Charcoal Figure Drawing Damaged

Cari Amici,
I had taken my disegno di carboncino (charcoal drawing) home from the studio these past two weekends to try to improve my tonal quality and work on the background of the figure drawing. On the 9th of March, I had a small accident and my drawing fell off of my easel. As I tried to catch it, my sleeve collided in the most unattractive and slightly random ways with the paper. I include an image here so that you can see how many steps back I took.

I seem to be having a problem getting the darks to stay on this Umbria paper. But then, I do not feel that I have created enough disegni di carboncino to be quick or perhaps have developed a better technique. And so, I continue to learn . . .

The second image of my drawing of the beautiful Valentina was taken on the 21 of March, my last day of working with this model. Now the drawing is safely in my flat. I want to add more narrative to this work, but this is really a new skill for me, so it may take me some time. Now that I have a photo of the near finished work, I will play in Photoshop to arrange shapes and decide which composition ideas will look the best. That way, I can minimize any problems with the carta by too much charcoal or too much erasure.

This morning, I went to the grocery store Standa to buy last minute food items for the lunch I am hosting tomorrow for Pasqua (Easter). I love these giant chocolate eggs wrapped in bright and glossy papers, but I cannot afford them right now. However, I love it that dolci is displayed right next to the Italian wines. I usually do not think that sugar and alcohol should be imbibed together, ma I like the idea of life’s little decadences.

And I ran into my friend Alessandro while in Standa. He is the partner of my friend Susanna; both are fiorentini and wonderfully kind people. I have always been partial to smaller communities and feeling that I know the people that live around me, so it is always a treat for me to hear my name while I am out and about. Buona Pasqua. A domani!

Solstice and Art Collecting

Ok, so these two do not necessarily have much in common. But yesterday was the first day of spring and tonight is the full moon. Bellisima! I went out dancing with many friends and had a blast! And after passing my camera around, I now have hundreds of images to prove it.

Allora, trying to catch up on e-mail is often a problem for me, but I came across notice of this blog about art collecting. It is pretty cool and I wish more people were sharing their passions in this way. Enjoy (and click on the title for the full interview):

03/20/2008: "THE FINE ART OF ART COLLECTING: AN INTERVIEW WITH EDWARD GOLDMAN" by Laurie Lamson

Some Exerpts:
Edward Goldman: “Yes, to wrap yourself in a blanket and just to watch TV. We cannot do anything without challenging ourselves. And when I say challenging, for [a] good collector, it’s to acquire, to buy only what [the] person loves. But it doesn’t mean [the] person should see only what [the] person likes and prefers to see. You have to see everything.

It’s like, you want to marry, you probably want to know, on a personal level, as friends and acquaintances, hundreds of people before you make a choice. You meet good people, you meet not very good people, you meet wonderful people, you meet nasty people. So you learn something about people. You learn about whom you want to spend the rest of your life with.

The same about art. You have to understand not only what you like, [but] what’s there around for you. You might be surprised. I believe that if someone likes to drink tea and coffee, and never drank vodka – we are talking about good Russian vodka from the freezer – you might be shocked. It’s [an] acquired taste. The same probably for the whiskey. The same for the very spicy food. You’re acquiring [a] taste. So you want to look at a lot of art under different circumstances and slowly decide, what kind of new friends you want to make among the art and artists.”

“For me, and I think for all of us, art shouldn’t be a luxury. Art is expression of our human collective experience, of our collective soul.”

“I think about art collecting, if you do it smartly, not to invest money, I’m not interested about that, and I’m not able even to advise people on that. I’m interested in investing yourself, your soul in collecting art, the way you invest yourself in building friendship, which lasts, you hope, for the lifetime.”

Resources:

http://blog.absolutearts.com/blogs/archives/00000419.html

Edward Goldman’s ART TALK audio and text archives available on KCRW.com: http://www.kcrw.com/etc/programs/at

Laurie Lamson is a writer and filmmaker based in Los Angeles. She produces and directs mini-documentaries for neighborhoods, causes and organizations, and is currently raising funds to make a documentary about the Fine Art of Art Collecting classes. You can send a comment to laurie@jazzymae.com.

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

Art Publicity in Italy

Whew hoo! How cool is this? (scusami, self-indulgent moment coming up . . .)
My mug shot and name made today’s newspapers in Italy!!! There is a small teaser photo on the bottom of the front page of the 11 March edition of “Il Giornale della Toscana” and then a rather large image of me starting my drawing of Caravaggio’s ‘St. John the Baptist as a Youth (with ram)’. Yup, just what every girl needs – a photo in the paper of her working on her knees.

The article on page 11 is rather long and takes up more than half of the page. The images and text came from giornalista Fabrizio Boschi of “Il Giornale della Toscana” and is about the new plight of the madonnari (street painters) after the law regarding Street Art was changed in January.


Caption quote:
A sinistra una “Madonnara fiorentina”, Kelly Borsheim, 43 anni, originaria del Texas. È a Firenze da un anno e mezzo, ma adesso per lei, come per gli altri suoi colleghi, si prospettano tempi duri. Lei è anche scultrice di marmo e bronzo: una vera artista a tutto tondo. I Madonnari sono artisti di strada, così chiamata dalle immagini, soprattutto sacre e principalmente Madonne, che sono soliti disegnare per strada.

A VERY Rough Translation:
On the left one "Florentine Madonnara", Kelly Borsheim, 43 years, originally of Texas. She has been in Florence for a year and half, but now for her, like for her colleagues, they see hard times. She is also a sculptor of marble and bronze: one true artist to all round. The Madonnari are artists of the street, therefore called from the images, above all sacred and mainly Madonne, that they are usual to draw for the street.

