On Art and Animals, or, Seeing the Real Thing

I have a confession to make. When I saw Caravaggio's The Calling of Saint Matthew last year in Italy, towering over me in all it's massive chiaroscuro glory, I felt little beyond a twinge of "Ooh, cool! It's so big in real life!"

I never admitted that to my classmates. Artists always declare that art MUST be seen in real life to be truly appreciated. I, on the other hand, feel that it's good to see art in real life especially because the scale gets lost in textbooks, but that it's not a life or death matter.

Still, I have come to the conclusion that that there is one key element that makes seeing the real thing necessary: movement.

This conclusion came after seeing

• Bill Viola's Ocean Without A Shore at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne
• Anthony McCall's You and I, Horizontal II, at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image
• Kangaroos, echidnas and wombats at the Australia Zoo near Brisbane.

Images just can't capture the spirit of these artworks and animals.

I had a bit of a mental freakout when I chanced upon Anthony McCall's You and I, Horizontal II. I had written about one of his "solid light films" for an art history class which made finding this piece in an exhibition about film and movies (rather than an art museum) all the more exhilarating.

Basically, the artwork is a projection of shifting lines and curves of white light through fog/smoke/haze in an otherwise pitch black room. You can change the art without changing its base by interacting with the smoke and light at various points: fanning the smoke to watch it swirl in the light; blocking the light path at various points to see long thin shadows stretch to the opposite wall; or standing at different points and heights to get varied immersions. Or you can just sit in a corner and watch it uninterrupted.

At certain points I felt like I was underwater. At another point, a horizontal beam of light moved slowly down to my neck and I held my breath as if it was about to choke me. When the light described a curl, I stood in the middle and felt like a surfer within the curl of a massive wave. Seeing this after Bill Viola's Ocean Without a Shore meant that I couldn't help but make connections with light, water, life and death.

It was beautiful and absolutely fascinating.

My words are painfully lacking for describing the experience. And even though I said that images can't capture the experience, especially with something that requires you to be wholly immersed in a 360° environment, these images (click!) will at least give you a better idea of what I'm talking about.

The movement of these works and the fact that they unfold within time means that you truly miss out if you don't experience the real thing.

As for the animals? You just need to see a kangaroo hopping very slowly, a wombat executing a startled 180° jump and turn, or an echidna waddling around in its hilarious spiny glory to appreciate the fact that images can never do the wonkiness of these Australian creatures justice.

Ode to Heat

The streets are unbalanced
Tipping with weight of pedestrians
Who gravitate to the side less touched by sun.

We seek shade.

Squares, plazas, seats,
Full in the morning shade
Ghosted by afternoon sun.

Life clusters under shelter.

Even then
The indecision of the breeze
Makes shaded relief temporary.

Walking. Dripping.

Museums, libraries, info centers.
Cool wisps of air beckon enticingly
From their briefly opened doors
Whispering a single promise.
Air conditioning.

But the sun is life
And the blue is joy
And the spring that feels like summer
Of 94 degrees in November
Leads to one conclusion.

It's slurpee season.


(Tapped in the shade at 37"49'05.47S 144"58'07.99E)

On the threshold between life and death

I've never been a fan of video art. Maybe it's because my attention span jumps like a hyper kangaroo or maybe I just don't know how to appreciate it. (It referring to the video art, not the hyper kangaroo.)

Enter Bill Viola's Ocean Without A Shore. (Look it up. But only after reading this.)

My entire time in the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne was spent with this piece. The introduction for Ocean Without A Shore states that it "explores the threshold between life and death, or as the artist has stated, 'the presence of the dead in our lives'."

For someone like me who feels compelled to record my experiences in scribbled sketches or scraps of brochures, it's frustrating to spend this much time with art this amazing and not be able to take any sketch or image of it with me.

But when all else fails, benches beckon and ink meets paper.

So here, in words scribbled into my journal, is my attempt to preserve my experience of Bill Viola's Ocean Without A Shore immediately after emerging from the room.

~

It's absolutely mesmerizing. You enter a small, darkened room and take a seat on a bench. It's silent except for a constant muffled noise as if you are underwater and water is falling some distance above you. A large vertical video screen is ahead, maybe five feet in height. Two more screens stand guard, one on the left wall, one on the right. All three propped up on altar-like structures.

