Ancient is Modern, Modern is Ancient is the umbrella theme for the art of three series showcased here: Cave Art, Goddess Eternal, and Southwestern Landscapes.
The theme was first inspired by the visually abstract nature of primordial Southwestern and Western landscapes during Savaiano’s five-year residency in Santa Fe, N.M., and almost 40 years of living and traveling in California. It was further stimulated by her interest in prehistoric and ancient cultures through readings and travels in Italy, Greece, and Mexico, notably their particular reverence for animal life and seminal female goddess figures expressed in abstract art language that has been embraced in contemporary art.
These influences led to embellishing on the abstract art techniques of color, geometry, texture, shape, line, form, pattern, and monochrome tone to re-imagine the subjects of very bygone eras in a contemporary aesthetic and sensibility.
In her mixed media Cave Art panels: the graceful lines of the movements of elks, bison, horses, and deer who once crossed uneven textured and colored shapes and forms of Neolithic cave walls of Lascaux, Chauvet, and Altamira in France and Spain.
In her Goddess Eternal series of sculptures, ceramics, and Pop Art painting: to date, the classic bodily curves and symbolic “goddess hieroglyphics” patterns of vulva, swirls, chevrons, breasts, nets, etc., of prehistoric and ancient goddess figures and timeless icons inspired from research and a spring 2024 visit to Minoan sites in Santorini and museums in Athens and Rome. The female empowerment goddess motif will continue to unfold with pieces of such timeless icons as Eve, Mary, Amazon, Cleopatra, and Athena.
In her Southwestern Landscape paintings: the rolling sensual lines of Death Valley’s sand dunes, the geometric shapes of La Jolla’s arched rugged coves, the sandy and scruffy jagged wall planes and cone-shaped spires of the canyons of New Mexico’s Tent Rocks National Monument.
A master’s graduate from Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., and a world-class journalist specializing in the arts and media for 20 years with Time, Inc., Savaiano began her art career in 2008 with the first of her Southwestern paintings as a continuing education student at the Otis College of Art & Design in Los Angeles. She expanded her disciplinary range with studies at various art centers, including the Florence (Italy) Academy of Art, University of California San Diego, Palomar College, San Marcos, Calif., and Lieu de Sculpture private art atelier in Carlsbad, Calif.
She has exhibited at the Scottsdale Art Week, 2026; Hamptons Fine Arts Fair, 2022 (along side internationally renowned Hamptons Colony artists Eric Ernst, Danny Simmons, and Hans Van Bovenkamp); Fallbrook (Calif.) Art Center; Bridgeport Art Center, Chicago; Zhou B Art Center, Chicago, Water Street Studios, Batavia, Ill., and other venues in the Chicago and Sarasota, Fla., areas.
She has sold works through gallery representation of Ross Contemporary, Chicago, the online international gallery, saatchiart.com, and charity auctions.
Her collectors are from Tucson, Dallas, Beverly Hills, New Jersey, and the Chicago suburbs.
