Learning to do creative, hands-on work is never mere time-filling, as we so often think today. Calling something a hobby can seem trivial, but the creative process—even when the results look modest—engages both soul and body, forging a link between thought and reality. That connection itself becomes a form of therapy, training the mind to make concrete what it imagines. Art therapy, by its very nature, does not fixate on results but on process. It focuses on each phase of work because those phases *are* the true therapeutic and creative aim.
Handling clay, for instance, will not make us sculptors. But it lets us experience the act of shaping—something we can control and direct with our minds, and even more so with our hands. What emerges is simply a form, simple or intricate, that holds all of us within it: our mood, our mental cast, our creative energy.
I introduced classical etching to the young residents of L'Arche Il Chicco gently, bringing art magazines and talking through the works shown. We visited a couple of group exhibitions at Officine Incisorie as guests. Their attention as they looked was striking. But more than that—they absorbed what they saw and made it their own.
Etching contains fundamental principles of therapeutic practice. It is not purely instinctual; it is reasoned and divided into precise phases. Each one prepares the ground for the next. Anyone who has taken up etching must learn to set aside haste and the anxiety to reach the end. You focus on method, one step at a time. There is design work that demands concentration and vision. There is the handling of materials and tools. There are strict timings—we're talking seconds, minutes, hours—that must be respected, or the whole project fails. There is the physical labor of inking and cleaning the plate, repeated many times if you want multiple prints, though each print will always be different, similar but different. The final pull from the press brings an emotional charge, always a surprise. And there is the simple sensation of touching printing paper, soaking it in water, drying it before the pull. A whole world of sensation that only lives in the doing. The result comes, but that is not the goal. It is only one phase of the entire journey.
For the young people at Il Chicco, we simplified certain procedures and removed the riskier steps. What remained was the medium of expression itself—the means through which they could speak in works that define and identify them. We discovered that Danilo has a gift for urban landscapes. Chiara and Nadia lean toward pastoral scenes—flowers, countryside. Alessandro, who has a particular sensitivity to music, draws instruments, musical notes, violin clefs, in a way that echoes Picasso. Marilena depicts figures that she lives with inwardly.
The futurist painter Umberto Boccioni represented states of mind as human figures: strange, spare, ethereal forms born from the artistic and spiritual synthesis of a great artist who made them tangible.
Marilena expresses her inner states in her work. She never knew Umberto Boccioni. She is deeply introverted, closed in on herself—but the moment she begins to draw, something shifts. She opens. She reaches out for recognition from those around her. In her figures, Marilena always includes an environment, as if seeking shelter. The rest you can judge for yourselves.
The real measure of success goes beyond the undeniable quality of their work. It is the enthusiasm. It is the anticipation of the day we meet. It is the lift in mood, the watching their print emerge from the press—a true lived experience of how art should be shared and experienced.
Meeting L'Arca
Il Chicco entered our world because the L'Arca community offered us a space to use as a printshop. We equipped it fully. From there it was a short step to starting a workshop with some of the young residents. At first it felt like play, an artistic experiment to see how they would tackle something creative and demanding. Then came the surprise: their commitment and the results were remarkable—so much so that we held our first exhibition in 2018 on Via Giulia, followed by another the next year. The beauty of the workshop is that etching involves many phases—preparing the matrix, inking, printing, among others—so everyone who participated had a role, each taking on one or more tasks. It fostered collaborative work. You can find everything we do at www.officineincisorie.it. There you can get to know us better and download our catalogs, including the one from Il Chicco's exhibition: DI-Segni DI-Versi.