Newcomers stand uncertainly at the entrance before their eyes adjust to the heavy darkness.

Each screen is fuzzy, noisy, dark, and grey, with tiny muffled figures in the distance, one figure per screen.

Slowly, one figure starts to move forward. Slowly, ghostly. Their image shifts, blurs, falters, even as they grow larger in their approach.

A sheet of water, invisible prior to contact, separates them from us.

They begin to cross the threshold into the world of the living. One figure's fingertips graze the sheet of water, testing, testing. Another figure walks erect, chest pushing ahead of neck, nose ahead of forehead. No hesitation. Yet another presses their palm to, then through, the liquid sheet. Another bows their head and pushes through, unseeing.

Noise of falling, rushing water fills the room, increasing in intensity as more of the person's mass interrupts the flow of the water

As they emerge, color floods their drenched figures, sometimes with jarring saturation in their attire. They stand in the world of the living for varying lengths of time, with varying degrees of interaction with we living spectators.

Some refuse to open their eyes. The world of the living must be met with caution.

Others hold your gaze. Disconcertingly.

One old woman emerges with great joy on her face. Contagious joy. But it soon turns into a troubled expression as if she knows she can't stay. She lingers for a very long time once she passes through the water back to death. Even in death she is reluctant to leave the living, breathing.

A woman dressed in vibrant green has her head bowed slightly, to the side as if listening, deliberating. She takes a very long time to open her eyes. But when she finally does... slowly... she lingers...

And as she stands there cautiously in the world of the living, a man in the middle frame walks quickly to the water, through the water, and stands surveying this world. He puts his hands on his hips as if he doesn't care much for what he sees. He turns and walks back, easily, quickly. All this while, the woman lingers on...

The people do not emerge from the left to right frames in an orderly fashion with similar speeds. Life is not predictable. Death is not predictable. We are not predictable.

They make contact with the water differently. They move through it differently.They are individual and unique in how they enter the world of the living and how they respond to it.

But the constant truth is glaring. Invariably, every single one of them must leave and return to death. And we, sitting in a darkened room in the world of the living, can't help but feel ...

Days 26-28, in journal pages

Click for mildly larger images...

A house in the Lake Tekapo neighborhood was selling massive pinecones as big as my head (or so it seemed). They were quite hefty and almost as prickly as a durian. Ouch. A hardcore kayaker we met in Tailor-made-Tekapo Backpackers bought one for his mate who laughed at him and refused to take it. So they made the above impromptu sculpture and were contemplating lighting the dang candle. Crazy kayakers.

A seismograph of sorts. Lake Tekapo en route to Christchurch. These were attempts at straight lines. Buses are bumpy.

Went to the Christchurch Art Gallery. Terrible gallery tour left me drained so I refueled with a mocha (which they pronounce more as mok-ka than mow-ka). This old man was sitting there, mildly glum and entirely uninteractive with the woman across from him.

A rubbing of a plaque on a bench in the rose gardens. "This place you came to reflects the beauty of your soul." It makes my heart happy!

I sat in the Botanic Gardens today, basking in glorious sunlight and laughing at the ducks splashing in the large puddle lakes left over from the morning's downpour. They move far too much to be captured in more than gesture.


Nuf said.

On the quandary of color

The shores of Lake Tekapo

Latitude: 44" 00' 06.95 S

Longitude: 170" 28' 49.25 E

Blue is the color of this lake.
That's a lie.
It's green. Greenish-blue. Um. Teal?

Sky is the colour of this lake.
A greener version of the sky.
This colour's lightness belongs in the sky,
not held down on earth, trapped in this lake.

But if it were in the sky,
I'd think the grass had seeped upward to contaminate the sky.

There's just no way to win.
This color is unnatural.

Scott calls it gatorade.

Gatorade is the color of this lake.
Gatorade should not be the color of any lake.

There's exactly one place in nature where this color would be at home: in a hot tropical beach surrounded by bright green palm trees, glowing golden sands and a blinding hot sun.

But no, it's here in the South Island of New Zealand with a chilly breeze and a crisp sun muted by vague clouds. Here, preceded by chalky white rocks that will undoubtedly transfer its white powder to the seat of my dark black pants. Here, bordered by dry, brownish green hills that could easily be transplanted to sunny southern California in the heat of fire season. Here, followed by icy bluish mountains capped with snow.

