Le4uadre – Damiana Spoto

I am a designer, working with shapes and colors, creating prints related to the landscapes of my heart..some are Sicilian landscapes, others are from Lucania, my adopted homeland. I have always been excited by colors, all of them, their powerful vibrational charge. I think colors are therapeutic, they speak to the soul. My most difficult challenge? ..relating them to each other, always trying to achieve harmony. My work is always enriched by the encounter with the other, at the exact moment when the relationship, albeit brief, is established, then inspiration for new visual stories and new prints is triggered. My training takes place between Rome, Florence and Paris in the field of fashion and the study of macro trends. After designing collections for John Richmond, Gucci, Pianura Studio and Alysi I fund in 2015 in Basilicata the brand le4uadre with the precise intent to generate beauty through the careful use of shapes and colors. For the past nine years, I have been teaching at the masters in design and fashion at the Costume & Fashion Academy in Rome and the Modateca Deanna located in Reggio Emilia. Le4uadre are not just objects but dizzying journeys within color: visions of trees, seabeds, geometric progressions that merge and collide.

Q&A

What craft do you work with?

I am a designer, I trained between Rome and Paris, I create prints to make scarves and bags with a strong personality.
I have been working in the fashion industry for 10 years, my brand was founded in 2015.
I draw with mixed technique, I use watercolors, pencils, I render on the graphic tablet ancient medieval friezes, it is not important in itself the technique, but the goodness of the final result.

What inspires you to work with this craft?

I am passionate about colors, brightening the look of women wearing my creations, being able to make them happy and more beautiful than they already are.
I choose natural materials, recycled fibers such as rose petals, milk fiber, recycled viscose, beech bark pulp…recycled nylon..or pure silk from Como, pure cashmere…very soft merino wool gauze…

How do you start your creative process?

My creative process starts from visual suggestions, I observe a lot of the ancient historical traces in our cities, urban or suburban environments, small towns or big cities, I observe those little ” nothing”, infinitesimal details and start embroidering stories in my mind. Here is the most fun part. The more difficult one is the ability to manage the many small segments and operational processes that are part of my job.

How would you best describe your workspace and what tools could you not do without?

Without my stones, my colorful minerals or fresh flowers around me a little I feel like an orphan…that’s what should never be missing on my desk, be it even a wild flower picked at the edge of the concrete collected on the way to my little colorful atelier. Colors as well as flowers mellow the soul and predispose to beauty and joy.

Are there new techniques you would like to try?

The manual technique of engraving, the one used by the skilled Indian printmakers–perhaps with mineral and vegetable pigments as was done in the old days.

What have you learnt or the best advice you have received that you would like to share with fellow crafters?

“It takes love” , my fashion teacher at the Academy in Rome told me, when fatigue makes you falter, the only answer is always love, for what you do, for who you are.

What other types of craft do you dream of collaborating with?

In another life I would have liked to have known the illustrators of Hermes…for their sublime visual storytelling skills.

What professional dream do you have?

Growing more and more.
Giving more and more joy through the use of colors and telling the best of my second magical land : Basilicata, its forests, its tiny abandoned suburbs.
Tales truly imbued with sparks of magic.