting harmonies and discords become the sources from which I hope to capture the elusive offering poet Wallace Stevens described as “a pheasant disappearing in the brush.” Recent work explores the chemistry of color in the built environment and the contrast of new and worn surfaces.
Widget, wood assemblage
Bio
Slant Rhyme, wood assemblage
Hugo Rizzoli is represented by Julie Heller Gallery, where his collages were featured in two-person shows in 2015 and 2017. His work has been exhibited in juried shows at the Provincetown Art Association, the Cultural Center of Cape Cod and Cotuit Center For the Arts. In 2019, new handmade paper fusions were shown at the Tubac Center of the Arts, Tubac, Arizona. In 2020 and 2021, new work was hung at The Cultural Center of Cape Cod in Yarmouth, MA., Provincetown Commons, Provincetown Art Association and again at Tubac Center of the Arts. Most recently, Rizzoli presented a solo exhibition at the Cultural Center of Cape Cod in the summer of 2025.
Rizzoli’s art studies began in private instruction and workshops, including a summer at the Fine Arts Work Center, Provincetown, where he showed mixed media at the Hudson D. Walker Gallery. This work resulted in publication of a chapbook of poetry, Cape Strata (1989).
For eighteen years, Rizzoli owned and operated a book shop in Potomac, Maryland, the Bookstall, specializing in literature and fine arts. He and his wife, Carol, a writer and artist, live in Barnstable, Massachusetts.