Street Painting in Florence, Italy

Cari Amici,
Coming to you not even live (hey, I resemble that remark!) from Florence, Italy . . . Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

It also happens to be Monday, so I have spent my day as an Italian madonnara. I had to share this with you since I am so happy to have access to the Internet again.
So, anyway, I chose to draw a portrait of a Madonna by Sassoferrato in 1640 AD. This first image shows how I got started today. I am not particularly comfortable with my skills with pastels, so while I try to lay out a basic pattern of light and dark shapes, I do not have the layering skills that true pastel artists have mastered.


And thus, you see image # 2 after I have mooshed all of my hatched layers together with my hands. This technique is part of the reason I tend to wear so much chalk color on my face and clothes! Oh, and please let me know if this post had too many images for your taste. I get fascinated by process that I worry sometimes that I am overwhelming others.

I should have gotten the face more in proportion to the original print I had to work from since using a grid is supposed to help the artist. However, I have some bizarre resistance to measuring and creating straight lines. So, while I do a lame job of laying out my grid (or as they say in Britain – I can’t be bothered to create a proper grid), I suppose I am not troubled by the result enough to change. Stubborn Irish girl!

The third image is of me working on my disegno. I cannot seem to get enough darks to make me happy. Also, I think this image of a face (only) emerging from the street is creepy in a cool way. And yes, I was wearing a GREEN turtleneck under my suspenders on the jeans that my sister Amber gave me last August. You just cannot see it since I added the white pullover from Sophie and later, my jean jacket. I also had drawn a shamrock to the left of my Madonna image.

This fourth image was taken when my friend Skye dropped by for a visit while she worked the crowds in centroFlorence, handing out pubblicità for a bar on Via Dei Benci. Note her lovely green wig to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. I actually did enjoy today, although my body has already started to pay, because I had so many friends drop by to look and give their enthusiastic support. I get a kick out of hearing my name called out in Florence.

This next image of the hands with the face basically done, while the veil leaves much to be desired, was taken around 18:00. I started my work around 14:00. I had to wait for Tomo, one of the top madonnari here, to use my space for a videographer. Claudio is still hoping for enough public support that the madonnari will be able to keep making street paintings in Florence after 31 March 2008. Anyway, my friend Abdu stopped by again and said he really loved this partly done look.

But, I moved past that . . . I quit just before 22:00. The tourists are coming more now, but not enough yet to stay until midnight, as I did in September 2007. This image was taken by another friend of me with my work on Via Calimala.



And finally, I show you the finished chalk drawing. The word ‘takk’ that you see is Norwegian for ‘thank you.’ Besides getting a generous tip from some traveling Texans (Texans have always been decent tippers, from my experiences), a couple of Norwegian music students gave me some Norwegian coins and wrote the word out for me. I told them the money is very cool and I like it, but I took the coins out of the buckets and put them into my pocket so as to not encourage other people to leave money that I cannot buy food with here in Italia. With the US dollar so weak right now, it is better for me to earn what I can in euros to avoid the costly exchange rates.

And, today I received more questions than usual about “how can you wash this away tonight?” So this last image is of my washing my square to prepare it for tomorrow’s artist.

Buona notte! I am exhausted!
And thank you for reading! TAKK. Grazie mille!
Ciao,
Kelly

Shopping at d. bartolini in Florence, Italy

I am not much for shopping, but I do love images and the patterns within them. So, one night recently while walking around Florence, Italy, I passed this kitchen store named d. bartonlini on the corner of Via Buffalini and Via dei Servi, and not too far from the famous Duomo of Florence.


Enjoy!

Ciao, ciao.
Kelly

Raining Confetti in Florence

One recent evening on my way home from the studio, I noticed that it was raining confetti again. Italians – or maybe only Florentines – seem to love showering the streets on any or no apparent occasion with lots of colored paper dots.

This time I looked up and saw a young child diligently reaching into a loaded bag held by, I presumed, her nonna (grandmother). I waved as I called, “Buona sera! Permesso?” asking for permission to take their photos as I waved a camera in my hand. I thanked them as I moved on to my next stop, but it is moments like these that remind me of why living in a small city can be charming.




PS Buon Compleanno – H Happy Birthday, (brother) Steve! ti amo.

Moving David from Florence Italy

Arguably the most famous sculpture in the world, Michelangelo’s ‘David’ may be moving. While Florence is trying to manage high traffic in her central historical district, there are some people considering whether or not to move the large tourist attraction outside of the Accademia and the city center. (Pictured here is the fake ‘David’ that is exhibited in Piazza della Signoria.) Read more at:

http://theflorentine.net/
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/art/2008/01/davids_home_is_in_florence.html

Another article I found via artsjournal.com discussed Michelangelo’s drive to be the best and conceal his efforts while becoming this (by burning most of his drawings). It is a good article, and here are a few of my favorite highlights:

The critic Waldemar Januszczak, who had the chance to scrutinise the [Sistine] ceiling from close quarters from the top of a television scaffold, wrote: "I could see the bristles from his brushes caught in the paint, and the mucky thumbprints he'd left along the margins. The first thing that impressed me was his speed. Michelangelo worked at Schumacher pace. Adam's famous little penis was captured with a single brushstroke: a flick of the wrist, and the first man had his manhood."

