GETTING DRESSED IN THE DARK : AN ARTIST’S WAY HOME
GETTING DRESSED IN THE DARK : AN ARTIST’S WAY HOME is a raw and evocative memoir that explores the complexities of love, betrayal, and the healing power of art. When Rob confesses his affair with Gabriella’s young friend, shattering their decades-long bond built on radical honesty, her immediate reaction is a punch to his mouth—a moment that unravels the life they had so carefully constructed.
From their youthful days spent smoking in café corners, intoxicated by conversations about art and literature, to two decades of living an unconventional artist’s life in a converted 19th-century schoolhouse in rural Maine, Gabriella and Rob created a world rooted in creative exploration. Their polyamorous relationship in the second half of their marriage was just another layer in a life defined by openness and experimentation. But Rob’s betrayal rips apart not only their marriage but the foundation of their shared life’s work.
Through the lens of this crisis, Getting Dressed in the Dark journeys through the aftermath of devastation, reflecting on the meaning of art, trust, and identity. With poetic insight, this memoir contemplates what remains when the story you believed in most collapses—and how, for an artist, the material world becomes a path back to wholeness.
GETTING DRESSED IN THE DARK : AN ARTIST’S WAY HOME is a raw and evocative memoir that explores the complexities of love, betrayal, and the healing power of art. When Rob confesses his affair with Gabriella’s young friend, shattering their decades-long bond built on radical honesty, her immediate reaction is a punch to his mouth—a moment that unravels the life they had so carefully constructed.
From their youthful days spent smoking in café corners, intoxicated by conversations about art and literature, to two decades of living an unconventional artist’s life in a converted 19th-century schoolhouse in rural Maine, Gabriella and Rob created a world rooted in creative exploration. Their polyamorous relationship in the second half of their marriage was just another layer in a life defined by openness and experimentation. But Rob’s betrayal rips apart not only their marriage but the foundation of their shared life’s work.
Through the lens of this crisis, Getting Dressed in the Dark journeys through the aftermath of devastation, reflecting on the meaning of art, trust, and identity. With poetic insight, this memoir contemplates what remains when the story you believed in most collapses—and how, for an artist, the material world becomes a path back to wholeness.
GETTING DRESSED IN THE DARK : AN ARTIST’S WAY HOME is a raw and evocative memoir that explores the complexities of love, betrayal, and the healing power of art. When Rob confesses his affair with Gabriella’s young friend, shattering their decades-long bond built on radical honesty, her immediate reaction is a punch to his mouth—a moment that unravels the life they had so carefully constructed.
From their youthful days spent smoking in café corners, intoxicated by conversations about art and literature, to two decades of living an unconventional artist’s life in a converted 19th-century schoolhouse in rural Maine, Gabriella and Rob created a world rooted in creative exploration. Their polyamorous relationship in the second half of their marriage was just another layer in a life defined by openness and experimentation. But Rob’s betrayal rips apart not only their marriage but the foundation of their shared life’s work.
Through the lens of this crisis, Getting Dressed in the Dark journeys through the aftermath of devastation, reflecting on the meaning of art, trust, and identity. With poetic insight, this memoir contemplates what remains when the story you believed in most collapses—and how, for an artist, the material world becomes a path back to wholeness.
Praise for GETTING DRESSED IN THE DARK : AN ARTIST’S WAY HOME
“We only see through things. They show us invisible worlds.”
In a memoir as poetic as it is refreshingly unconventional, Gabriella invites us on a journey through the complexities of her life, guided by her deep connection to the homes that shaped it. With thoughtful reflection, she explores how curiosity, conversation, and candescence infuse meaning into both our spaces and our stories, even amid the upheaval of shifting places, partnerships, and identities. Through her reexamination of what truly matters, Gabriella unearths fresh roots and reveals the everyday moments as invitations to rediscover her own (as well as our) wisdom and wholeness.
