The
Providence
Journal
Glorifies The Lithocollage!
How many times does a critic of a book or of a movie is lousy and the general public ends up by glorifying it as a work of art?
On the other hand, how times is there a coincidence of tastes when we are leading with a true masterpiece?!
But the Critic of the Critics is only one: TIME! Time is always infallible and insubordinable! The great works are like great mountains: from the distance they are appreciated better!
“The Lithocollage” was born 25 years ago, by Chippi Tegu. It has been saved inside the same glass enclosure which contains the Dighton Rock, ( the Pavilion), as part of the Dighton Rock Museum, in Berkley, Massachusetts. Take your family to see these two masterpieces. It is free of charge. Take route 24, exit 10. Or call for an appointment (508)-644-5522.
Manuel Luciano da Silva
Here is the critic of “The Lithocollage” written by William K. Gale, one of the Editors of “Providence Journal”. Journal-Bulletin Entertainment Editor. Published on Sunday Journal ART and TRAVEL, June 27, 1976.
Dighton Rock Slate Tribute. By William K. Gale,
Providence Journal Editor June 27 1976
Long before the white man invaded, Profile Rock, in Freetown, Mass, ( it ) was a gathering place for Indians. It was high ground, good for observation and signaling. It was protected from the wind, and the rocky soil allowed little mud.
Today, the Profile appears in Mount Rushmore fashion to be the face of an Indian, making it a perfect backdrop in the monument to American Indians which Andriana Chippi Tegu of Providence has been working on for months.
What she has done will be unveiled today at the Dighton Rock Museum in Berkley, Mass., just the other side of Fall River. Her work may well be unique. It is art both rugged and suggestive, a handsome piece done in hard material which shows the soft ness, the caring, of its author.
Miss Tegu calls her technique “lithocollage” from the Greek “litho”, meaning stone, and “collage”, having to do with gluing materials. But by any name, her project has meant a great deal of painstaking work to back up an exciting artistic conception.
Her four-by-eight-foot wall hanging is done almost entirely in slate glued to a frame on which a background has been painted. Each piece of slate was selected by trial and error over months, until the work you can see illustrated was completed. In the background is Profile Rock; in the foreground are the faces of six Indians.
“I was going to do a very detailed painting,” she said last week in the basement of her parents’ home in Providence, where she works on her lithocollage. “But then my brother Steven came up with the idea of slate. It’s beautiful and native to New England, and the Indians were almost from the Stone Age.”
At the time, a roofer, Richard Grassley of Seekonk, happened to be working on the Tegu home and volunteered that he had lots of old slate in his back yard. The Tegus could have all they wanted, free, he said.
That settled it, and Miss Tegu began her research. Besides reading what she could, she visited some of the Indians still living in this area.
“Many had intermarried with whites,” she says. “And of course there are no photographs or accurate drawings of Indians. I had to sort of bridge the gap between what I could see today of Indians and my own ideas. I feel so strongly now that I can identify with Indians.
The Indians in Miss Tegu’s work are strong and handsome. They represent New England Indians rather than the Western Indians that one usually sees depicted. For instance, they wear no feathers above their heads because in the heavily forested East feathers made walking difficult.
Her work was commissioned by the Friends of Dighton Rock Museum. The museum is dedicated to displaying items connected with the Dighton Rock, on which there are European inscriptions widely believed to pre-date Christopher Columbus.
Once Miss Tegu’s research was done she began a series of drawings, with the final background and human drawings being translated into the slate figures by trial and error. It was long and laborious process, but the end result is a striking example of creativity as well as a tribute.
Miss Tegu, who is 22, graduated this year from Rhode Island College with a degree in art education. She was on the dean’s list every semester, which is appropriate for the daughter of a professor. Her father, Dr. Steven Tegu, teaches modern languages at RIC. In addition to studying at RIC she also attended art school in Madrid.
This fall she hopes to return to Europe—Italy or Portugal—for further art work and study. “I’ve had years of classes and deadlines and now I want to let the real me come through,” Miss Tegu says.
But for the past few months she has been completely caught up in her work on the Indians of New England.
"I think of this work as more like poetry,” she said kneeling on the floor of the basement, a piece of blue-green slate in her hand. “Painting is so detailed. Poetry is suggestive, and this is a suggestion, a suggestion of a great people.
“Late at night when I’m working on it, it becomes spiritual. The scene, ,the Indians, come alive for me. I can feel it and I’m right in it, right in the middle of it.”
End of the article
Instructions from Providence to get to Dighton Rock Museum: Take Route 195 to Fall River, picking up Route 24 north toward Boston. Ten miles north of Fall River get off on exit 10. Two miles to East and you will find the Museum. Or call 508-644-5522.
I have asked personally, Chipi Tegu to write an article explaining, to the general public, to be pushed here in my website, how she created the Lithocollage, etc. and she said YES! So be on the alert!