From Palermo to the Sonoran Desert: My Journey as an Artist

---

I’m Bijou D’Arpa, originally from Palermo, Italy, with an MA in Italian Language and Culture from Middlebury College. After more than 30 years teaching Italian at the university level, I felt called toward a more hands-on, creative life. In many ways, my art has become another language for me—one made of color, texture, and the landscapes around me.

My journey began with embedding dried flowers and grasses in resin, but everything changed when I discovered alcohol inks and later the inspiring courses taught by mixed-media artist Jane Monteith. That discovery opened the door to a world of experimentation I didn’t know I needed.

In 2019, during a visit to the Southern Arizona Arts Guild, I showed a few early pieces and was immediately juried in. At the time, I was creating mostly abstract collages. But I quickly realized how deeply people in the Southwest connected with desert imagery. That shift encouraged me to look at the Sonoran Desert with new eyes—studying saguaros, cacti, wildflowers, and the shapes of distant mountains in ways I never had during my earlier years teaching in Arizona.

Today, I create mixed-media collages inspired by the desert’s colors, forms, and quiet expansiveness. I paint all my own collage papers by hand using alcohol inks, acrylics, acrylic inks, crackle mediums, and other texture-building materials that create raised, tactile surfaces. These become the pieces I cut, layer, and shape into desert landscapes and abstract forms, finished with a glossy resin coat that brings everything to life.  Because drawing and hand-cutting were never where my patience lived, I now design my shapes digitally and cut them with a digital precision cutter, which lets me focus on painting my papers and assembling each collage as a layered, textured story. 

My Italian roots often find their way into my sense of color and rhythm, while the desert has taught me to slow down and notice the subtleties of light and shape. What began as a simple curiosity has become an ongoing practice of exploration, gratitude, and joy.