Getting to know the Kuretake watercolors

Last fall I gave my daughter a set of Kuretake watercolors, which I have been wanting to try out ever since. After spending a few happy days with them recently, I offered to make a trade of sorts—I would keep the box of Kuretakes and treat her to a trip to the belle arti store, where she could assemble her own custom set of watercolors. That was her original intention, but I had ordered her the Kuretakes as a surprise before realizing this. Even though she was gracious about the gift, I can relate to the excitement of composing a personal palette, and figured my proposal would be a happy solution.

So I have been "getting to know" my inherited watercolors, which come in a delightful green box (shown further down the post). Since many of them appear so much darker in their pans I have been creating a reference guide, with the corresponding numbers...

 

I love the packaging: a beautiful green box, with metallic Japanese characters...

 

Last fall I began working on an invitation suite designed around a leaf theme, but had to hit pause when I got caught up with the launching of Studio Milledisegni. In the meanwhile, I have grown so fond of the repetitive action of painting leaves that it's become somewhat of a meditation. Below are some of my leaf-covered sheets... Stay tuned for the card designs, which are quite different from these all-over patterns!

 

I hope those of you currently in winter are surviving what can often be the hardest weeks. Seeing the paperwhite bulb shoots growing taller by the day (above) is certainly making the days more enjoyable in my studio! And if you are still in the middle of summer, may it linger a while longer...

Orange-inspired: ALaW "Place"

 

Hello again! As promised, here are some more of the orange/paper-related photos of the letter forms shown in the image at the beginning of my previous post. I really liked how the light hit the different surfaces, and the shadows that were created by/in/on these little "places"...

...which is how I am thinking of these letters. They are my belated solution for a project I was working on last year, A Letter a Week 2014, the theme of which is "place."

You may recall that I was studying Italo Calvino's Le Città Invisibili (Invisible Cities) in preparation for the "place" alphabet. But, try as I might, I could not come up with an elegant way to structure/do justice to Calvino's fifty-five "cities" with a mere twenty-six letters. I did have fun trying though, as I played with ideas ranging from designing a board game to a multi-sectioned/windowed fold-out book, a deck of cards or a sort of fantastical map. And, in the process, I certainly became more intimate with this poetic work of Calvino's, which considers the multiple facets/personalities of Venice through fifty-five poetic tales.

As an alternative, other ideas——a Florence-centric piece, an artist's book featuring eight of my favorite cities, a series of collages focusing on urban elements...really, the theme of "place" is just about the most inspiring thing I can imagine——tumbled around in my mind. But I was distracted by other things last autumn, and this second ALaW alphabet of the year ended up falling by the wayside. So, with 2014 drawing to a close, I found myself contemplating simpler ways of addressing the "place" alphabet——something less left-brained and more about simply working with my hands.

I started thinking about how to use paper/the structure itself to "draw" the letters and somehow arrived at the idea of creating them from strips of paper seven centimeters high. Each is then housed within a 7x7x7-cm volume/"room," which keeps the letter shape in place; the letters can thus be "read" in either two or three dimensions. Even with past ALaW projects (for which the letters are each required to be presented within a 7x7-centimeter square), I have often found myself extending into the third dimension. Over all else, structure tends to be the aspect that drives my work/designs, and in this case it's definitely the principal element.

Color also plays a role; I've chosen a dozen or so colors of Fabriano Tiziano, and will use different combinations for the various letters of the alphabet. As the making of these first ones coincided with the "orange" edition of the ROY G BIV photo challenge, they each incorporate orange for either the letter, its housing, or both. (ROY seemed as good an excuse as any to get the ball rolling.)

My initial thinking was that each letter would essentially be like a small book(let). This will perhaps be more evident with some of the other letters——those composed of straight lines, as opposed to curves——but can be seen here, for example, with the "Z." I had even considered introducing words onto the "pages," but I quite enjoyed how the sun interacted with the little letter-forms on the gorgeous day when I photographed them last week...and that seems to satisfy any yearning I might have for "content." I especially like the triangles of light & shadow on the "Z" in the second image below——there's a bit of an optical illusion happening.

 

The next images show the letter forms free from their confines...

 

So, I am looking forward to seeing how these letters

turn out as I work my way through the alphabet

 (slowly, no doubt, but I'll get there!).

 Here's wishing all of you a creative week...

