My nonna (grandmother) Rosina died at the age of 26 shortly after giving birth to   her seventh child.  She was married to my grandfather, Sam, when she was 14.    I never knew her, but the moment I saw this picture only a few years ago I felt      an immediate connection to her.  For the first time in my life I could see where        I came from.  Not just in looks, although that part was shocking to me          because I could finally see myself reflected in an ancestor for the first time,            but in her eyes, the set of her jaw and the way she sat... the center of her             world and making no apologies for it.  It’s as if she was saying, “Take the               damn picture I’ve got shit to do and no, thank you, I will not sit up                 straight, cross my ankles and look proper.  You want me, you take                   what you get.”  I can relate.

                     So I dedicate this site and my art, if I may be so bold as to call it                        that, to this woman I never knew but admire.  She would                          probably call all this a waste of time and pointless and                            something worse in Italian that I wouldn’t understand, but I                              think deep down she would have laughed and been proud.

                               This is because she died too soon.

                                  This is for everything she never got to do in her short life.

                                     This is for Rosina.