Art on the lake

Lake Fimon is a place that inspires passion and awakens a sense of beauty in those who know how to listen. The first passion is that of Antonio, fisherman and guardian of the lake.

The magical moment was when my father took me on his Motom Delfino, with me sitting behind him. We arrived at the lake. To me, it was the sea. The first time I saw it as a child—I must have been ten or eleven years old—and saw that vast expanse of water... I fell in love with it immediately.
I said, “Dad, take me to the lake whenever you can!” And my father simply replied, “Antonio, my son, I have to work. I can’t keep bringing you to the lake.” “Can I come by bicycle?” “Whenever you like. You're a big lad now. Before long you'll be going to work.” And in fact, at thirteen, he found me a job in a print shop, and I stopped coming to the lake as often as before. While working as a printer, I could hardly wait for the working week to end so that I could go fishing at the lake. Fishing, swimming. That was my life. So I’ve known this lake for seventy years. And it still surprises me now. In my opinion, by now it ought to be a pond rather than a lake. But since we’re from Vicenza, we always like to exaggerate: Lake Fimon. The water chestnuts... I was fortunate enough to inherit what used to be the lake’s former water-treatment plant. It’s where I have my little hut. The hut belongs to the municipality, not to me. The old purification plant is there. We fishermen took it over through our fishing association, which has now existed for thirty years. We put in four thousand hours of work cleaning the plant to bring clean water back to the lake. And I still carry on today. The water chestnut has now disappeared from the lake. In the tanks I have at the purification plant, I grow it as though I were tending a vegetable garden. But it requires a completely different technique. You don’t simply sow it; it has to be placed in its natural habitat. So, inside the tanks, I recreated the habitat it needs. And now the plants are growing vigorously, more beautiful than ever. A poet comes here alone. He doesn’t come on a motorbike; he comes on foot. And if you arrive by car, you leave the car and walk. Instead, people walk around the lake chatting away. A log. A log is just a log. But it can become many things. One poet sees it in the shade, another sees it in the sunlight, another sees something else entirely... As for me, I collect fallen tree trunks from the water. Looking at the texture of the bark, I take them out of the lake, leave them to dry, and then I make portraits from them.