There is something unfailingly epic about snow capped mountains.

But epic bluish brown snow capped mountains don't fit with unnatural Gatorade blue-green teal sky-seeped-grass colored water that should only be paired with a blazingly hot beach.

Pictures were attempted. But the camera mocks me by adjusting the color until the lake only displays a brilliant blue. None of this green-teal-grass-seepage business.

Maybe that's the color other people see as well. We don't really have a way of knowing how different our perceptions of colors are from other people's. That bothers me sometimes.

This landscape, these colors… They only fit together when you jump off a tour bus in the company of a hoard of camera-wielding tourists, squinting at nature through layers of plastic and technology. Shoot and run. Shoot and run pile hoard back onto the bus.

But to sit here at 44" 00' 06.95 S, 170" 28' 49.25 E, contemplating this landscape and these colors? I'm befuddled.

What a quandary.

Bone Carving, In Pictures

My initial design in my journal copied over to the bone. It's a Fern! It only seems appropriate since my name is Fern and I'm in New Zealand where ferns are everywhere: in nature, in culture, in history, in logos..

Practice drilling. Which I turned into a semi-smiley face!

Cutting out the design with the drill in the background. This hurts the hands, greatly.

Done cutting!

Thinned and rounded...

No pictures of the filing and sanding and filing and sanding which took forever. I accidentally filed down several fingernails into odd shapes while filing my pendent.

This is Marisol from Chile doing the final sanding. She's a lovely quirky lady whom I really enjoyed. I'm glad we got to see her off and on over four ish days.

 
Thankfully, Jim drilled the hole into my fern. It was a delicate step which required hands far more skilled than mine. Here's a picture of him tying the cord into a necklace.

Final product!

I have to say, this ranks as my top NZ experience thus far. Jim picked us up from our hostel (Globetrekkers, also my favorite hostel thus far) and brought us to his home a few minutes away. Opononi (the tiny town we were in) just had a Country Music Festival (which I found oddly amusing) so Jim and his wife Charlotte had lots of their extended family wandering in and out of their home. They were completely natural and at home even with three complete strangers siting in their living room hunched over a piece of bone for 6+ hours. For lunch, Charlotte cooked us an insanely delicious meal of pumpkin soup and the best biscuits I've ever eaten. She sat and ate with us and shared their Maori culture, life, stories, beliefs, etc, with us.

I'm falling in love with Maori culture. It's poetic and beautiful and I can't do their stories justice with my poor memory. Granted, I've only had a taste of it and I haven't been exposed to any negative aspects, but still! Charlotte can recite her family history back 67 generations. Family history is held in high regard. It is respected so much that they only recite their family history when it holds meaning for those who listen. For us bone carvers, the names she would say would hold no meaning for us so Charlotte would never recite her history for us. For other Maori people she would, because a single recognized name in the recitation could be enough to link their histories together, thus connecting their webs of life.

As for the bone carving, Jim told us that as we wear the necklace, the bone pendant absorbs our body oil so that you become a part of it. When you pass it on to the next generation, they will have a part of you with them. Their body oil also becomes a part of the pendant so that both generations (or both people, whomever they may be) have a shared story and are connected through the pendant.

On art and traveling

I didn't realize how starved my inner art muse was until I walked into the San Diego Museum of Art today. (Resident's Free Tuesdays! Whoot!)

It's just that feeling when you look at an artwork and get flooded with excitement. (Look! Another place where Fern is like a 6 year old in a candy store!) Not to mention awe and glee and inspiration and the desire to create.

Picasso's The Frugal Repast, is one of those works. Look at those varied lines! Look at that gorgeous stylization!



(Okay, so an iPhone in low light makes for a poor image...)

Oddly, I appreciate it more because it reminds me of stylized characters in some awesome 3D animation shorts.



Dr. DeBoer talked about that in 20th Century Art once. We were looking at Matisse's The Red Studio which a lot of people in the class really liked.




But one reason for our appreciation was because it has this quirky 2D animated film vibe. It's like we're better able to appreciate past works because of a current art form that gives us vocabulary, context or something to connect with. There is so much that goes into our experience of an artwork.

Like travel. Or at least, the anticipation of travel...

