THE MUSES OF ASSISI
by Bill Strubbe
While touring Assisi, it was in the lobby
of Hotel Giotto that I met Edith Isaac-Rose and
Bea Kreloff who for 24 years have offered art and
writing classes in Italy. Initially they headquartered
their workshop studio at an Assisi convent, but when the
Mother Superior caught Bea slipping guests in after curfew,
they took up quarters at the more convivial Hotel Giotto.
The centrally located four-star hotel has given over a
spacious conference room and terrace for use as a studio.
Included in the writing workshop fee is a shared double
room with bath, breakfast, dinner, lectures, and gratuities.
“We wanted an Italian town with
a lot of history, culture, and art, yet not too distracting
for the students; meaning not Florence. We wanted a
town where participants could walk around and become
familiar with it during their stay,” explains 80-year-old
Bea. “The Art Workshop International has been a
welcome presence in Assisi and a part of the fabric
of town, and we are proud of the relaxed, enriching
environment we’ve created.”
Edith and Bea met in 1979, and have
been life and business partners ever since. A child
of socialist parents, Bea was raised in a hotbed of
radical politics in Brooklyn, carrying that activism
into her adult life: civil rights, anti-war, gay rights,
and feminism. The former head of the Art Department
at Fieldston School, when not administering Art Workshop,
she keeps up her work as a feminist and human rights
activist.
Edith, a graduate of the Chicago Art
Institute who has taught at Ohio State, Columbia, the
New School, and Rockland Community College, has exhibited
in the United States and abroad and her work is part
of the Hirshhorn Museum and other important collections.
The success of the visual arts classes
encouraged them to form writing workshops as well. With
much naiveté and chutzpah, they asked such literary
luminaries as Grace Paley, Tony Kushner, Frank McCourt,
Dorothy Alison, Vivian Gornick, Michael Cunningham,
and Maxine Hong Kingston to lead workshops; to their
delight all of them accepted. Credit for the writing
classes, as well as the visual arts courses, is available
to matriculating undergraduate students at the New School
in New York
This year they added an Italian language
class, and a culinary class with Valerio Mogliani, Hotel
Giotto’s maestro chef. Included in the cooking
workshop are trips to Norcia (home of the Black Truffle),
winery tours, an ingredient-shopping excursion to Bastia,
and a visit to the famous Perugina chocolate factory.
www.artworkshopintl.com
[Published:
May, 2008]
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