Paper tree

It's time for 2015's first edition of the ROY G BIV photo challenge, so we are once again beginning with the color "red" (the "R" in ROY). My images this month are of our 2014 Christmas tree, pre-"assembly."

The Christmas tree was always one of my favorite traditions of the holiday season, but getting an evergreen home on foot and up fifty-five steps became such a project, and then I always felt guilty having to dispose of the tree in the new year. So, as an alternative, for a few years we made one of tissue paper pom poms suspended from the ceiling fan in a pyramid arrangement that loosely represented a tree. Last year we were in Sydney over the holidays, but my daughter emptied several bookcases to create a tree of books that we draped with beaded garlands and a string of lights. I really liked that one, but it made accessing many of our books a bit of a challenge until we finally got around to disassembling it some time in February!

Last November, as I was hunting out crepe paper to make streamers for my daughter's birthday, I found some luxurious (i.e. beautifully sturdy) red and purply-red papers. Since the holidays arrive soon after her birthday, I grabbed some olive crepe paper as well, thinking maybe it could at some point be brought into the equation, extending the birthday decorations into December. The ceilings in the living room are a few meters high, and I envisioned a second, more intimate, "ceiling" composed of crisscrossing streamers.

After trimming the paper into narrow sections, there were far more than I needed for the birthday decorating, so they sat, pretty little rolls, in a basket. I liked how they were all kind of squished together, somehow reminding me of roses. At some point I got the idea to create a Christmas tree with streamers. We gathered the ends together at the top, suspended them from the trusty ceiling fan, and then attached the loose ends to a ribbon-covered hula-hoop...so there we had it——a lovely "tree" of red, purply-red & olive streamers.

But first, I took a few pictures...

Incidentally, I find red to be a very difficult color to photograph accurately when it is the main color in a composition, so I tried under a number of different occasions before getting the handful of images you see here. Controluce, with the day's later light, seemed to best capture the reds & purply-reds. Then all of the JPEGS became washed out once they were imported into Blogger, giving the lovely reds a pinkish cast, so I resaved them as PNGs. (I include this info because I know others have also had issues with photos retaining their properties in Blogger...the PNGs are a bit darker, but definitely truer to the originals.)

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I just wanted to say thanks again for the condolences and very kind comments in response to my last blog post. Things continue to be hard here; it still feels like things will never be the same in our little world, but the support is very much appreciated. Thank you...

 

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And, for those of you who may not be familiar with the

ROY G BIV photo challenge from past years, it was first begun

by artists Jennifer Coyne Qudeen & Julie Booth. Each month is

devoted to a different color of the rainbow, and once we do each

of these we will move on to other colors later in the year. All

are welcome to join in the search. Please visit Jennifer & Julie's

 blogs for links to other participants. Guidelines are here.

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.

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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.

Twenty-nine electrons

 
Sparked by a desire to work with beads & wire, several months ago I bought a book called Bead on a Wire by Sharilyn Miller (one of the books shown in the image above). Getting organized has taken a while, but I have been slowly accumulating tools and materials, and practicing jewelry-making techniques. From the beginning I decided that copper would be my 'signature'; I like its warm color, and wanted a material that would age well and suit the beads I planned to work with. My original idea was to design earrings inspired by the beaded elements I had created for some of my artist's books.

Then one day I was sitting at the studio table, just letting my mind wander a little, when I spotted a copper coin lying on the floor. I grabbed my chasing hammer & steel block, and started pounding. (I have to wonder if the idea to try this was the latent result of following my daughter's research of artisan drum cymbals; these works of art often have interesting textures that highlight the rich qualities of the metal.) In any case, hours of hammering have led to a small pile of resurfaced one-cent & five-cent pieces, virtually indistinguishable as small change from various EU countries. The noise factor and the adverse effects on my wrist & thumb have rather limited the size of the pile, but there are just enough for a small series of wire-wrapped earrings and pendants. One of these days I'll show how they're coming along, but for now, here are a couple of photos of the raw materials.

 

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And, still on the theme of copper, next are a few shots of my progress with one of my alphabets for ALaW (A Letter a Week). Originally I had planned to design both of the year's alphabets around the theme of 'peace' that is required for one of them, but somehow I found myself involved in making letters from copper wire. For one thing, the 'packaging peace' concept I've been working on is fairly ambitious—I was already way behind with the goal of producing 'a letter a week'—so I decided to create a simpler one while I continue to work out the details of the peace-themed alphabet.