Signor Boschi’s article told about the work of the madonnari and also about the increase in the tax or permit fees for the street painting organization. Claudio Sgobino is the leader of the Madonnari and he chained himself to the Neptune fountain in Piazza della Signoria on Monday 10 March in protest to the large fee hike. Claudio has been in Florence for 20 years, but has worked as a madonnaro for 23 years.

Then late in the day, my friend Lisa O’Neil sent me a text message that she also found me in a group shot with the madonnari in the Metro paper. The image below was located in the Metro on pagina 7 and was taken by the journalist in front of the Palazzo Vecchio. I am standing on the left – wearing pants, no less!



So, let us see what kind of changes might be had after Claudio’s publicity campaign.

Caravaggio in the Rain

Today I tried to work as a madonnara on Via Calimala in Florence, Italy. I arrived around 13:30, after my work with model Valentina. Not a good day for making a drawing or earning some euros – it was raining off and on, and then later, just on.

My project for today was to copy Caravaggio’s “St John the Baptist as a Youth with Ram” I really did not get very far – maybe 30 minutes into it since two vans were parked over the square that my permit allows me to paint in. The polizia found the drivers (who also had permits to park within the city during the day), but asked if I minded waiting until after they finished lunch before they moved their vans.

In the meantime, Claudio and Laura (two Florentines who run the madonnari organization, asked me to walk over to Piazza della Signoria at 15:00 for a photoshoot with some journalists who wanted to help publicize Claudio’s strike against freedom of expression. When I returned, I took the photo you see here. Funny that the glare from some of the raindrops makes it look like the whites of the boy saint’s eyes are really glowing!

(Prior to the scheduled photo shoot, giornalista Fabrizio Boschi of “Il Giornale della Toscana” interviewed me in my drawing square, even taking photos of me creating il mio disegno brutto. I laughed when he asked me my age. It reminded me of my first experiences in Italia in 2004 – after establishing my nationality, the men I met in the piazze always wanted to know my age. I was still of the school in which one does not ask a woman her age, and was curiously amused instead of offended by this behaviour.)


These next two shots were taken in Florence’s Piazza della Signoria. Claudio is the chained protester / founder of the madonnari and is seen wearing a red scarf. I just loved this doggie bicycle that one of our audience members had with him. While I hate the dog poo that litters this lovely old city, the dogs here rarely seem interested in biting any stranger who gets close. This one seemed especially sweet.

Then this last image is what I returned to find after my publicity efforts. It was interesting to me how much red remained (especially after yesterday’s blog entry about the Slaughtering of the Lambs. I get frustrated sometimes at the pastel kits I have bought for this job. I never seem to have enough dark colors. This image may look weirder than expected because the top is actually seen here on the bottom. I flipped the image, after needing to take it from the angle that gave me the least amount of glare from the rain-wetting street.

Anyway, I poured my water on the soaked chalk and grabbed my broom for extra scrubbing. Perhaps tomorrow’s artist will have less rain.

Thank you for reading!
Kelly

Easter Lamb

Cari Amici,
Today in Piazza della Repubblica in Florence, Italy, there was a demonstration to try to keep people from killing lambs for Easter dinner.

Buona Pasqua and La Mattanza degli agnelli è cominciata. which translates roughly to “Happy Easter” and “The Madness of the lambs has begun.”

That last translation was a guess on my part. My dictionary says that matto means ‘crazy’ or ‘mad’, so I thinkMattanza means ‘madness.’

The protesters were making the point against Sfruttamento Animale – the exploitation of animals. Several other volunteers were handing out a flyer that explained how animals were being tortured (with a rather rude and graphic visual) and how animals are like human beings, feeling joy and pain. And “The exploitation of animals is a constant in our society.”

For more information, you can check out the site for the Italian Campaign for the Animals: www.campagneperglianimali.org



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Arts Petition to Italian Government

Happy International Woman’s Day! We do not celebrate this in the States, but my Ukrainian friend and sculptor Vasily Fedorouk introduced this holiday to me years ago and it is known here in Italia as well.

Ma, if you have been reading some of my blog entries, you might remember that I occasionally work as a madonnari (street painter -- arts) here in Florence, Italy. Today there was an organized demonstration on Via Calimala where we draw each day.
Before January, the madonnari paid the government 300 euros per year for permission to draw in three spaces on this street. But in January 2008, the law for Street Art changed and we now must pay 695 euros every three months. That is quite a hike! Also, after 31 March, we do not know if we will be able to draw anymore in these spaces.

So, yes, that is me that you see wearing a chain around my leg with some of the other madonnari. My friend Inga took that image shortly after the press came. I am hoping to find my image along with my new friends in the Corriere Della Sera paper tomorrow. That would be pretty cool, si?

We were collecting signatures to be able to try to show the government that people support the art efforts of the madonnari – and anyone can sign. But, it is apparent to me that my speech needs to get better. One man made a bit of fun of me because I could not understand the language he spoke to my friend Laura, a native Florentine. But I understood about half. Speaking and understanding are two different things and my speech was far too awkward to describe to Italians what I wanted and why. Most were kind and grasped what I was trying to communicate. And, hey, I was better with the English-speaking viewers!

This last image is of my friends Inga and Abdu, who joined in the later drawing. Tomorrow they will continue in our demonstrazione in Piazza della Signoria. Wish us luck!!