L'INGORDIGIA

Back in 2015, long before before the Covid-19 scourge, I visited Florence to visit a dear and talented friend Brianne, and explore the city. One particularly inebriated night, while wandering through a random ancient alleyway, I was captivated by the sight of a very large piece of street art.

Carefully placed within a bricked up archway, this two-meter tall, black and white paste-up stole my attention and held it for a long moment. Before leaving Florence, I returned to the site during the daytime to shoot a decent photo of it, then posted it on Instagram.

At the time, despite my efforts, I was unable to find any information or leads about the artist(s), either in Florence, Italy or online. Thus, I left it be as a memory of that trip.

Five years later, my girlfriend, scrolling through my Instagram feed, asked about that post.

“What is that?!,” she asked, intrigued.

“My favourite piece of street art,” I replied, before elaborating on the rest of the story above.

After explaining my relationship to this piece, it occurred to me that it would make a gorgeous chenille back patch for a jacket or coat, and that I might be able to resume my search for the artist after a lapse of five years of exposure.

The search continued.

I thus began to scrutinize my photo, trying to discern any hint of a tag or signature, beyond what seemed to say “SPAM” in the bottom left corner, carved into what seems to be a wooden tag, loosely hanging from a twig, belonging to what are actually the fingers and hands of the central figure of the piece. This mysterious mythological female human / dolphin / tree creature, appears to be seeking hanging grapes, which may or may not be the lures of a second, serpentine monster, dark and ominously wrapped around the latter, constricting her arms. Its slick black grasp escalates downward to reveal the finned head and maw of the beast, poised with open jaws and long, sharp teeth.

Entangled in this scene is a banner, with letters disparately scrawled upon it.

L’INGOR DIGI A

It took me a moment to put this together and discover that it was, of course, one word, in Italian:

L’INGORDIGIA.

(In English: Greed.)

Already excited by this new level of comprehension and depth, I again began searching the internet using these clues, along with terms like ‘street art,’ ‘Florence’ and ‘monster.’

Eventually, I came upon the work of Guerilla Spam, a corresponding instagram account, and, eventually, the piece itself, featured in an online portfolio collection from 2014.

I immediately contacted the artist via the email provided, and asked whether any merchandise or prints of this beloved piece were available. To my delight, they responded, informing me that the piece in question was an original one-off poster (still present in Florence to this day), and thus that there weren’t any copies or digital versions ever made. They then offered to print and sign a copy of the image, if I was interested.

I responded to this information with a request to digitize it myself, as I was both capable and interested in doing so. I asked about copyright information and received approval to recreate it; it turns out that the copyright for this beautiful original work of street art actually belongs to the public, under international Creative Commons, as decided by the artist.

I then referenced both his portfolio photo and my post to gradually build a vector version of this work in Adobe Illustrator. during my spare time. After a few months, I finally completed this task during a cold November afternoon in Berlin. I then saved the high-res originals, vector files and alternated, shared them with the artist, and wrote this post to commemorate this effort.

L’INGORDIGIA (Vector), by Guerilla Spam. Recreated by Danko. Berlin, November 2020.

Finally, my last step in this process WAs to organize and procure a selection of bigass 9’’ x 12’’ (20cm x 30cm) fuzzy chenille back patches.

(If you’re unfamiliar with the term, chenille is a kind of fabric, similar to the delightful tactile fuzziness of a towel. When used to create patches, it adds a new level of both quality and texture, and can be combined with embroidery to create detailed, refined pieces. Large patches, like this one, look particularly nice when placed on hoodies, sweaters, jackets, coats shirts…).