I've been wanting to experiment with the idea of stringing wire across cutouts/open space for a while now (a small gesture toward this desire can be seen in the final photo of this entry about my indigo cubes). Ultimately, in my quest to continue exploring Florence's urban plan through unusual media, I'm imagining recreating small sections with wire—but in the meanwhile, these letters are helping me to get familiar/more comfortable with the possibilities & limitations. For now I am working with .75mm copper wire strung across 360g Murillo paper. After playing with numerous structures/layouts, I've decided that the alphabet will take the form of a six-page accordion 'book', though this may change as the experiments continue. I'm trying to achieve a balance between letters that are slightly abstract (not sure this is the right word, but a better one is not forthcoming at the moment), yet still recognizable as such in context. These first letters shown are all made up of straight strokes, but I have something a little different in mind for the curved letters.

Next is a little experiment I tried with copper wire and crystal beads. You might recognize the first image as an interpretation of the electron diagram for Copper (Cu), also known as number 29 in the periodic table—hence the twenty-nine beads (and the title of this post). If I were to pursue this line of thinking I would probably go with a considerably looser, more organic interpretation, but I'm glad I at least got this first thought out of my system...
 

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The tangle of wires that's been growing in the studio lately reminds me a little of this network of branches (a rose trellis at the Rose Garden), and brings me to a favorite book, A Time to Blossom by Tovah Martin.

The year we ended  up coming to Italy to live, my mother gave my daughter and me a copy of A Time to Blossom. Ironically, this also ended up being the last year we had a garden of our own, and perhaps this is yet another reason I appreciate it so much. I love everything about this book: the design & layout of the pages, the halftone botanical illustrations that appear throughout, the nostalgic photos by Richard W. Brown and, most of all, Tovah's writing.

From a very young age, she felt the desire to "write about why the poppies wouldn't wake up until after the morning cartoons," and explore other mysteries of the garden. She says, "Mine wasn't a privileged youth, horticulturally speaking. My mother wasn't a world-class gardener, and she didn't tend a particularly large tract of land. But she always puttered around the backyard, planting this and that, and those moments flavored the rest of my life." Her own attitude in the garden is similarly unceremonious and spontaneous, and she seems to have held on to the sense of wonder she remembers from childhood. I especially love how her words so beautifully bring to life the distinct personalities of each flower; it's like reading about people—the impetuous ones, the sturdy ones, the un/predictable ones, the lazy ones, the crazy ones...the beauties, the stragglers & the prima donnas...

As I glanced through A Time to Blossom, it was nearly impossible to find something to share—I could easily have quoted from every chapter. But, as we above the equator cross into spring, this passage about 'bare sticks' seemed to express the same kind of delight I'm feeling as the world around me comes back to life again:

The logic behind wading out in the snow to collect armloads of bare sticks was not immediately apparent. It seemed that trudging into the fields in search of twigs in March was a good definition of a fool's errand. But you kept that opinion to yourself.

The exercise of forcing branches is tailormade for those who cannot wait out winter—and anyone under the age of twelve (as well as many much older than that) fits in that category. Shrubs, apparently, are also of an impatient nature and perfectly willing to be fooled into a flowering mode...

...I couldn't help but wonder what my father thought as he watched the procession of naked branches coming inside. I thought my mother might have taken leave of her senses as I watched her labor for several hours cutting and mashing stems and arranging sticks in her best vases with all the meticulous precision that she usually bestowed on flowers. When her work was done, the product looked very much like a bundle of kindling, elevated in status for no apparent reason.

Pussy willows and forsythias were her usual victims, cut for the purpose, but anything that had been felled by a storm was fair game. Apple branches appeared indoors regularly, as did redbuds and witch hazels. No matter what we brought in, two or three weeks went by before I stopped questioning my mother's sanity. Then, wonders happened.

To see a forsythia in spring is no big deal. To encounter pussy willows in April falls short of stopping the earth. But when you force those unpromising branches indoors, it's a different story entirely. Close up, each flowering branch has a grace that is totally lacking on the shrub or tree. Together, they form a bouquet that could easily have come right out of a fairy tale.

