Fiammetta Hsieh Rubin, who has been living in Chestnut Hill for 47 years, was born in Rome in 1936. She was raised seven miles outside of Rome on the ancient Appian Way, one of southern Europe's oldest roads, on a 300-year-old villa built by a nephew of Pope Urban VIII that had previously been a convent. Her parents farmed the land, which was full of livestock and sustained the family's needs. Her family made their own wine, and they sold the oil made from their olive grove to local merchants.

It was an idyllic childhood. Fiammetta would wander about the rows of grapes and find pieces of frescoes and marble that her German mother (who had come to Italy to get a Ph.D. in linguistics) explained dated back to the Roman Empire. “I thought God was my friend,” recalled Rubin, “but then the Allied bombs started falling on our olive grove. Peasants had just washed their sheets when the bombs started falling. Because of the danger, my parents sent me to Rome to live with my grandmother, who was never there because she was afraid, and a 15-year-old girl. I was very lonely and depressed.

“Schools were not open; I had no children to play with, and my parents were not there. I cried a lot. I was raised a Catholic, but I became very angry at God. I thought about suicide. I thought life was not worth living. We did go to the zoo often, and I thought the animals were my friends. My father thought Hitler and Mussolini were wonderful. He said they should get rid of the Jews. It was not until later in life that I realized how horrible he was.”

Rubin's family home was just one mile from the Anzio beachhead, the site of one of the most ferocious battles of the war's Italian campaign. It took place from Jan. 22, 1944, to June 5, 1944, ending with the capture of Rome from German and Italian fascists. According to historians of the Italian campaign, the operation produced a combined 30,000 combat casualties and more than 40,000 non-combat casualties on both sides.

“I was 11 when we went to England in 1948,” said Rubin. “I was with an Australian friend of my mom's and two children. I was on a train with Jewish boys, and I fell in love with one of them. I'll always remember him. He was so sweet.”

Despite being traumatized by the bombing and killing, Rubin showed artistic promise from a very early age and was able to come to the U.S. on a Fulbright scholarship in 1955 to study painting, architecture, printmaking and philosophy. During a career spanning more than 60 years, she has since excelled in many artistic pursuits. During the 1950s Rubin studied abstract expressionist painting at the University of California at Berkeley. During the late 1960s and early '70s, she created an entirely new enameling technique that combined her metalsmithing, drafting and printmaking skills.

Rubin came to Philadelphia in 1973 to apprentice with Stanley Lechszin at Temple University's Tyler School of Art, working with hand-hammered copper, enamels and plastic resins and was involved in the burgeoning 1970s American craft movement. From the mid-'70s to the mid-'80s, she had exhibits of her work at Spring Street Enamels Gallery (NYC) and Langman Gallery (Phila.) and taught enameling at her studio.

In the early 1990s she began to work with digital photography of plants, flowers and other natural objects, and until the present has combined digital photography and drawing. Her work runs the gamut from classically inspired representational art with religious, historical and philosophical themes to completely abstract art. In 2016 she had a highly praised exhibit of her mixed media work at Art Expo at Pier 94 in New York.

While in the U.S., Rubin converted to Protestantism and later to Judaism. Her first husband was Chinese. “He was a good man, but the cultural differences were enormous.” Her second husband was a pharmacist. “His Jewish relatives were wonderful people, but the divorce was not amicable.” Rubin's third husband still lives in Chestnut Hill but not with Rubin. “We still have a good relationship, though, and get together often.”

In 1986, Rubin became a certified doctor of naturopathy (N.D.), a healing approach based on natural methodologies, which she later taught in the Health Perspective Program of Rosemont College. Before training in naturopathy, Rubin taught art and the history of art at the University of Wichita, Kansas. She also displayed her art and presented a paper at the conference, "Toward a Science of Consciousness," at the University of Stockholm, Sweden, where a documentary about art and healing was made about her. And she worked with schizophrenics at Hahnemann Hospital.

Rubin says she has had several psychic experiences throughout her life, starting as a child. Her autobiography, several years in the writing but not yet published, tells of examples of psychic healing and how she has worked with bioenergetics medicine, acupuncture, magnetism, color, sound and Kirlian photography.

Rubin has a daughter, Gilda, and a son, Andre.

For more information, email rubinartstudios@aol.com. Len Lear can be reached at lenlear@chestnuthilllocal.com