Amanda Gibby Peters, Founder of Simple Shui and House Therapy
"In this strikingly intimate and beautifully layered memoir, Gabriella D'Italia traces the dissolution of a 20-year marriage and polyamorous relationship, unraveling the intricate connections between love, betrayal, and creative devotion. Moving fluidly through past and present, she explores how the act of making art is inseparable from the act of living—and how a life in art is shaped by the people we create with, collide with, and sometimes lose. At its heart, this is also a story of inheritance, both literal and intangible: the objects, histories, and wounds we carry forward, and the unexpected beauty that can emerge even in the darkest times. A bold, luminous meditation on what it means to forge one’s own path."
Lana Wilson, Emmy-Winning Director
While the story will forever be fiercely hers, Getting Dressed in the Dark opens a mirror or portal between D’Italia and her reader, inviting in all those attempting vulnerable journeys of discovery and creative birthings of their own. In each faceted chapter, D’Italia varyingly weaves or unweaves tendrils of her life’s attempts at unbound meaning making. She writes from a commitment to bearing witness to our memorial identities housed in the keepsakes, wall coverings, table scratches, sent and unsent letters, kitchen utensils, fuzzy sweaters, worn paths and meals of our lives. Her narrative is sometimes devastating, but always important: a series of blazes along a path of truth and beauty. Even for those who tend not to notice resonances of their embedment in their surrounding worlds, this memoir will spark moments of recognition of our role in weaving narratives into and through our environments. For those already sensitive to these interweavings, the book will feel like a fortuitous lightning strike, providentially awakening new commitments within one’s own journey of creativity and living well within life’s complexities. A memoir through and through, this text simultaneously summons a chorus of those dedicated to human meaning making. D’Italia’s words and practices honor the vital importance of living life with ecstatic honesty, and she writes for those—including herself—whose voices are necessarily fragile and yet which sing potently in creative relation with other forces—people certainly, but also those of our material and spiritual surroundings, and always of our own precious embodiment. The memoir reminds us that we are always participants in crafting choruses of meaning even if at times our voices are capable only of lip syncing or, alternatively, of sobbing screams. It also reminds us that our journey here is forever unchartered in advance Pick up this book and listen. There is no way to emerge without discovering some vital tune you’ve been humming without notice beneath your many layers. It is a call for mutual recognition and the responsibility to oneself and others that lies therein.
Kirsten Jacobson, Ph.D. Professor of Philosophy, University of Maine
What I’m reminded of over and over again while reading “Getting Dressed in the Dark” is our ability to form our lives and how, at the same time, our lives form us: our families and friends, our surroundings, the landscape, what we are inexplicably drawn to. I am reminded of the conscious and continuous commitment required to live in accordance to our beliefs. It is never smooth. We must keep coming back to what is important even when, especially when, it doesn’t make sense to others…There is an admirable tenacity to how Gabriella insists on living her life. She constantly reflects and continues to find ways through meditation, therapies, contemplation and reflection. Her ability to take a raw exposed look at her life in its entirety provides an understanding of where she lives in the moment. It is the acceptance of constant change and fluctuation that moves us all to the next place.
Linda K. Mead, Visual Artist and Printmaker
About GABRIELLA D’ITALIA
Gabriella D’Italia (she/her) is an interdisciplinary, award-winning fine artist. Her work explores home, nature, female identity and the contributions of these environments to our human wisdom and sustenance. She is best known for her highly inquisitive, pro-craft, feminist fiber works and multimedia collage. Her work has been exhibited at biennials, salons, embassies, and galleries internationally. Gabriella grew up in Morristown, NJ. After receiving her BA in Philosophy and the History of Science and Mathematics through the Great Books program at St. John’s College, she moved to Boston and then Maine, where for two decades she immersed herself in costume design, quilting, leadership roles in nationally recognized fine craft organizations, and teaching courses on creativity. She holds an MFA in Intermedia from the University of Maine, Orono. Gabriella lives and works outside of New York City with her family.
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Genre: Nonfiction
ISBN: 978-1963115420
Publication Date: October 24, 2025
