Fabiana Sorrentino

Year of birth: 1975
Where do you live: Ostia
Your education: I graduated in Cultural Assets Preservation and specialized in Cultural Management
Describe your art in three words: creative, hard coloured and passionate
Your discipline: I work on several production lines: home design, ceremony and personal and fashion accessorizes
Website | Instagram

How did your Journey in the World of art begun?

I was passionate about crafts since I was a girl I liked to create original carnival masks, Christmas decorations always different and handmade, personal gifts for my friends or family occasions.
I had a huge box for recycling ribbons, flowers, boxes, fabrics, broken necklaces and any object that would be suitable to be reused.
I have always been a guy with many ideas: I made sure that they were also made and well packaged!
I have always loved to follow my passions, so over time I attended several practical courses to comply with them.
I also had organizational skills and I thought it would be nice to combine them – and then study them -in event planning.

How did you do the transition from working in event management to focusing on Moss art?

There was a phase in my life I tried to realize the dream of dealing with art-inspired weddings and events.
To do this, I thought I had to know both creative and managerial phases, in order to be able to design a theme and instruct a team in its realization.
So I followed management courses and practical ones like sketch, floral design and even sewing ccourses.
Even if I found out wedding planning was not sustainable for me and my family organization, my passion for handmade met moss art…
Doing something artistic or creative – especially after becoming a mother and giving priority to my family needs -, represents staying in touch with my aspirations, passions and desires.
My Atelier is my “happy place”: while working, I forget problems, look at the world with an “A tinteforti” filter and even stimulate others to do the same.

Fabiana Sorrentino | Patchwork | 2025

Can you explain the creative process between your moss and lichens artworks? How do you decide the colors and elements that come together in each piece?

Normally, before a Moss artwork there’s a sketch, traced on paper and then on wood, especially if pieces are matched each other or exhibited together.
The priority for me is to identify whether there will be one or more centers of observation: a diagonal one, a spiral one, a wave or several waves…?
The fullfilling of the composition should be defined after that: whether with lichens only or also with plants, flowers and moss in addition, because some of these elements require sponge to be placed.
I can’t decide everything in advance, because, the work taking shape can inspire me differently.
I do not love – and perhaps never realized – monochromatic lichen works: I feel really A tinteforti and try to express myself through plants and colored flowers.
I am also baroque in my works: my creations are both rich in variety of naturalistic elements and dense in composition.
The colors can be chosen by combination (i.e., bringing together two or three elements which fit together well), by selection (i.e., matching shades, tones and undertones of a specific Armochromatic Season) or, finally, according to a specific request; in that case, my ability is to provide a wild range of elements in the required colors.
In general, compositions are more balanced with large, medium and small elements alltogether, as you would do in floral arrangements or in a table setting decoration.
In the end, I rely on my aesthetic sense and even on my “horror vacui”: I rarely stop from inserting new elements in boards I’m working on if I perceive them as scarce or unbalanced!

Your Works often explore the theme of “flowering”. How does the concept reflect your personal journey and growth as an artist?

My creativity and my artistic sense are innate, but my mental switch in perceiving and define me as artist has been a result of a constant and laborious job on myself.
I have gone through great distress periods: when I threw myself into unsustainable ideas; or when, after starting a creative job, I found out a pregnancy and had to close all dreams in a drawer until unknown date; or even more, when I thought I had anything more to give to the world, because I couldn’t find space and energy for my passions.
When doctors said it was depression, I realized that the only solution was to go on creating again: profitable or not, I had to make art regularly, because that would have been my therapy, a real needing and it would have represented my blooming time!
I knew that I could give something to the world as artistic woman, so I started a psychological sessions to overcome blocks and self-sabotage, I found a location for my lab, I began to meditate regularly and, above all, I started to do moss art!
That was the moment I “blossomed” and, by telling my story on social media, I wanted to inspire other women to become aware that, in life, it’s important to discover and show yourself to the world with your own strong colors… no matter what!
This is what I put in my works: the dignity and strength of a creative and personal path that became art and manifest to the world.

Fabiana Sorrentino | Il Paesaggio Di Pindaro | 2025

What role do your flowers, moss and lichens play in your art? How do you view this Natural Elements in the context of your creations?

They’re like colors for a painter: brushstrokes; new and different textures are like testimonies of a varied nature, which reflects the human being.
My works of art are unique creations, never equal to themselves, different from each other, as the human being and his personal discovery and flowering process.

You have mentioned the importance of color and experimentation in your work. How do you approach esperimenting with New materials or technics in your art?

I might perhaps be considered a craftsman rather than an artist in what I do.
It has often been suggested to me to approach potential customers as a merchant having in his hands the solution of their problems and needs.
I did it, without conviction: this is the craft approach to reach a wide audience with your skills and precision, perhaps creatively solving a practical or aesthetic problem for them and replicate it for multiple people (anyone who identifies with that type of client or solution).
I use art and creativity as, in primis, an expressive, communicative and aesthetic tool, in order to itself, without any dissemination ambition.
Each work is unique and unrepeatable; it aims to inspire viewers and emotionally engage observers.
The “beauty” you buy in an artwork, in short terms, I think is your needing to keep what you felt the first time you look at it… as if it’s been talking to you!
So, from the craftsman you buy a creation providing for its use and placement, from the artist you buy no more than the pleasure to have that piece of art…
In add, artists can give a value to their works only after finishing them, because they need to change and insert elements until they’re satisfied; artisans should be part of a figure decided with a customer in advance: and for me it would be very limiting, stylistically.

Fabiana Sorrentino | Fabiana-Sorrentino-works

Can you tell us more about the symbolic meaning behind the materials use and how they connect to your broader artistic message?

I am more an artist than a craftsman in my creations also because the experimental and aesthetic part in the use of raw materials prevails over practicality or logicality.
For example, I have mounted works on leather (instead of wood) bases. It has given many assembly and exhibition pitfalls – having a not completely rigid support.
Moreover, I created a type of processing moss I call “raso”, which comes from the meticulous and long shredding of lichens to form a frothy and smooth appearance texture.
I love to use moss roots, which many people throw or consider “ugly” in absence of the “domed head” of quality lichens.
Obviously, composition time is longer, technique can be spurious and risky, but it’s an artistic experiment, with aesthetic implications, that I’ve loved!

What has been the most significant challenge you have faced while creating for Moss art, and how have you overcome it?

Stylistically I could say that the greatest challenge till now has been working on large surfaces for the first time: fill without weighing down and harmonize works aesthetically without being repetitive – with a stylistic figure as rich as mine -, could have been a failure.
I think I have overcome the challenge, but this should been judged by the observer of my 80 by 80 cm triptych!
What I did to solve criticities, was to keep some “constants” in the composition, to give continuity (for example some natural elements are present in all the three paintings) and vary some others to give movement (for example, the nodal point, the richest band in the three squares, it varies his position, being once at the top, once in the middle and once at the bottom).
Emotionally, however, the hardest challenge was to confront me with the sustainability of my “business”: for example, my high number of hours-per-work are not easily “countable” and in others’ eyes are a “constant loss.

I said to myself that:
– what is good for others mustn’t necessarily be good for me and vice versa;
– I do not need the consent of anyone, if creating is what I want to do;
– creating is my process to find myself, my well-being and my pleasure, and this has immeasurable value!