More sketches from waiting for Cesar in S. Lorenzo last Saturday; blazing heat, grapes, cheese and bread from the market, and music for a few hours. It doesn’t get much better than that.
Sketch from our first party, held last Sunday, which was lots of fun. Sugar from the caffè at the top of La Rinescente; flower from the sidewalk found close to the house.
A mass fruit-painting day yesterday while watching Attila and listening to the rain.
ps– sorry for the quality of the images (again…) I still have no access to a scanner, since the studio ended.
Up at seven after weird dreams about the attic in my dad’s house catching on fire (losing all of my art!) and government war agencies masquerading as mental institutions to go to the bead store across the river. Sitting here drinking coffee and fizzy water and looking up glass beads online, because I’m about to go take my first-ever lampworking class!! For now, we’ll ignore that it costs 165,00, which is almost all the money I have left in the world,(and with Paul in London until July I’m not sure how I’m going to make more) and call it an investment.
Hopefully pictures of glass (and a more thorough update) soon!
Yesterday I went to the Cascine market with Cindy. We met at her house, which is in S. Spirito, and walked through both of my old neighborhoods all the way to the park, which is a fair amount of walking in eighty degree, sunny weather, close to noon. Every Tuesday they have a market in the Cascine park, which is a huge park close to the river. They have everything, from things for the kitchen to food stalls selling vegetables and panini, herbs and coffee and cheese and meat, to tools, sewing supplies, really cheap clothes, bins of shoes, perfumes without boxes– even pets. It’s probably a mile or more long, and we stayed for two hours just rummaging around. In the end I walked away with: one peach (my first of the season), one piece of schiacciata, two linen dresses, two cotton dresses, one silk shirt that is a teal color I love, and a pair of pants that make me feel like a sultan (albeit slightly charlatan) and spent a grand total of: 9,00. Huzzah. When I get pictures, I’ll post them. Fashion show. Summer clothing is off the list.
And I’m starting to need summer clothing, now; today it was 29 (84), and yesterday it was 33 (94). It is simply getting to be too hot to go around wearing pants, or even things with sleeves. But I’m happy– it’s the kind of heat that stays in the stones until late, late at night, so even if you bike home at one in the morning, as I did on Monday, you are still not close to being cold. I had forgotten what this heat was like, but was reminded rather forcefully yesterday when we arrived at Cindy’s apartment and I was roughly the color of one of the new dresses. I know that I should invest in sun block, but it just seems such a pain.
I planned on going to the studio to do more scanning, since Friday is my last day– I rang and rang and rang but– no Charles. Che palle, palle. So I went to SACI to find this woman to whom I had promised a ruler, and we chatted until I was late enough to have to hurry home on the bicycle to meet Cesar at six to pay the rent to Paolo. Somewhere just after the vialle (one of these days I want to videotape my bike passage from school to home so you know where I mean) I slammed on the one break that works, and it just popped out, wires and all, sending me skidding in the middle of five thirty traffic. Fabulous. What was worse was that I had to walk the other twenty minutes home, knowing I was going to be late, already sunburned, and already having walked a fair amount today, lugging a broken-braked bicycle. When I finally arrived home, money having been withdrawn for the imminent rent paying, the house was empty but for the dishes in the sink and the guitar on the bed. So I had a litre of water, some cucumber, and waited. Did the dishes. Made the bed. Listened to music. Finally, when seven thirty rolled around, I said enough of this (an hour and a half of waiting?), and went out to buy paperclips. Of course the store was closed, so by that time buying paperclips turned into buying a bottle of wine at Penny Market, so off I set in my new floaty cotton dress with the sultan pants underneath, marvelously cool and feeling slightly bohemian, only to see someone waiting astride a scooter some way up the road with a guitar strapped to his back. So Cesar and I went grocery shopping and made sandwiches in the gloom of falling twilight, I had my glass of frozen wine, a shower, and he slathered my sunburned skin in lotion. All in all, a productive day.
The problem with finally, finally having good weather is that I have been busier than expected this past week, just being out in the city, and also working, which is a good thing. There has not, however, been so much desire to stay at home and update. So here is a batch of sketches from the past week, in some kind of chronological order.
On Tuesday I reprised my babysitting experience for Isabella, and we had a lot of fun. While she was watching Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in Italian (the new one by Tim Burton which seems a bit odd for a three year old) I did some sketches since it was likely the only time I was going to see her still.
Last Sunday it rained and stormed and in general was the lovely kind of summer thunderstorm weather I’m used to but never get in Florence. So I made a huge pot of chicken soup (hurrah for learning how to boil a chicken whole!) and discovered that if you put in chunks of crusty bread without breaking them up into crumbs they turn into dumplings, and are delicious. Got out the watercolors and painted away the afternoon while Cesar went to play in Galuzzo for a benefit dinner. Quiet night at home playing with colors. Yes, please. Reprise of Pizzaghettone.
Some more random sketches from the train on the way to Rignano; I still haven’t figured out what they think of this girl painting on the train. This is also when I rediscovered the color Prussian Blue.
Sketch done while having an aperitivo with Cindy in the bar on Via Faenza to show her how my pen worked; the restaurant is a seafood place, I think. I liked the geraniums.
I recently came across a kind of pencil that was supposedly a water-soluble pencil like a watercolor pencil, but once the wash dries, it becomes a permanent ink. I had to find one, as it seemed ideal for sketching– you could just lay in the values with the pencil, wash over them so that they were permanent, and then fill in the colors without messing up a water-soluble background. So off I went to Zecchi, and after some deliberation decided to start with the black one (there are lots of colors, and the charcoal gray almost won through). This is the first experiment (it’s a garlic flower that is exploding in our kitchen):
These are more attempts from sketching with Cindy in Piazza Signoria; how nice it is to have someone to sketch with!
Saturday night we went to Cesar’s parents’ house for dinner, and had a lovely evening full of salame di cinghiale (boar sausage), cheese and crackers, proscuitto, more cinghiale, beer and french fries. Conversation ranged from traveling to religion to conspiracy theory. Fantastic. We bedded down in the living room, and the next morning had breakfast on the terrace with their magnolia tree:
It’s been a fairly good week. Somehow it has become Monday, and I’m feeling oddly excited for it.
ps– last night I discovered that watercolor pencils are great for skin! Who knew.
This is the current thinking for the pinhole project; combining the images with text. Originally they were going to be post cards to begin with, trying to explore this idea of having a relationship with this city as if it were a person. I think they are still going to be that way, but I recently was donated a huge bottle of gel medium, and one day while sitting for Paul got the idea that if I did gel medium transfers, these pinhole images would be luminous and transluscent, semi-transparent, and perhaps I could layer the text I wanted behind them without the words themselves overwhelming the imagery. This is ever the danger of trying to incorporate text with visuals, I think. Also, the words wouldn’t be completely legible, which might be interesting, but might also detract from the point? I’m not sure. Thoughts?
More pinholes, finally– after two hours of scanning and three hours of editing Wednesday, I lost all of the work. So here it is again for your viewing pleasure. More to come– simply more editing to do.