Next to the exhibition of Picasso and similar artists, SDMA had a special exhibit on the art of Oceania. I'll admit, this grouping of art never grabbed my attention when we studied it in World Art. (With the exception of the slightly sacrilegious enjoyment of a Moai guy Kleenex dispenser where you pulled the Kleenex out of the Easter Island statue's nose. Teehees!)




But here's the thing. Travel makes me far more aware of everything relating to the location I'm going to. All of a sudden, my interest went into overdrive everytime I saw New Zealand or Maori on an art label. And that interest seeps into other artworks in the exhibit so that I pay closer attention to pieces I might normally breeze by.

I think traveling can be truly enriching because it helps to increase and focus my interest and curiosity in directions other than what I'm used to and constantly surrounded by.

Yay travel! Yay art!

And yay for eavesdropping in museums! As one middle aged woman said to another while passing by one piece in the Oceania exhibit: "It's a surfboard!"

Actually ma'am, it's a shield from 19th century Papua New Guinea. But I do like your humor.

Even if she was overdoing the whole bringing in our current experiences to appreciate past artwork...

On rejection.

How can I live? Oh the pain of a breaking heart slowly being ripped to pieces, excruciatingly torn, bit by bit like bloody string cheese...

Kidding.

Really.

The title just sounded so melodramatic I couldn't help it.

This is more about "rejection."

As in, dang it, I didn't sell a dang thing in the comic con art show! And even with the Aaron Brother's buy one frame and get the 2nd for a penny sale, those frames were still freaking expensive!

(My initial velcroed panel. That failed. Upon which I migrated to a pegboard panel, incurring greater expense in the realm of picture frame wire and gluesticks. But it held!)

But what I've learned about the comic con crowd:

An art major, graduated.

I. could
e.xperiment
In the
Neighborhood of
exerting
effort to
drench this blog in art.
Meaning, this blog shall
obambulate on thoughts of
travel, but also
include my
various
artsy
twiddlings to stave off
ignavia in my
own art
now.

What say you?

Cinque

Day 5 :: Florence :: Appreciating Art

• Saw Fra Angelico's cell paintings, Masaccio's Trinity, all of Florence from the top of the duomo, Donatello's Mary Magdalene, Michelangelo's Pieta and more.
  
• If that made no sense to you... well, we studied a lot of these things in art history this semester.
• It was really exciting for me to be walking (fairly speedily) through a museum and suddenly stop and recognize a statue (out of a bunch of similar looking statues in a room) and remember (vaguely) what I'd learned about it. And sculptures especially look quite different in real life!
  
• It's never really hit me so hard before that when you teach someone about something, they'll actually care about it. Something to remember the next time I get mad at someone for not caring...

To Venice tomorrow... here starts the real test of how well I navigate. I've been to Rome and Florence before so I at least had some idea about how to get around and what I wanted to do. Bring it on!

(Trying out Twitter since texting access is far more likely than internet access! http://twitter.com/felcearto)

On being an artist…

I've never really thought of myself as an artist until this semester.

Maybe it's being completely surrounded by artists (if you're sitting still for any length of time you're probably going to get drawn!). Maybe it's being in Italy (and visiting copious amounts of art museums). Maybe it's being completely immersed in art classes (no physics related courses for the first time in 5 years… my brain is awfully confused!). Maybe it's just that whipping out my sketchbook feels entirely natural. (It helps that this is the first time where I've been confident that my sketch will actually look semi decent!)

Whatever it is, this is the first time I actually feel like an artist, whatever that actually means.

Our field trip this weekend was to Volterra (blue pin) and San Gimignano (green pin)… Cortona is the yellow marker. For cities whose names you'll recognize… Pisa and Florence (Firenze) on the upper portion of the map!


I met an awesome artist named Antonio Breschi in San Gimignano. His store was very well set up and visually very appealing. (It had his sculptures and drawings as well as clothes by a designer named Louise Moller-Breschi. )

…Sei l'artista?
(trans. Are you the artist?)
...Mi piace [gesture to a beautiful image on the wall]!
(trans. I like [point at wall]!)
I missed the class on the use of piacere because I was sick so I have no idea if I said that correctly or not.

