This is an OSIA/Albany Site maintained by Professor Emeritus James 
Mancuso, and while it features Italian Americans in the Upper Hudson 
Valley, it's articles are of interest to all Italian Americans, such as the 
following. 

The excerpted piece below is an example of an all too frequent story 
of so many who waited almost too long to experience the joy of 
re-connecting with their ancestral birthplaces.

Kathleen Gwinnett, a career painter, traveled to the places of origin 
of her family, in Italy and Sicily, and since her reconnecting she has 
developed a large portfolio of paintings that record her vivid impressions 
of her encounters with the world of her forbears. 
=================================================
A Painter Reconnects to Family Heritage in Italy and Sicily
by Kathleen Gwinnett 
 
My parents had very little interest in seeing Italy. Their parents came to 
New York City at the turn of the century. They settled in New York City. 

Since I was a young girl, I always dreamed of traveling to Europe, but it 
was not until I reached my 50th birthday and experienced my bout with 
breast cancer that I had the determination, finally, to travel there. In 1991, 
I (visited) Florence, Venice and the Italian Riviera. I was enchanted with 
the culture of Italy, and the beauty of its land and its people. Although I 
had studied Italian art in my art history classes (at Parsons School of 
Design, New York City), I didn't realize how the antiquity of the country 
would envelop me. There was so much I wanted to capture in my 
watercolor paintings.

I began studying Italian language tapes and listening to Italian music 
on my return from that first trip. I hadn't realized how much Italian 
vocabulary I knew from listening to my grandparents. Finally, in 1998, 
I convinced my husband to take me to Italy: this time, with the goal of 
reaching Sicily and the places where my grandparents originated...

My father had told me that my grandfather went to the market every 
morning to sell his butchered meat. I can only guess this is the old 
Vucciria, close to San Domenico church. I was really excited to visit this 
market on my last trip to Palermo, and of course, I painted a scene from it... 
I painted my grandmother's house in Belmonte Mezzagno. The painting can 
be found on my web site. The web site also displays paintings from my 
maternal family's town of origin, Resuttano in the Madonie Mountains...

Arriving back in America, I continued to paint the Italian and Sicilian 
locations I had photographed. For the first time in my painting career, 
I felt so attached to my original paintings; I decided to keep them, and 
make prints for sale. I subsequently created a website to display and 
sell my paintings and prints, and also to relate my travel experiences 
and my connecting with my Sicilian family history...
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The images of her paintings and accounts of her travels at her WWW sites:
http://www.geocities.com/nccaterina 
http://www.geocities.com/gwinnettcf