I spotted these bright blossoms sprouting from a potful of branches outside of a shop during a rainy errand-running outing earlier in the week—a lovely echo of Tovah Martin's branch gathering recollections...

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On the note of flowers, I finally got myself organized and 'arranged' the freesia stems (shown in my last blog entry). I actually quite enjoyed them scattered randomly among small vases, creating that studio-table garden of sorts—though it originally came about more for the sake of getting everything quickly into water. Still, it was satisfying to gather them into a close-knit bouquet, since intimate arrangements are more my style. Owning a flower shop actually holds a lot of appeal for me, though it's just one of many creative lives I sometimes dream of. I think one reason I've been motivated to participate in National Novel Writing Month the past couple of years is because I enjoy constructing other worlds I'd like to inhabit. (The other main reason is so I can explore the many contradictions that exist in each of us—something I find endlessly fascinating.)

 

 

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An Italian proverb says, "Marzo pazzerello guarda il sole e prendi l'ombrello," basically expressing the same sentiment as Mary in The Secret Garden, when she tries to explain when Colin asks what spring is like: "It is the sun shining on the rain and the rain falling on the sunshine..." Literally, the Italian proverb means, "Crazy March; see the sun and grab an umbrella." Despite March's reputation, it always comes as a surprise. One day Piazza Pitti might be filled with picnickers & sunbathers, the next by colorful umbrellas...You go to bed sniffling from a cold, and wake up with your nose itching because something just started blooming...Tea left over from the pot you made to keep warm yesterday becomes a refreshing glass of iced tea today...In the morning, men are calling out, "Ombrello?" from every street corner; in the afternoon they're selling sunglasses. Confusing, crazy & wonderful all at the same time: change is definitely in the air.
 
My words for March are linked to this transition period as the earth reawakens: wait/hope/trust...words that are helping me to stay grounded during this time of change in my own life as well.

Each time I glance up at this very last flower on the cyclamen plant my mother gave me last December (above), I see the petals as the wings of a butterfly...a sweet little symbol of hope. And I have to say, after never really appreciating cyclamens, the three-and-a-half-month tenure of this one has taught me some lessons, namely that you can find beauty if you just keep looking—and look closely enough.

 

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And finally, to close this long entry... A lovely gift from Angela Liguori at Studio Carta arrived the other day—the 2013 calendarbook. Designing their calendarbook is an annual ritual that Angela & her collaborator, Silvana, have been observing for several years. While Roman-born Angela now lives near Boston, the childhood friends reunite in Rome during the Christmas break each year, and Angela then returns to the US with the components all ready to assemble in her studio. I just love the unusual ways they have found to define the unfolding of a year. You can read more about the latest one here, and click here to see photos of several past calendarbooks.

P.S. There will be more copper (and other variations on 'ORANGE') for ROY G BIV in the next few days...like this post, the one for orange just keeps on growing!

Winter comforts

In this indoor season that is conducive to wool slippers & feather duvets, reading, baking & tea drinking, a passage from Christopher Alexander's A Timeless Way of Building often comes to mind. (This is the book that lays the foundation for patterns such as those from yesterday's post.) Alexander asks the reader to envision this scenario, which describes the concept of 'comfortable', in an attempt to explain something he calls the 'quality with no name':

Imagine yourself on a winter afternoon with a pot of tea, a book, a reading light, and two or three huge pillows to lean back against. Now make yourself comfortable. Not in some way which you can show to other people, and say how much you like it. I mean so that you really like it, for yourself.

You put the tea where you can reach it: but in a place where you can’t possibly knock it over. You pull the light down, shine it on the book, but not too brightly, and so that you can’t see the naked bulb. You put the cushions behind you, and place them, carefully, one by one, just where you want them, to support your back, your neck, your arm: so that you are supported just comfortably, just as you want to sip your tea, and read, and dream.

When you take the trouble to do all of that, and you do it carefully, with much attention, then it may begin to have the quality which has no name.

'Comfortable' is just one of several words Alexander cycles through in an attempt to further describe the 'quality with no name'. He begins with 'alive', next is 'whole', then back to 'comfortable', and on to 'free', 'exact', 'egoless', 'eternal', and 'ordinary'. After analyzing them one at a time, he finally concludes: "And so you see, in spite of every effort to give this quality a name, there is no single name which captures it." I like his suggestion that we "Imagine the quality without a name as a point, and each of the words which we have tried as an ellipse. Each element includes this point. But each ellipse also covers many other meanings, which are distant from this point." And, whether it gets us 'there' or not, I find the passage about making yourself comfortable with tea, books, cushions & dreams to be a lovely image.