I got much farther with this conversation in Italian than the last artist I tried talking to in Italian in Arezzo a few weekends ago… Though that's probably due to the fact that Antonio spoke English (and understood when I accidentally slipped into Spanish) while the artist in Arezzo didn't speak any English at all. In Arezzo, the conversation got as far as me saying that I'm an art student (una studentessa d'arte) in Cortona and the artist saying that there's a great exhibition in one of the churches in Cortona. But when I attempted to say that I had just gone to see the exhibition two days ago and enjoyed it, I was entirely stumped and resorted to English with hand gestures, ending with a shrug and a laugh at the communication failure.

Antonio asked who I thought would win the election and at that point I abandoned all attempts at Italian. I can barely talk about politics in English much less try to take my fumbling and rather elementary thoughts about it into another language.

The conversation naturally turned back to art. He made a very good point about the whole "starving artist" concept that I really loved. An artist who isn't making it financially may be starving monetarily but there are many other ways that a person can be starved…. They can be starved culturally. They can be starved creatively. They can be starved by NOT doing what they would really love to do or what they would feel fulfilled by. So why is it that so much emphasis is placed on one form of starvation?

Well, that's not the best way to phrase it. Food and habitation are rather essential for actual physical survival. When I'm comparing monetary "starvation" to cultural and creative starvation I'm not taking the first "starvation" as literal starvation but as not having the job security that one would go into a "practical" major/job for. I'm writing about this entirely conceptually with no experience of having to worry about my day to day essentials entirely on my own. Maslow's hierarchy at work here. I'm in a privileged position. How can I even talk about comparing starvations?

I've just typed myself into confusion.

Basically, I never thought to think about choosing what to do with your life in terms of "starvation" in any area beyond the image of a poor starving artist. Take what you will from that.

Antonio studied to be a civil engineer. (I'm double majoring in physics! I told him excitedly, delighted to find another crossover.) He said something about how life and work are one thing and that you have to go into what you have a passion for, whether it's art, physics, politics, etc.

I'm not hugely passionate about art like some of the students here on the program or like Antonio. I definitely had issues with that at the beginning of the trip… lack of artistic self confidence if you will… feeling like I didn't really belong here because I'm not really an artist in the limited sense of someone who HAS to create art to feel fulfilled in their lives. I love and enjoy art but I hardly ever draw or do art outside of the classroom unless it’s a gift for someone. And to top it all off I am perfectly willing to create artwork geared towards what sells. (San Diego Comic Con art show anyone?) I had asked about some small works of Antonio's sitting off in a rather hidden corner and he had said (with a hint of bitterness) that he had put them there on purpose because he wasn't happy with them. When I asked why, he said it's because those pieces were his compromise to make something that sells and that he didn't like repeating himself and wanted to work with original ideas even if old ideas prove to sell better. I had actually been eyeing those little pieces because I could afford them at 10 euro rather than the gorgeous ink drawing on linen up on the wall that was going for 400 euro. And yes, I really would consider buying that piece. (I was very tempted to take a picture of the store (and conveniently the drawing as well) as I left but felt that would be disrespectful… Sad that he hated the idea of reproductions. I would definitely have paid for a postcard of the piece! Heh. I kept my mouth shut about that though.)

But... I'm learning more and more to accept myself as an artist outside of my initial limited idea of an artist. It's basically finding my own style of being an artist both in terms of what my art looks like and how I approach art. I had trouble sketching and drawing at first because I kept trying to follow styles that I liked of of other students whether it was linear, realistic rendering, graphic rendering, beautiful shading, etc… I'm a lot better now at just drawing without being so constrained by what I feel I should be doing. It's a lovely feeling! Stick my quirkiness into my drawings without thinking and suddenly things just work.

As far as being an artist, I think I need something a bit more diverse and combined than just art for the sake of art. (I went on a rant last week about art being pointless, self serving and too focused on innovation. I was in a bad mood. Don't mind me.) I also found myself missing physics a few weeks ago. Yes, me, actually MISSING physics! Remind me of that when I complain incessantly about Mechanics next semester. It was quite a delightful moment for me, realizing that I actually do like physics enough to miss it, and that I wasn't deluding myself the entire time that I was solely a physics major. I think the left side of my brain is starving right now. Britney (computer science) and I commiserated about this a few weeks ago... give us some freaking math/science problems to solve before our brains atrophy! Please!

