A Zibaldone was originally a notebook kept by Italian merchants in the 14th century. Alongside workaday notes they began to add personal stories and pictures.
The Zibaldone Project uses this structural concept to explore islands, townlands and communities. The project is lead by artists JesseJames, inviting people to contribute a response of their experience through stories, memories, images, thoughts and ideas.
This website complements the physical Zibaldone notebooks. It tracks the creation of the notebooks and their contributors. It is a hodgepodge of images, video, stories and information of a not so easily pigeon-holed nature.
The Inisheer Zibaldone creates a snapshot of island life and island people. Inisheer (Inis Oírr) is the smallest of the Aran islands in Galway Bay off the west coast of Ireland along the Wild Atlantic Way. JesseJames were artists in residence at the Aras Éanna Arts Centre on Inisheer for the month of August 2017 and lead the sketching workshop of Féile na gCloch, Festival of Stones, which takes place on the island each year in September.
The Firhouse Zibaldone is an exploration of the town land in South County Dublin where JesseJames reside. The project explores how Firhouse relates, or doesn’t, to Inis Oírr, their experience of the smallest Aran Isalnd during their artist’s residency and the concepts and practices that evolved through the Inisheer Zibaldone project.
JesseJames were invited by the Galway Heritage Office to create the Loughrea Zibaldone as part of the Loughrea Medieval Festival. Together with four other artists from Spain and Hungary, JesseJames set about capturing a sense of people, place and culture based on our experiences of Loughrea over the festival weekend. All of the artists pages were bound into the Loughrea Zibaldone notebook which is currently exhibited at the Loughrea Municipal Library.
The Zibaldone Project 