Faces from Italy

One of my favorite things in Italy were the faces and figures, both religious and otherwise. They stuck them everyone. Here are a couple of my favorites.
The doll above was at the antique market in Arezzo, and was selling for 1000 euro (about $1400!).

This reliquary was in Viterbo.


A face above a doorway in Orvieto.


And this stately man is from the Camposanto in Pisa. The rest of my face pics are in a set in my flickr.

Goodbye Italia!

We're back from Cortona now. We had a wonderful time, but will miss the friends we made and the beautiful scenery.

I've uploaded all 2000 or so photos we took over the last 3 months to my flickr and will try to post some of highlights here.

From Italian Walls

These are the brooches I made for the end of the semester exhibition here in Italy; they are all chased and repoussed silver and are based on pictures I took of Italian walls. The walls seemed to show the best examples of the passing of time here; old elements combined with new ones, or just left over from the past.

My last bookarts project in Italy

I made a box to put my travel journal, sketchbook and Italian phrasebook in. The plaque is pierced brass. It feels a little sad, as my last project before we leave, to have made a box to put my experience in.

Really real books, that I made

in book arts, here in Italy.

a tradin' fool

I have been trading jewelry with as many of the other artists and faculty here as I can! Above is a ring I traded with painter Holly Coulis.


These earrings were for photo teacher Robin Dana.


And this brooch was made for ceramicist Lauren Gallaspy.

Each piece is a "portrait" of its wearer, according to how I see them.

Amulets

N. and I saw an awesome collection of amulets at the National Archaeological Museum of Perugia this weekend. The collection contains 3,000 objects gathered by one man in the late 1800 to early 1900s. All the objects, some very old, some contemporary to the time, were kept by people for magical/superstitious purposes.

We photographed as many as we could (can be seen at the end of this flickr set), along with the Italian descriptions for most of them, which I tried to translate using Google, but the translations are rough. Any suggestions from Italian speakers would be more than welcome!

Souvenir Badges

Been making these silver pins with imagery based on snapshots we've taken in Italy. They are chased and repoussed in silver.

Largest is approximately 2" long.

For really lovely pictures of what we're seeing in Italy

check out this blog being kept by the photo faculty here, Robin Dana. Her website has other amazing photos, as well.

More books

Long and link stitch structure, discovered in Italy. I recovered my travel journal using this stitch, since it seems appropriate.


Coptic stitch structures; the top and bottom journals have paper that I decorated myself.

Cortona

Here's a lovely sunset in Cortona. So far, it is pretty cold and windy here. We had a little snow last night and I'm hoping that's all we get because snow on the hills around here would be treacherous. I know they've dealt with it in the past.

I you would like to see more pictures of Cortona, click here to go to the set on my flickr.

Keeping Busy

First thing I wanted to do in Italy was play with the white carrara marble that is in abundance here. It's very easy to carve and work with, so I started by making the weird shapes above and then decided to carve an ear because listening (to stuff I don't understand) is on my mind a lot right now.
Not sure what, if anything, I'll do with either the ear or the other pieces; I'm still thinking.

I am also sitting in on the book making class and have so far made several pamphlet style books.

It is very fun and something I've always wanted to learn to do, so I'm grateful to have the opportunity.

And, when all other inspiration fails, I make a spoon. So here is my newest little spoon--a good size for espresso here in Italia!


No idle hands for the devil's playground here!

Italy is so Italian.

N and I are having a great time in Italy.

Some parts, Rome especially, have been so exactly as I pictured them that they were almost underwhelming. But there have been many other surprises, including the fact that fewer people speak English here than I expected/hoped.

We really should have worked harder on our Italian lessons...

For more pictures of our time in Rome, click here

The Last 24 Hours

So this is how it went:

N and I arrived at Austin-Bergstrom International airport at 6:30 a.m. for a 9:30 a.m. flight to Dallas, intended to connect to a flight to Philly, which would take us to Rome.

Instead (thanks to the Blizzard that Crippled the Midwest), we flew to Chicago (genius) to connect to a flight to London and then to Rome. After people laughed at us when we said we were flying out of Chicago at 5 p.m. on Tuesday (blizzard warning started at 3 p.m. and lasted until 3 p.m. on Wednesday), we called the airline and asked to be sent someplace southern, quickly.

That worked, and we flew to Raleigh-Durham for a flight to London, and then to Rome.

All told, it took 4 flights in a little over 24 hours, and a little running through some large airports, but we made it just 6 hours later than originally scheduled.

Sadly, our checked luggage was not as lucky.

'cause imma dork like that,

I made my own Italian phrase book. I got the info from Wikitravel.

Coming soon!

My brother's artwork

These paintings were all done by my older brother, Tim.

Tim studied film at the University of Kansas, then worked as a video photographer for the network news business, and now he's studying to be a polysomnographic technician (person who tests for sleep disorders). He does these paintings on the side and I think he has a truly unique style.

New Copper Wall Pockets on Etsy

check 'em out!

One last thought from The Craftsman

"Both the difficulties and possibilities of making things well apply to making human relationships. Material challenges like working with resistance or managing ambiguity are instructive in understanding the resistances people harbor to one another or the uncertain boundaries between people."

--Richard Sennett, The Craftsman

Happy Day of the Dead--or Election Day, whichever.

I'm almost done reading The Craftsman by Richard Sennett (it's sort of dense, so I'm taking my time). And here are a few more notable passages:

"You can teach a man to draw a straight line; to strike a curved line, and to carve it...with admirable speed and precision; and you will find his work perfect of its kind: but if you ask him to think about any of those forms, to consider if he cannot find any better in his own head, he stops; his execution becomes hesitating; he thinks, and ten to one he thinks wrong; ten to one he makes a mistake in the first touch he gives his work as a thinking being. But you have made a man of him for all that, he was only a machine before, an animated tool."
--actually a passage by John Ruskin, quoted in The Craftsman.

Regarding job retraining:
"Artisanal craftsmen have proved particularly promising subjects for such efforts. The discipline required for good manual labor serves them, as does their focus on concrete problems rather than on the flux of process-based, human relations work. For this very reason if has proved easier to train a plumber to become a computer programmer than to train a salesperson; the plumber has craft habit and material focus, which serve retraining. Employers often don't see this opportunity because they equate manual routine with mindless labor."