Casa Dell'Angelo Caprino
Hello artists
Are you a creative professional in any field who works with joy in a peaceful, natural environment where curation and spontaneity are equally valued? Do you have a project that could benefit from a residency in a small, rustic house in the hills of Northern Italy? And finally, would you like to share your creativity and energy with a local community of folks in Caprino Veronese? For a period of 1-3 months, you could be our rent-free guest in Lubiara
(food, transportation and personal needs are the responsibility of the artist)
Who are we?
We are an NGO (non-governmental organization). We are a mixed expat family of Americans, Italians and Danes (and a Norwegian if you count the dog)-Lisa, Stefano, Sasha, Arianna and Zeno (and Loki). We live and work in Copenhagen, and come down to our Italian home as often as possible. We work with friends, neighbors and supporters of the arts to make the Association of Casa Dell’ Angelo possible as a not-for-profit organization to support artists and creatives. We have lived in the village of Lubiara since 2007. After a decade of Scandinavian summers (too cold for some of us), we decided to rent a small apartment for three weeks in a village near to Lake Garda. After the first week, we were touring around with a real estate agent in hopes of finding a summer home. When we came to Lubiara, we were enchanted. Something about the place, not really anything specific, yet everything about the environment. . . it simply chose us. The agent assured us that the home was far too small for a family of five, and the lack of a parking space or cantina would make our lives very inconvenient. We disagreed and immediately bought the small house where we will welcome our artists-in-residence—‘Casa dell’ Angelo’ –The Angel House, named for the stone angel who lives in the wall of the tiny garden. At Easter in 2014, we became the owners of the farm next door to Casa dell-Angelo, known as ‘El Poer’ (in English, ‘The Homestead’) in Lubiara. From medieval times until the 1960s, ‘el poer’ in dialect, or ‘il podere’ in Italian, was the structuring unit of rural livelihoods. It was the homestead of a family and provided everything needed to thrive and reproduce. The bounded land and its bounty were essential to the existence of a family. El Poer has been in the family of our friend Gianluca for generations and we enjoy the stories from the elder neighbours whose memories on the land trace back the decades. We have been privileged to be welcomed by El Poer and strive to maintain its essence as a simple, tranquil farm. We will be the sometimes neighbours of the artists in residence at Casa dell Angelo. In 2024, we began talks within our local community about how we might use our Casa Dell’ Angelo in a way that could support our values and our neighbourhood, With the Association of Casa Dell’ Angelo we hope to create a place of peace. It is our goal that anyone who comes to stay in our place will feel at home and will make this their place. We happily host creatives and their families of all configurations. All genders, races, species and religions are welcome here, as long as you are nice.
Who are you?
To be a good fit as a Casa Dell’ Angelo Artist-In-Residence, you should be engaged in a creative project that can benefit from quiet time. This could be a painting, poem, book, blog, play, performance, installation, quilt, song, dance, music score, costume, article, sculpture (small) or something we have not even thought of yet. Tell us about your project—what do you imagine for it, how far along is it already, how much time and space will it need, who’s your audience, how do you imagine it moving into Caprino and the world? You should have some idea of how your residency could contribute to the local community in Caprino Veronese. Perhaps you could participate in a public art exhibition or read your work aloud in the local middle school, or you may want to collaborate with other artists in the area—whatever your ideas are, we are happy to work with you to connect to local community members who can help you to make a meaningful contribution with your creativity. A few practical things that will help: you should speak English or Italian, be comfortable living independently and either walking about 15 minutes to the local grocery store and waiting with immense patience for the public buses to take you to nearby cities (like Verona, from which you can board a train to go anywhere in Europe), or you could rent a car. The house is fully furnished with all the basics you might need for daily life in rural Italy. It’s built on three floors (basically one room stacked on top of the other), but the kitchen, bathroom and living room are all on the ground floor and the two bedrooms are upstairs (so it is possible to live there without climbing the stairs if necessary). It is an Italian ‘rustico’ which means that its old stones are beautiful and keep the house quite cool in the summer, so there are fans but no air conditioning (except on the top floor). There are bugs in Italy, and sometimes they like to come in the house. All the windows have mosquito nets, as we prefer that they stay outside. There is a tiny garden with an olive tree and flowers outside the house, and a table and chairs for enjoying meals there. For winter guests, the house has central heating but there is also a fireplace built with marble from the quarries located in the neighbourhood.
