Doing some art stuffs...

Buongiorno! I've had a couple of busy, busy weeks. I was in Rome two weekends ago and in Venice for Carnivale this past weekend (pictures and blogging for both are forthcoming). I'm off to Paris next week for spring break, so I'll have that business to share as well, when I return.

I thought I ought to talk about some of the class stuffs I've been up to, which, believe it or not, take up the majority of my time here. However, seeing as that I love nearly every second of it, it is a wonderful and not unfortunate thing. I came to study here to see Florence and go a-traveling, of course, but the major reason and occupation of my time is my art stuffs. I know that, being a pre-med kind of a person, I won't really have another chance to dance around and play at being an art student.

This semester I am taking Drawing with John (mostly, as I said earlier, figure drawing), High Renassiance Art History with Helen, Photography with Romeo, and Digital Multimedia with Dejan (pronounced Dayan, if you're interested). In this here post, I'm telling tales of D.M. It is, to be sure, an interesting class.

The class, although entitled Digital Multimedia, hasn't really discussed a lot of the technical aspects of anything you might expect to involved in this class. It would be better called, in my opinion, Contemporary and Installation Art and The Philosophy of Dejan Concerning Both These and Their Application to the City of Florence. I guess Digital Multimedia is just more catchy. For the first half of the semester, we've been having a series of lectures from Dejan on a range of topics in this area, discussing different artists and their approaches to their work. One of my favorite artists we've gone over is Sophie Calle (link to photos of her work). She's one of those artists for whom it is very difficult to distinguish the difference between the life of the artist and the art of the artist. She's also completely insane. My big photography project is inspired by her work and so, is also sort of insane, but also great fun. To be later discussed.

Anyway, so we discuss all of these ideas and listen to Dejan and his ego speaking to us for a few hours twice a week and have intermittent assignments, which I actually quite enjoy. These assignments are meant to work on observation skills and sort of get ideas going for our final project. The second half of the semester is dedicated to work on a final installation project, which, excitingly enough, we are actually going to install in a gallery in Florence and have a reception and everything. This project is meant to center around the idea of the city, to recreate a space or interaction or person or whatever using digital multimedia tools in the space of the gallery. That sounds complicated and it sort of is. Everything about Dejan is sort of complicated in a simple way. That is, the ideas he means to express are not in and of themselves terribly complex, but he always articulates them in such a way that we often sit in class listening to him and wonder if we haven't somehow gotten ourselves accidentally high.

So, these assignments. All of the pictures below are from going off on one of his assignments. Sometimes during class time, sometimes not, he gives us a place or a walk or area or some such and tells us to go make observations of the place and to bring back notes and pictures and whatever else we'd like. From these observations, we design an installation piece to recreate the event. Oh, contemporary art. We're learning a lot about the very contemporary stuff - gestures and videos and performance and installation and etc. I like a lot of it and have had the opportunity to go and see several exhibitions of current artists in the area and in Bologna, but I don't know if I'm entirely convinced about all of it.

Bologna! I had forgotten to mention that trip. I went with this class to Bologna to see one of the largest contemporary art fairs, ever. It's in this huge convention center and prominent galleries from everywhere come and exhibit their best pieces. It was an interesting look into the business side of the art game. It was great fun, but overwhelming. Ten hours of intense art is a lot. Dejan practically had a panic attack.

Anyway, so these pictures:


So one of these assignments was a trek to an address. I went on this travel with a friend from the class, Biz. She's a lovely person. We are currently working on this epic side project involving some small ceramic pieces (Biz is a potter) with photo emulsions on the surface. Hopefully we'll get that going and I can post pictures and write all about it. So, one of the other girls in the class went to this place before we did, so we knew a bit of what to expect. The address is 16 Via Della Scala, if you're interested, and the building is an old pharmacy. The shop is still in use and dates back to the beginning of the 1600s. The entrance is seen above and is not particularly exciting. It isn't something you would notice, walking down the street.


So, you walk down a long and brightly lit hallway with statues and wonder where the hell you are. At the end of the hallway is this room. Everything is ornate and mutely lit and generally gorgeous and unexpected. They sell all kinds of things: elixers and soap and tea and candles and other odd things.


See? Elixers.


One of the other rooms (there were several) where I bought the most delicious honey for the tea I brought back from Istanbul.


There is also this sort of odd reading room, with no apparent purpose. Just selves of books and no chairs and signs saying "These books are not for sale" in Italian.

All of the walls were frescoed. The windows were all very dark and these extravagent chandeliers were the source of illumination everywhere. All in all, a very odd place.

So, next we went to the underground area of the Maria Novella train station. This is a very odd and lonely and unused space in general. Biz, I believe, plans to install some sort of project there at some point.

There was this big empty area with no apparent purpose. Just endless graffiti.


Someone likes the Sex Pistols?


Biz, looking.

