ORBIANA OLIVETO , a suite of nineteen drawings by James McGarrell, made and printed in the monotype medium on the intaglio press of the Ligurian Study Center for the Arts and Humanities at Bogliasco Italy in March and April of 2003. They derive from close study of the olive orchards there and a recent rereading of Homer's Odyssey although they were not made from direct observation of the former, nor are they to be viewed as illustrations of the latter.

The nineteen short prose poems written to accompany them are by the distinguished poet, Rosanna Warren. Her most recent volume of poetry, Departure, was published by W.W. Norton in 2003.

further notes: monotypes are simply drawings or paintings made on an unmarked plate, most commonly copper or plexiglass, and printed in an edition of one. In this case the drawings were executed in brush washes of blue lithographic ink on a sheet of formica and printed on 22 x 30 inch dampened Stonehenge paper.

They were done while the artist and his wife, the writer and translator Ann McGarrell, were Resident Fellows at the Center on the Ligurian coast just south of Genoa. After several days of contemplation and drawing in the olive grove surrounding his studio there, he followed his usual procedure of improvisational drawing from memory and imagination.

Between a frontispiece and an end piece of olive tree motifs are 17 compositions alternating verso and recto between figurative interiors suggested by Odyssian incident and “rhyming” configurations of the trees.