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Q&A: Sarah Lawrence Alum Brings Artwork Home

Sarah Lawrence alum Nicoletta Barolini '83 showcases her work at the Sarah Lawrence College library.

Located right outside of the Village of Bronxville, the exhibition space in  library is currently home to the work of alumna Nicoletta Barolini, Class of '83, whose work comments on employment and social structures in America. Focusing specifically on the workforce, Barolini's work is also a nod to the 1884 satirical novella "Flatland," written by English schoolmaster Edwin Abbott, which today still finds appreciation among math, physics and computer science students and teachers.

During her time at Sarah Lawrence, Barolini studied sculpture, art, philosophy and literature. She currently works in graphic design, although one day hopes to live off of her artwork alone.

Patch: How did the book Flatland by Edwin Abbot inspire your work, if at all?

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Nicoletta Barolini: It was a response; mine is "Flatlands." Different parts of our daily work and life routine are flat, and the book Flatland: A Romance in Many Dimensions is a study of dimensions. The book talks about different dimensions. There’s one dimensionality, and two dimensionality, and three-dimensionality, but then he’s saying that there’s four, five, and probably six and so forth.

The whole point [of my work] is that kind of flattening you get in the workforce, and to bring it back to Sarah Lawrence, [the College] is such a nurturing environment that once you leave it, you realize that the world is just not like Sarah Lawrence. So all the wonderful things that you nurtured and encouraged here are easily flattened out there because you just get squashed into the same tube basically.

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Patch: How did you decide which aspects of society you wanted to flatten?

Barolini: Well it’s mostly about work. I’ve been in the workforce for thirty years and so that’s my biggest experience, so that’s what I went to. I guess, if I was a student, I could say study, except not here [Sarah Lawrence], because here they don’t flatten it. [I guess] you could get easily flattened at a more competitive Ivy League school, where the bottom line is the numbers that you achieve.

Patch: What materials did you use to assemble these pieces?

Barolini: These are wood. I used wood, wax paint and plastic for things like the driver’s seat belts. I did a lot of sawing. My brother-in-law got me a really awesome jigsaw and I went crazy with it. I got it as a Christmas gift.

Patch: What did you do after you graduated from Sarah Lawrence?

Barolini: I went to the School of Visual Arts and got a certificate in graphic design. Then I went straight into graphic design and I worked in all sorts of things, mostly publishing. I also did a lot of medical publishing with medical technical illustration.

Patch: Do you create your own work full-time now?

Barolini: No, but that’s the goal. I work at Columbia University now and I am a graphic designer there and I lay out the newspaper. My dream would be able to carve stone again. I went on a junior year abroad when I was at Sarah Lawrence and I studied in a sculpture query and it was great. I enjoyed that so much. It was in Lacoste, France. Apparently it’s the town where the Marquee De Sade had a castle. That was its claim to fame! The castle is a ruin now, but there is a huge limestone quarry there and we did a lot of sculpture. It was really fun.

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