How to apply
Submit by email to casadellangelocaprino@gmail.com the following documents, kindly pay attention to the maximum length requirements. Hyperlinks to online sources are welcome.
• Your curriculum vitae (including your contact address, email, phone, all formal education and training, and employment history).
• Two pages (maximum 1000 words) describing the project you would like to work on during your residency
• Two pages (maximum 1000 words) explaining your suggested contribution to the local community in Caprino
• One page (maximum 500 words) discussing your personal fit with the project and its goals—why you should be the Casa Dell’ Angelo artist-in-residence and listing the time periods in which you would be interested in being in residence.
• We accept rolling applications and try to let applicants know if they can be accommodated as the Casa Dell’ Angelo artist-in-residence within one month after the application is submitted.
• All decisions of award are final and are made by the Casa Dell’ Angelo Executive Committee.
• Applications may be written in Italian or English.
For volunteer opportunities, please send a brief message to casadellangelocaprino@gmail.com to inquire about our current opportunities
Things to do in Lubiara
Walk up to St. Mark’s Fort (Forte San Marco)
The fort is from 1888 and was used during the First World War to defend Italy and the strategic Adige River below. The fort is striking in its architecture. It was armed with 25 cannons and 300 soldiers, housed in a remarkable forte. Today, you can see the tracks where the cannons were placed and the small windows where well-visioned snipers could shoot down anything coming up the river. You can also see rather uninspired graffiti, small pellets from the guns used by the war-play soldiers who dressed up for pellet war on Sunday mornings, and often a large family of delightful, multi-colored goats who hang around in the vicinity. The fort is private and technically it is closed to public entry. However, many people have gone in—the metal bridge is quite sturdy, and the views from inside the fort are amazing.
To get there you walk outside the gate and turn immediately left. Continue up the footpath next to the fence and walk up the hill. When you reach the top cross over to stay straight. You will pass under a lovely olive grove and then you follow the path. When you come to an intersection with a wider path that is more like a road, you turn right. This path will take you up to the Forte San Marco in about a half hour.
You can walk down the same path that you took to climb up or take a detour around the fort toward ‘Pozza Galet’ and then down to rejoin the same path that will take you back to Casa Dell’ Angelo. If you are adventurous and not afraid of heights, the trail to Pozza Galet is wild and fun and takes a little over two hours to return to the house. It is signed, but not often as well as one might like. However, no one has ever gotten genuinely lost in our experience, and anyone can give you directions back to the ‘Piazza di Lubiara’ (the small square where the monument sits at the bottom of our road).
Go to the local market on Saturday morning in Caprino (the nearest big village)
The stalls open around 8:00 and close just after noon. This is a great chance to buy fresh local produce, odd items of clothing for which quality may not be the priority (like socks) and fantastic cheese and salami. It is also offering decent fish and seafood from two fishmongers who are parked at the top of the market nearest the Mountain. For the best goat cheese in Northern Italy, go to the small mobile stand that sits at the bottom of the square. If you stand with the mountain at your back and look at the big church with its clock tower, the goat cheese is to your left, just past the intersection. There is always a selection of remarkably fresh goat cheeses of all varieties from happy goats that graze on Monte Baldo. The young woman who sells the cheese will gladly let you taste them, all, before you select.
Pick wildflowers or gather sticks
There is so much natural land which changes and takes on a different character every season. In the winter months, Lisa finds small sticks and ties them into bundles. Officially these are for starting the fire, but mostly, she just likes making the stick bundles when she walks around. In the spring and summer, she likes to find a wildflower, or two, and bring them into the house. Except for the wild orchids which are sometimes here, and are so special that they really can’t be picked and must be left to amaze the next person who stumbles upon them.
Head to Lake Garda and watch the sunset
However cliché it might seem, our very favorite thing is to watch the sun set. It is often between Monte Belpo and Monte Baldo when it actually goes down behind the ridge and you can declare the sun has officially set. In the good tradition of Cape Town where we lived once, a sunset is reason for a round of applause and a refill of your glass. Probably our favorite new spot is the café at Hotel Du Lac – about 10 minute’s walk to the right of Garda town if you are facing the lake. Highly recommended, are Prosecco for the purists, a nice Amarone if it’s chilly outside, or ‘Spritz Campari’ for those who like the Aperitivo vibe with a little more intensity.
