Shades of Venetian Rose (Pink Part II)

As you can see, the sun did come out in Venice...interesting to contrast the cooler pinks on my first day there with the photos I took on a sunnier day. While pink is not a color I am normally drawn to (unless it's as "hot" as pink can be, as in fuchsia), I do love the endless rosy shades everywhere you look in Venice. In fact, I realized on this trip that Venice wouldn't be Venice without pink!

*

{P.S. I haven't made it to see everyone else's PINK yet,

but am looking forward to this month's ROY G BIV tour.}

Strawberry pink

 

Now that we've gone through the whole rainbow, ROY G BIV photo challenge founding artists Jennifer Coyne Qudeen & Julie Booth have proposed we continue with some additional colors for the remaining months of the year. August's color is pink, and there are few pink things (maybe no pink things!) I like better than a strawberry gelato. Recorded with my daughter's cell phone earlier this month (hence the not-so-great resolution), I do wish I could share a taste of the cono di gelato alla fragola. This one is from a gelateria my daughter and I discovered when we started going out to Gavinana (a suburb of Florence) to refill our contact lens prescriptions; while we usually grumble about the time-consuming bus excursion, stopping in at Il Sorriso is always a sweet note. With a perfect balance of lightness, smoothness, creaminess and flavorful-ness, Il Sorriso's  gelato definitely ranks among our top few absolute favorites.

*

And on another note... Earlier this week I took the train to Venice——a place where rosy shades abound——and collected a handful of pink-inspired photos as I made my way over to the Lido (spending a few beach days here has become a tradition each summer). Unfortunately the sun barely poked through the clouds the afternoon of my arrival, so before posting the photos I will see if I find some more light-filled shots before I leave. The weather has been a very un-summer-like, so fingers crossed!
 
But for now, here is a photo from earlier in the summer, taken from the balcony of our Rockaway Beach hotel (in Oregon, USA). What a delightful spot that was, with a sunset so delicate and gentle, and which seemed to last for hours...

 

{Guidelines are here if you would like to join in the extended ROY G BIV search.}

Violet in Seattle

A section of the wall in the EMP museum shop.

 

This month's edition of the ROY G BIV Challenge* was a lot of fun to photograph, and came together in a single afternoon during a recent visit to Seattle. After turning in the cute little Chevy Spark that had gotten us safely up the west coast of the US, we had a single night & day in Seattle before our red-eye to the east coast. Much of the morning disappeared in pursuit of sampling various downtown coffee shops, checking out the Pike Place Market and generally enjoying the city bustle before heading over to the Experience Music Project (EMP) museum.

While my daughter was there for the music aspect of the EMP——much of her time was spent in the practice rooms of the Sound Lab since she was missing her instruments by this point of our trip——I was especially looking forward to experiencing the architecture. And the fluid, multi-color metal surface and constantly changing reflections of the Frank Gehry-designed building did not disappoint. By the time we exited to a clear evening several hours later the center section had transformed into to more of a fuchsia color, but the effect was purple when we first entered under rain-threatening skies. Thus began my quest for VIOLET...

It wasn't hard to find. Just as the exterior of the building offered several glimpses of violet, so did the space within...lights & color joined and reflected on the metal panels that also line the interior. With its enormous screen, hi-tech sounds system and light effects, watching music videos in the Sky Church makes you feel like you could be at a concert (complete with lots of blue, red——& purple——lights; a few of the purple-y moments are shown below). In fact, I suppose you could say that (Psychedelic) Purple is pretty much ingrained in the spirit of rock 'n roll.

Umbrellas hang from the Sky Church's seventy-foot ceiling.

The sense of drama above this set of stairs (right) matched that of the Sky Church (left).

Intersecting ceiling panels/reflections

This ceiling/wall inside (left) could easily be confused with the building's exterior (right).

Another view of the intersecting ceiling elements

 

There is a general impression of letting go of a sense of time and place in this sculptural, ambiguous wonder of a building——a feeling that seems perfectly suited to the scope of the Experience Music Project. You can discover more about the EMP by following this link.

*

I still have some catch-up to do with everyone's explorations of June's ROY G BIV——I can never seem to manage much time on the computer while traveling——but am excited to see both the INDIGO and VIOLET discoveries. Also, I am sorry to not have replied yet to those of you who kindly took the time to leave comments on my quick "indigo" entry, but I look forward to reading them properly and finally answering il prima possibile.

*

The ROY G BIV photo challenge was created by artists Jennifer Coyne
Qudeen & Julie Booth. Each month is devoted to a different color of
the rainbow——red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo & violet——and
all are welcome to join in the search. (Guidelines are here.)

Indigo, from Florence to the USA

I am on the road at the moment——driving up the western coast of the US with my daughter——so a little late with my "indigo" contribution for ROY G BIV this month. On the left is my sequin-filled, indigo-inspired box for ALaW (the unassembled sleeve can be seen in my previous post), and the image on the right is a shot of the gorgeous (chilly!) water surrounding Pebble Beach.

Happy summer to everyone in the northern hemisphere!

Sydney Intro/Retro-spect(ive)

You may remember the above image from last Christmas's blog entry, when my daughter & I were in Sydney. I've been sitting with my photos from that trip all these months, returning periodically to sort, consider & arrange them. The majority of the pictures I took were mainly for the sake of recording our activities & adventures with my brother & his family (and my sister & hers when they joined us)——as a way to preserve the memories of our time together. Somehow, on this very first visit to Australia, it felt more "right" to just take everything in——to get a feel for the place & not be distracted by trying to photograph the landscape, the water, the architecture & the thousands of details in between. The camera is a wonderful tool, with many uses, but I find it can also distract from the actual experiencing of places, of moments.