My current thought: 3D animation seems like a very good fit for me. It's got technical aspects, physics, art, acting (if it's character animation at least), and stories and entertainment (if I go into animation for film).

It's definitely going to be weird to go back to Westmont and be surrounded by non art majors. I'm still going to whip out my sketchbook and draw anyone who's sitting still though (watch out studying people!). On the bright side, I'll be getting a good mix of areas to keep my entire brain happy! Several art classes (publication design, senior seminar and the senior project), mechanics (which probably applies to animation better than the majority of my other physics classes), acting (finally!) and scuba! I'll have an 8-5 Thursday with the addition of scuba, but since I have no Friday classes (a physics major with no Friday classes? Whaaat?), scuba is basically my end of the week fun. Whoot!

We have 26 days left before the program ends. 3 weeks left in Cortona. 2 weeks before the final exhibition/show of our work. Where has the time gone? And how on earth does one choose what to focus on with so little time left? My art? Learning more Italian so I can actually talk more with the locals? Soaking in as much of Cortona as I can? Spending as much time as possible with the wonderful people on the program? Sitting in the park and on the wall overlooking the valley and just being?

All of the above...

Because this post that was intended to focus on thoughts on being an artist ended up wandering all over the place. But that's just how it works... ramblings, a collection of my recent musings … all of the above!

It's a late birthday post...

My creativity and energy are being horded by my classes here, hence, no recent posts. Not that I didn't try… I've been attempting a post on food and another one on dessert forks and just couldn't get it out. If I can't write about food and dessert, I REALLY must be drained of all creative juices! Oh, art...

Hence, a picture post, three days late, on what the Fern did on her 21st birthday, as halfway promised to her dear parents!


Had SEVEN hours of class.
(Printmaking, Drawing, Italian)

(Here's part of my attempt at landscape during Drawing. You can kinda see the lake on the upper right of the next picture...)

Finally satisfied my craving for fried eggs and soy sauce!

(This is going to be my self portrait for Drawing.

And yes, I'm sure I baffled many tourists as I ran out to the wall with a camera and plate of fried eggs in my hands and a massive bottle of soy sauce under my arm. Not exactly a common sight in Tuscan hill towns! Then again, short asian girls with afro-like-porcupine hair isn't exactly a common sight either...)

Watched another gorgeous sunset...

(Cortona beats everywhere else I've been for best horizon sunsets, but Lubbock, Texas still wins hands down for full-sky sunsets.)

Visited one of my favorite spots… the park!

(I can usually be found perched on the steps to the right of the lamp and below the leaves on the right side of the picture. Excellent people and dog watching spot!)

Sat on the steps of the Palazzo Comunale in Piazza della Repubblica...

(ya know, the steps where the choir sang during a chilly winter night in Under the Tuscan Sun)

…and watched cute old men socialize (hehe).

Bought some pesto, foccacia bread and pecorino fresco cheese from the Molesini alimentari

(which are pretty much grocery stores the size of a single aisle at Wal Mart)

Then bought fruit and tomatoes from the corner fruitissima...(It's actually a visual feast in daylight. Dusk lighting + indoor lighting makes for confused cameras and oddly colored pictures.)

Enjoyed the view of the valley on the way back up to the dorms…

(Again, this doesn't even begin to capture the view.)

Then headed back down to Tonino for dinner with the entire University of Georgia group (as we do every weeknight) whereupon my camera decided that it didn't like the batteries that I had just put in that morning.

But it cooperated for the picture taking of food!

For the first course, fun hat-shaped suction cup pasta with not quite so fun meat...

(it suctions your tongue sometimes!)

For the second course, yummy fish that was incredibly well presented…

(Look, Christmas!)

And then lights out for an incredible fun and raucous round of the Happy Birthday song and a HUGE deeelicious birthday dessert!

(This picture is pretty bad. I assure you it looked (and tasted) far more amazing in real life!)

Aaaand... the birthday celebration ended on the wall overlooking the night lights of the entire valley below with a bottle of dessert wine (vino dolce, not dolce vino) served in white plastic cups (for which I had to pantomime since my attempts at asking for "Coppa, per favore. Otto coppe? Coppa?" failed miserably.)

Oh, and you can't forget us singing "Little Bunny Foo Foo" and bopping people on the head with my happy bouncy green balloon from Dolce Vita (which Amber so kindly procured for me)!

