A & E

Since he was 10, artist Alexis Nutini has lived in the United States, primarily in Pittsburgh's East End, where he grew up in Squirrel Hill and attended Central Catholic High School.

But it was the summer trips with his father, University of Pittsburgh professor of anthropology Hugo G. Nutini, to the town where he spent the first 10 years of his life, Fortin de las Flores, Mexico, that he says influenced and continues to influence his work as an artist.

"I was fortunate enough to go every year between spring and summer."

Now 28, Alexis Nutini is very much his own man and very much an artist. A woodcarver and printmaker, he creates wonderfully expressive woodblock prints that are an amalgam of his life's experience. And though he currently lives in Philadelphia, he thinks of Pittsburgh as a second home and visits often. After all, he says, "My entire family lives here."

That explains why one can find Nutini's latest solo exhibition, "Reflection," at Mexico Lindo Gallery, in Squirrel Hill, which is owned by his brother, Jean-Pierre, and sister-in-law, Lisa DiGioia-Nutini.

From the outside, one can clearly see one of Nutini's massive works that hangs in the gallery's Murray Avenue storefront window. Titled "Intercambrio," Nutini says, "It means interchange or exchange in Italian or Spanish."

"Essentially it combines images from my background and my experiences in Rome," Nutini says of the nearly 7-foot-long print which is a collage of images including inverted churches, the Italian countryside, self-portraits and the interior of the artist's apartment, as well as a few objects such as an antique tricycle and a bird of paradise flower.

In many ways, the large, monochromatic piece is much like the works on display inside, most of which explore the artist's identity as a Mexican-American and his experience living in both Spain and Italy.

In 2001, just a year after he graduated from St. Mary's College of Maryland with a bachelor's degree in art, Nutini was awarded a Fulbright grant and moved to Barcelona to complete his project "A visual ethnography of Spain."

Inside the gallery, a few of the first pieces visitors will notice are four wood blocks arranged next to the door that relate to that experience. Calling them "sketches," they are in fact woodcarvings that feature the various sights Nutini encountered in Barcelona, from the characteristic street lamps and Gothic cathedrals of the old Gothic Quarter, or Bario Gothic, to the stone streets and churches designed and built by Antonio Gaudi (1852-1926).

"All of these images are what I found while I was in Barcelona," Nutini says of the multiple images that are, in essence, combined in the form of four separate, but identically sized, wood blocks. "Essentially, what I did was that I would carry my piece of wood and walk the street and sit down somewhere to do a sketch, then a quick carving sketch."

In 2005, after a year abroad in Rome, Nutini received a masters of fine arts from Temple University's Tyler School of Art. But it was that year in Rome that infuses a lot of the works on view, such as two massive works, "Self Portrait" and "Self Portrait in 35 Woodblocks."

The former is nearly 8 feet tall and features the artist represented from many different angles. It's a collage method that results in huge schizophrenic compositions. Intertwining figures, inverted perspectives and radical scale shifts expose personal elements of the artist both external and internal, revealing his vision, he says, "of a world without boundaries."

In the latter work, Nutini presents himself yet again. But here he combines his self-portrait with a few portraits of his fiancee. Again, in this piece, there are various interior views and landscapes of places familiar to the artist, but combined in a variety of positions or portrayed from various angles.

What's most curious about this piece and much of the works on display is that Nutini chooses to exhibit the wood blocks, in many cases instead of the singular-edition prints he pulls from them.

"I like the idea of having the original (on display)," he says. "That way people can feel it. To me, I'm more interested in the wood, anyway. That's what I'm all about. I'm a carver. I like people to touch the wood. I don't mind."

As for the overall size of the works, which are atypically much larger than most wood blocks and woodblock prints, he says that's a direct influence of the well-known Mexican muralist Desiderio Hernandez Xochitiotzin, who just so happens to be Nutini's godfather.

Another influence was his maternal grandmother who passed away five years ago. That explains why one work, "Ofrenda a Leora," is an obvious depiction of an ofrenda, or shrine.

"Most of my work is, obviously, is very personal. And this is even more so, because it's dedicated to my grandmother in a loosely Mexican way," Nutini says.

With its bold images of skulls, plants, a ceramic dog and a bottle of Scotch, the print itself grabs attention, as it obviously did for esteemed Mexican-American printmaker Artemio Rodr'guez, who chose to include it in his book "Puro Muerto" ($15, La Mano Press, 2005), a contemporary compendium of Day of the Dead art.

And even though the piece is entirely inspired by Nutini's Mexican upbringing, he says he can't help that all of the pieces reflect upon that aspect of his childhood as well.

"Usually in my work I always put an element that goes back to my upbringing, where I grew up in Mexico or other countries I've visited. So, I use images that may interpreted as one thing, but their really images of Mexico," Nutini says.

"I think that's why I maintained a strong connection," he says. "If I hadn't gone back every year and maintained friendships, I probably would have completely seen myself as an American."

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