All of this art stuffs fills up my brain constantly. I love it and have thrown myself into it, but it does become overwhelming and underwhelming to live in the art world. I will miss it dearly, but I think I could go back to science when I return. Art, all of the time, instead of in small doses when I need it, can be too much, filling up my brain to the rafters with sparkling gold bits and building ladders down into dark basements I'd rather not spend too much time in. It can also be too little. I would miss, I think, the grandeur of science and the scale of its reach and impact.

I think I will always need both, though. They are made out of the same thing; the endless looking and curiousity and need to know things that lives in my soul. They are different ways of approaching this same thing. I just need to find a way to live and have both.

Ciao, my friends.

Home Sweet Apartment

So, I seem to be a little behind in my posting. I have much to say and pictures for all the lovely things I've been up to, but I have run out of internet in my home. Hopefully, my flatmates and I will get that up and working in the near future. As I mentioned last time, the internet situation here is a little bit screwy.

Luckily, SACI has internet in the 'lounge,' which is really just a room full of computers that is perpetually full of other students skyping and generally phuzting around. The area I consider to be the real lounge of SACI is this beautiful garden full of little hidden sculptures and pottery wheels and benchs and trees and all manner of things I love. When it gets warm, which hopefully it will soon, I imagine myself spending a good deal of time out there.

The other place I would consider a lounge of SACI is the cafe across the street. I am quite sure that the SACI students are solely responsible for the keeping the place open. It's adorable, cheap, makes a great espresso, and has really attractive proprietors (whom we refer to as our 'dealers'). The cafe is always full between classes and during the break we get in the middle of my drawing class, the whole class goes down for a cafe and, in the case of John (the professor) and John (the student) and myself, a cigarette. The break is hypothetically for the model of the class (It's figure drawing and so we draw from a model nearly every class period. We have also gone to the Academia and Piazza Signoria a few times, which is always lovely and also intimidating. John - "Okay, beginning drawing class, go draw the David."), but everyone needs a break during a three hour drawing class.

Anyway, I thought it would be fun to both keep and memory for myself and to show everyone what my home here looks like. I live in a SACI apartment with two flatmates, Lauren and Sara. We have two bedrooms, kitchen, and two bathrooms. We had a fourth roommate, Jay, who was mentioned previously as the 'LA girl,' but she moved into single a month or so ago. This means I have my own room, which is really nice, albeit slightly lonely every now and then. However, as anyone who has ever tried to live with me can attest, I am a disaster in my living space, so it's probably for the best.



This is the view after turning the corner from the front door of our home. It's always really exiciting to make it into the apartment, because it's so damned high up. That's my coat hanging haphazardly on the ledge there. You can't see in this picture, but there are also two small chairs against the wall that would be on the left of the photo, if it kept going. The stoves here are odd and take getting used to, but lighting them becomes automatic after a while. To light a burner: turn the handle on the wall that turns on the gas, turn the gas on for the burner you wish, and push the ignition button. Very exciting. I've had such a nice time cooking here. I love to cook and being able to pick up fresh food from the market to do some fills me with joy and rapture.

Lauren, sitting at the table later on that evening.


This is Sara and Laurn's room, which I creepily took a picture of while Sara was sitting on her bed. That metal thing in the right corner is our laundry rack. Noone has dryers in Italy (they use too much electricity, which is really expensive here), so everyone hangs dry their laundry. I must say, I feel like I appreciate my clothing much more, having to carefully hang dry each bit. It makes them feel more real, for some reason. I get this same feeling, picking out my food at the market, but I can't quite put my finger what this feeling particularly is.


Hallway, looking back towards the kitchen and standing next to Sara's door. The door further up along the hallway is a closet.

My room! It's a disaster, of course. But then, I live here. That chair sits in my front my desk and perpendicular to the doors to my balcony, which you can't see from here. I have all my books and postcards and things lined up on the wall above my bed. I'm a very stuff-having kind of person, so I couldn't handle leaving all of my things behind in Boston and I've already started to accumulate more stuff than I ought to here.

My desk and chair. I hardly ever work here, mostly because it's covered with stuff. I usually work at the kitchen table or out and about in Florence. All the work I do here is wonderful and I love it. I take pictures and read and write and draw and never read organic chemistry.

This is my chair on my balcony, on which I sit and smoke and contemplate at night. It's a refuge. It's quiet and still and I can see a man who sits in a window, writing at a desk every night. I have invented for him a life story that I hope dearly is true.


View downward from my balcony. So many things and houses and walls here are painted that wonderful yellow color. I love it. Also, this courtyard exemplifies for me something that is very true about Florence, but appears to be very false. The city, seen from above is very green. It's just that none of these beautiful gardens are visible from the street. If I couldn't see this area from my balcony, I would never know it was there. My professor Romeo, whom I love and adore and will speak on with greater length later, I'm sure, likes to say that this is because Florentines, while cultured and beautiful people, are very guarded. Thus, these gorgeous, but unseen gardens. It seems to be the case that the real and true Florence is still here somewhere, buried and hidden under the weight and pomp of it's Renaissance past.


This is what Florence feels like to me. Red tile roof homes and cypress trees and blue sky all just slightly out of reach.

Luckily, that clothesline reaches to my balcony.

Ciao, my friends.