(Yes, we sang Little Bunny Foo Foo. Yes, this was my twenty-first birthday. Shush!)

Yay Italy!

It's a miscellaneous post...

...Striped sacred spaces continue...

Last Saturday we had a black and white striped Duomo in Orvieto. This Saturday's color combination of choice? Pink and white stripeys! (At the Basilica di S. Chiara in Assisi.)

...And today's dose of graffiti...

Mirys was here at a scenic spot overlooking the piazza next to the Lower church of the Basilica of Saint Francis in Asissi and the surrounding countryside. It's just a few weeks old. (Not a few centuries old like last week's graffiti!)
And EMO with a handy dandy pronunciation guide (IMOH!!) just in case you're tempted to Italianize it by incorrectly saying "ay-moh." Heeh!

And art!

There's an art exhibition that opened today at the Fortezza (i.e. fortress) of Cortona and we University of Georgia students were invited (on very short notice, may I add) to submit work for it. So here I am with my very first woodblock print at today's opening reception!

My print is handily positioned next to the wine and snack table =)

We can now say that we've exhibited our work in a show in Italy.

How's that for a resume entry? =D

On Great Art and Graffiti

Apparently I'm the art major who doesn't care about amazing art done by various masters of ages past.

Art on a wall, in a museum, in a cathedral, and so on... they always seem to be outside of time. They're preserved, restored, roped off, and often seen outside of their original context. And after a while, it all looks the same.

Some art does inspire me. But other times, most notably after visiting the Ufizzi Museum in Florence, all that art just made me never want to create art again. We clearly have too much of it so why on earth should I add more to the clutter? ART OVERLOAD!!

We went to Orvieto this past Saturday and saw the Last Judgment fresco cycle by Signorelli in the Duomo. (Which, on a side note, reminded me of a fun house due to the black and white striped marble exterior!) According to the New York Times Travel section, this is "one of the Renaissance's greatest fresco cycles." Good to know.

Inside the chapel that housed these great Signorelli frecoes, everyone stood around, heads craned uncomfortably, to get a view of all the flesh and decay of Signorelli's work. (Take a gander! Here and here.)

I looked. And my neck hurt.

Other art students took out their sketchbooks to record whatever details struck their fancy. I whipped out my sketchbook (well, journal) but for an entirely different subject.

Graffiti.

From the 1500's!

Now THAT'S history - a far more fascinating expression and mark of presence than a great Signorelli.

So I spent the majority of my time in the chapel staring at two walls (conveniently at eye level for the salvation of my neck) copying graffiti. I pointed out the scratches to several others but no one else seemed to find it as spiffy and mind blowing as I did.


Dasvbbiano? Dasubbiano? From Arezzo, I'm guessing, in 1540! Or Francescho in 1536. Who were these people? What were their lives like? What did they look like? Did they get in trouble for scratching their names into the wall? Was the chapel a sacred space for them? Or maybe they were bored kids tired of going to church with their parents? When did that space become a look-but-don't-use-or-touch place you have to pay to get into with barriers set up to prevent a wayward viewer from getting too close to the now revered walls?

The 400+ year old graffiti made me notice every bit of modern graffiti I came across while wandering through the streets of Orvieto.


How about some "Hello moto!!" on recent public art? Or declarations of love to a pursued Pulcina scattered around several buildings in the town?


Apparently the human desire to leave a mark of presence, to somehow or another mark a location as a place that you were physically at, is hardly a new phenomenon.

Is the creation of art an expression of that same desire?

On felcearto

Fern is in Italy so it's only fitting that the title of this blog should be fern lim(b) in Italian. And fittingly, arto (limb) looks surprisingly like the English word art, which is, of course, what Felce (Fern) is here in Italy for. Clear as mud?

I make no promises to the frequency of updates or consistency of style on this blog nor do I make any promises regarding the interesting-ness or informative-ness of it. It's just another record of my semester abroad… except that it can be accessed by anyone. Ah, how creepy thou art, oh internet!

Currently in: Cortona.
Have been in: Rome, Viterbo, Florence
Will be in: Who knows? I'm open to suggestions…

The internet here is spotty. Like a dalmation. Hence the post to come on clouds and bladders whose events actually occurred a week and a half ago.

Blame the dalmation.