Piece Comment

Review of Silvio


WDET producer Zak Rosen has been working on putting together a series of profiles of 'outsider artists' in his area, and this one introduces us to an eccentric Italian / American sculptor and poet named Silvio Barile. What Silvio lacks in coherence he makes up for in enthusiasm, and producer Rosen does a yeoman's job of cutting Silvio's inspired ramblings into a quasi-logical narrative. I think the interesting thing in this piece, which contains no narration, is that Sylvio's comments are presented to us in such a way that we learn a little sequence of revelations about him, clues that force us to continue to re-evaluate our impression of the guy: He's ecstatic, but he's lonely; he's an artist, but he's a radical conservative; he's loving, but he's had bad luck with women... After getting beyond the perfunctory label of 'kooky,' we learn a lot about the psychological dimensions of this character in just a few minutes. This is very original work.