” The yard was looking very metaphysical with its dusty stools and large wooden benches.
After placing the maquette on a table, I took a sheet of paper and sat staring blankly at the sunset. Some dark red apples were hanging from a young tree in front of me.
Almost automatically, I found a pencil, and while I sat drawing it, I had the following imaginary dialogue with the apple tree: 

APPLE TREE – Isn’t it nice up here in the sculpture yard at sunset?

VIVIANA ROSSI-CAFFELL – Oh yes. The wind seems to have calmed down a bit.

A.T. – Still, I wouldn’t trust it with your delicate sculptures. Look at what it’s done to my apples, here on the ground!
Are you… are you drawing me? I didn’t know you could draw. Isn’t your work abstract?

V.R.C. – You could say that, yes. My thing with abstraction must have to do with the way I absorb information and store it in my memory. Apart from some rare occasions, most of the experience that I’m exposed to only leaves a very abstract impression on me, as if, in order to be assimilated, it had to be translated with the aid of a code. 
It’s a sort of simplification, a distortion, although a very precise one, into a language that is acceptable to me. It may sound very clever, if it wasn’t for the fact that, when I want to convert those impressions into practical terms, or when I need to retrieve a memory, the code doesn’t work, and there is no way to revert to the original.

A.T. – Oh dear. Never had such a problem.
By the way, don’t mind me asking, but what took you so long?

V.R.C. – Well, I spent the week in the metal workshop, making my pieces, I also ran what’s called a Masterclass for the students, and I’ve been through the archives and the collection… 

A.T. – No, no, I didn’t mean that. I meant in your life. How come you were nearly forty before you came to call yourself a sculptor?

V.R.C – (after a pause, to recompose myself after the surprise at such bluntness coming from an apple tree) Well, tree… I guess I’ve spent a long time dealing with my own windmills, to use an image from Don Quixote. Have you read Cervantes?

A.T. – (rather annoyed) No.

V.R.C. – What I mean is that we all get to ripen our fruits in different ways.
Think of the agave. All those years preparing and preparing, only to flower once, and then die. When you compare it to the woodland strawberry that doesn’t even need a seed to be born – it just puts down roots from one of its mum’s runners – and bears fruit in a matter of months, really, they couldn’t be more different, and yet they are both plants. 
I’m going to tell you something very personal now, something I’ve never shared with anyone else. 
This isn’t the first time that I’ve spoken to an apple tree. 
When I was living in my parents’ home, in Italy, there was this apple tree we used to call “duo melo”, because two varieties of apple had been grafted onto it. It was a very productive tree from the day we got it, rather young, just like you are, and its apples had the sweetest and juiciest crunch I’ve ever come across. It was planted right by the steps that led to my home, so I would walk past it every day. And every day it grew, getting ready to bear more and more fruit. 
I remember once, it was this time of year, and it was raining. 
Most of the leaves had fallen, and the red apples were plump, shimmering in the dark grey sky (where I come from, when it rains, it really rains). I rushed with my camera to capture this image of bountiful burden, which related so closely to how I felt: the strenuous effort this small tree made to keep hold of all his fruits, each one so round and beautiful, each one carrying the sweetest promise, the promise of creation, of pleasure and, through their seeds, the promise of eternal life. 
That’s exactly how I felt. I was cultivating most arts then, to various degrees: from ballet to calligraphy, without neglecting archery, rock music, martial arts and screenwriting… pretty much every single one of them. I felt just like that “duo melo”. And that’s when I realised that I was going to need to lop off a few branches if I wanted any fruit to grow to maturity. 
That’s what I’ve been doing in these years, tree. Pruning, basically. 
So, don’t be cross with the wind, because it’s actually helping you to lighten your load. 

By that time, it was dark, and the pencil was merely tracing the memory of the tree’s silhouette on the paper. ”

From “A dance for Edward James”, December 2021