The Invitation—Artwork

The Invitation explores hospitality, friendship and the quiet moments that shape a life.

Created following two months living alone in Italy—first in Florence, then in Assisi—the work brings together traces of two places and encounters within a single image.

A digitally drawn tortellino rests upon the weathered surface of a lichen-covered wall photographed during solitary evening walks in the hills above Florence. Alongside it, a shared moment of laughter with Marina Merli, director of the Ginestrelle Artist Residency, speaks to the friendship that emerged during my time in Assisi.

The work began with an ordinary morning.

I was sweeping the street outside the residency studio when a local woman approached me, took my arm and invited me to join a pasta-making class at her family's nearby language school.

“The sweeping can wait,” she said. “Come with me. It's starting now.”

Moments later, I was making tortellini alongside twenty strangers from around the world.

What stayed with me was not simply the invitation, but the act of accepting it. I had arrived in Italy alone, deliberately stepping outside the familiarity of my everyday life. Again and again, that openness led to encounters I could never have planned.

The tortellino became more than pasta. It became the trace of an invitation accepted.

The Invitation brings those traces together: a wall encountered while walking alone in Florence; a tortellino made because I said yes in Assisi; and a friendship formed through the experience of being there.

Places leave traces. People leave traces. Moments leave traces.

The original diptych remains a personal gift to Marina Merli. An exclusive edition of ten archival giclée prints of The Tortellino has been created, allowing this invitation to continue its journey into other homes and other lives.