Not until the final days did I feel truly ready to take in my surroundings through the camera lens. Fungus-spotted stone & an eroded rockbed at the water's edge called to me at the end of a bush walk and ended up becoming a sort of framework for stringing together the earlier, fairly random, photos. And then the awesome view of that vast country, with its rich colors & patterns, was the ultimate glimmer of magic as we flew across it on our way home a couple of days later.

So, at long last, I thought I'd share a sampling of screenshots I'm using as a reference for a book structure I've been putting together...

*

*

Working with the photos from this adventure——even the non-family ones shown above——has at times been difficult. They each hold the memory of moments not necessarily seen, but contained within——memories which underline the distance between Italy & Australia, driving home the reality of just how far-flung my family is. (My daughter & I in Florence, my brother & his family in Sydney, my sister & hers in Beijing, and my parents on the east coast of the US for all but the few months they spend in Italy.) When I think about how much of my nephews' & niece's growing-up-years I have missed, I find myself wishing we could more easily be part of each other's daily lives... If anything, it makes me aware of just how precious the three-week stay with my brother's family was.

I do wonder if my parents realized what they'd started when they left their own families and brought their children to live in Brazil for five years! I'm sure it's what has given us each the freedom to feel we could choose to live any place that called out our names. And we are lucky to be able to meet in so many different & wonderful places whenever we have the chance.

*

My box of Sydney-found treasures——bark, leaves, berries, papers & things I have momentarily forgotten——is still awaiting the right moment to be opened. I like the idea of putting some time between the discovery of the individual items & their collective unveiling, but I must admit that I am beginning to grow curious. And I wonder what additional memories will surface?

Violet in Venice

 

This month's ROY G BIV photo challenge color is 'VIOLET', so I was quite excited to find that the Lido (where my daughter & I spent our beach week) is full of purple-tinged shells. Even though we've gone there for the past few years, I must admit that it had never registered just how many of the shells are purple inside.

Each morning I spent some time at the edge of the water, looking to see what the waves had brought, and (no matter how hard I tried to limit myself), each evening my little tin was full of shells when we returned to the hotel.

 

They amounted to a plate's worth by the end of the trip...

 

Many of the purple shells were in fact fragments, reminding me of shards of broken china, or the finds from an archeological dig. I don't know what they may one day become, but I did enjoy composing them into 'story strips' (an ongoing experiment that you may remember from past posts), shown in the first image, as well as the simple arrangements below...

While most of our stay was spent on the east (beach) side of the Lido, one evening my daughter & I sat for a while on the west side of the island, facing Venice as the sun disappeared into a haze of purple & orange...

We took turns with the camera. As with the past visits, I was most interested in the reflections on lagoon, but it was my daughter who decided to photograph the final stages of the sunset in ten-second increments, and I'm pretty sure the photo above is one of hers.

*

After the past couple months of 'gallivanting', it feels good to be back in the studio again. There is a lot to do, but I hope to find some spare moments to share more photos, books, music & other good things as I work through the projects awaiting me. I have resisted the desire to share a slew of purple-themed songs for 'VIOLET', but leave you with a favorite U2 song of mine, 'Ultraviolet'...

 

* The ROY G BIV photo challenge was begun by artists Jennifer Coyne Qudeen & Julie Booth in 2012. Each month is devoted to a different color of the rainbow—red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo & violet. Guidelines are here if you'd like to join in this month, or in future rounds.

One little rock

 

I spent a few hours at the sea recently, on my way to see my daughter drumming in the end-of-the week concert at CampRock. The train stopped in the town of Cecina, and from there I turned west and headed toward the sea. After about forty-five minutes, the Umbrella Pine-lined road brought me to the water's edge. The beaches in this area are naturally stony (though sand is sometimes brought in to complete the picture of a proper seaside), and where the water meets the land I started noticing little rocks (stones? I am never quite sure just what distinguishes one from the other) traced with intriguing white lines, some straight, others circular. As I continued along the shore, I picked up several to bring home to the studio for further study—each was unique—but it seemed ridiculous (and a bit greedy!) to take so many, so in the end I chose my favorite. It has come around with me quite a bit lately, but finally made it onto the studio table. And then onto my tea tray. And the series of photos that follows could perhaps be called 'Anatomy of a rock'.

 

Photographing the rock's many faces led to more image-making. The deep gray called to mind that of my collection of new pencils (among them a dozen Palomino Blackwing 602s). Likewise, the Japanese tea pot on the platinum-rimmed 'tray'. And the rippled reflections of the amber glass I've been using as a pencil holder also captured my fancy (below), reminding me of July's reflection in my 'Arno Reflected' calendar (in the image at the top of the post). I love discovering these little connections between things as I go along, and it's been a while since I've had time to play around with the camera like this...

 

Glancing back through the last few weeks' photos, I then came across this stand of candles in Montepulciano's Cathedral. Their shape echoes the long slender Blackwing pencils, and even the golden flames seem to be mimicking the shiny gold eraser holders.

And yesterday I made a quick watercolor in indigo (still on my mind after this month's ROY G BIV challenge, mentioned in the last post). As an homage to the tradition of Batik, which I associate with the color of indigo, I'd love to explore this idea further using a wax resist technique.

 

I will continue to turn over the image of my pretty rock & its pattern of crisscrossing white lines in my mind, even as my daughter & I head for a much-looked-forward-to week at the sea. This brings brings me to my word for July: wander. As we began the month, we shall end it—wandering—though this time a little closer to home... 

Here's hoping that, summer or winter, you are finding joy in this season.

 

*

 

Below (as well as the image next to the indigo watercolor) is the sea at Cecina, upon whose shores my little rock came to rest...