. . .
Before he dipped the brush in the paint and set to work on his God and Christ, his Adam and Mary and all the rest, how did Michelangelo prepare himself? We know that, unlike his peers and predecessors, he did not use cartoons to transfer existing designs directly on to the wet plaster, because there are no the telltale peg marks left in the plaster's surface. We know that in some cases he worked from small drawings because a grid can be discerned over the finished work, indicating that he upscaled from a smaller sketch.

But what the norm for his preparation was we simply don't know – because Michelangelo didn't want us to know. Throughout his life he hated showing drawings to outsiders. Vasari claimed that this was because they revealed the endless effort he expended in reaching the perfection at which he aimed. Though he was dependent, like all Renaissance artists, on the patronage of the powerful, even men like Cosimo I were unable to get him to part with a single drawing. Before moving from Rome to Florence in 1518, he burned all the drawings in his house in Rome. Another terrible bonfire took place, on his instructions, at his death. Even Michelangelo's closest friends possessed only a tiny number of drawings, all of them highly finished.

. . .
Then, even while the agonies of the tragic tomb continued to pile up, [Pope] Julius threw another amazing job at Michelangelo. The walls of the Sistine Chapel, the private chapel of the papal household, were already adorned with works by 15th-century masters including Botticelli and Perugino. The ceiling was painted blue, dotted with gold stars. The chapel had long been in disuse because of a large crack in the ceiling. Now Julius wanted it to be drastically renovated, and commanded him to paint 12 large figures of the Apostles on the ceiling.

Imagine the Sistine Chapel ceiling looking like a child’s bedroom of blue and gold heavens !!!

Read more:
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art-and-architecture/features/the-sistine-chapel-was-created-500-years-ago-by-michelangeloor-was-it-773079.html

Olive Oil

Hey you!

I generally think of food as a sometimes-pleasant diversion of necessity. Yes, I realize that is blasphemous for some, but . . . I mean, I like a great tasting and smelling meal, especially when shared with a friend, but I am not too difficult to please in this area. And I generally prefer working to cooking.

However, for some reason, my friends here in Italia seem to be more interested in food than I ever noticed people being before. Maybe it is because when I am living in the country in Texas, I spend most of my time alone; whereas living in the city of Florence, Italy, I have easy access to a whole lot more people. Is this normal – so much time going into the preparation of food? Yes, I suspect it has been for centuries now.

And, while I liked eating olive oil before, I am now in the country famous for its love of all things olive. I took this image tonight at the Coop (grocery store) just outside of Porta Beccaria in Florence. It shows that there are lots more olive oils available than I ever saw in the States before. Here in Tuscana, they really celebrate the new crop each fall. Good fresh olive oil is green, not yellow. Italians eat it on everything. In fact, I remember my Italian friend Grazia offering me some melanzana (eggplant) one evening and then giving me an odd look of disbelief mixed with disapproval because I was too lazy to add olive oil.

I love it now – and am learning the joys of adding it to practically everything I eat now.
Buon appetito!

La Perla - Shopping in Italy

Walking home in a misty night recently, I saw this storefront on a main road in central Florence, Italy. Now, how delightful is that? Is there any place in the United States that is so comfortable with this sort of display? ha ha

BTW, La Perla means in Italian 'the pearl' or 'the bead'

Oh la la. ;-)
Happy holidays. I head to Bologna this afternoon and fly back to Texas from that city early in the morning -- assuming that my travel agent fixes his error. He changed my itinerary without my knowledge and I was apparently supposed to be on a flight THIS morning. Doh!

Tuscany, Italy - Grape Harvest and Olive Trees

Today I painted all day until 16:00. I had to stop because I did not have the right color blue, nor did I have 'il colore giallo' [yellow] to warm up the blue that I bought yesterday. And of course, this being Sunday ['Domenica'], the art supply stores are not open. Sigh . . .
But I love painting alone in my room, with sounds of the life in the piazza below. Today, there was a small family putting on a puppet show for tips. After having the experience of being a madonnara for a day, I appreciate more the work done by street entertainers.

Yesterday, I took the train for the short trip to Sesto Fiorentina to visit my friend Hafiza. We walked to some nearby olive and grape plots. Although the light was too harsh for good photos, I am including one here of some of the olive trees. Do they not look like dancing spirits to you?
And as Hafiza, an artist friend who loves drawing and making lithographs, pointed out: gone are the days of the romantic harvesting grape images. Today, they use plastic buckets, tractors, and today's [relatively] boring clothing.