{In case you haven't come across it before, this past entry offers more

details about Alexander, his patterns, and the 'quality with no name'.}

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On the theme of such comforts as tea, every time I wait for a pot to brew I think of this passage from The other Alice: The Story of Alice Liddell and Alice in Wonderland by Christina Björk, which is, as the author explains in the foreword "...a 'mischmasch' of of what we KNOW happened, what PROBABLY happened, and what COULD have happened." (Charles Dodgson was Lewis Carroll's real name.)

Mr. Dodgson boiled the water and poured it over the tea leaves. Then he walked back and forth, carrying the pot. "Why are you doing that?" asked Alice.

"Well, you see, the tea draws better when it can move around a bit," said Mr. Dodgson. "Once upon a time, there was a T that only stood still. It became so depressed it had an attack of nerves and went all to pieces."

Mr. Dodgson drew a picture of how terrible it had been for poor T. And by that time the tea was ready. Alice ate quite a few scones with jam...

Naturally, this leads to visions of scones dancing in my head; below is how I make them.

• Preheat oven to 225 C/440 F.
• In a medium bowl combine 2 cups flour, 1 heaped tsp baking powder, a pinch of salt & 1 heaped tbsp sugar.
• Cube 60g/2 oz cold butter and work it into the flour mixture until the texture is similar to a coarse meal.
• Stir in ½ cup cream & finish pulling together the dough with your hands. You may be inclined to add a bit more cream at this point, but first try rolling the dough around the bowl to gather it together (it seems to help if it's a cold metal bowl).
• Press the dough onto a parchment paper-lined baking tray, forming an approximately 7x7-inch/18x18-cm square, sprinkle with a little sugar (I like to use castor sugar), then cut into nine squares. You may want to trim the edges before dividing into ninths; if so, you can use the trimmings to form a tenth scone.
• Separate the scones slightly and bake until just golden, about 10 to 12 minutes.

Enjoy warm, with butter and/or jam, or jam topped with a dollop of cream (though I find that, with the sugar-sprinkled tops, you don’t actually need jam, butter or cream). I've also made these with half a cup of raisins, dried cherries or dried cranberries. Sometimes I also add a handful chopped pecans or hazelnuts along with the dried fruit.
 

 

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Hoping to somehow preserve the deliciousness of the blood oranges that are in season right now, I recently I bought six kilos of them (both the Moro & Tarocco varieties) and tried making marmalade for the first time. I found a recipe for a small batch of blood orange marmalade, which requires only four or five oranges—leaving plenty to eat whole or juice—here. A broken candy thermometer (plus my lack of canning experience) led me to overcook the marmalade, but it's still incredibly good once it's been softened in the microwave—and perfect on the scones...

 

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Milky coffee is my drink of choice in the morning, but making a pot of tea is the ritual I look forward to in the afternoon. I find there's also a certain beauty in the humble tea bag, which is the 'material' I have been exploring this month. As with last month's material—paper—the exploration is not so much about making something with it, but more about the beauty of the material in its original form.

While I generally prefer loose leaf tea, Le Palais du Thés also offers very good tea in muslin bags. As I enjoyed a box of Margaret's Hope (their Darjeeling tea), I began saving the little cloth bags, with their pretty labels, hoping to use them in the studio somehow. I've considered different ideas—perhaps slitting the side of each bag and replacing the tea leaves with folded papers to write on; adding more 'pages' to the existing labels at the ends of the string (to form miniature 'books')/otherwise involving the string; or embroidering/stitching on the muslin—but for now have simply focused on playing with & photographing them. 

It seems a lot of artists find inspiration from drinking tea. One example is Heidi Zednik, who records her thoughts on tea bags salvaged from her daily tea ritual. I first came across her project via an exhibition held at the Abecedarian Gallery, One Unit per Increment, which brought together works created within the framework of a regular interval (daily, weekly, monthly, etc.—a concept I love). Another artist’s work in that exhibition was also tea-centric: '100 days' featured bowls that artist Tatiana Ginsberg crafted from paper and then used for her daily tea. Each bowl assumed a unique character as it "reacted to and recorded the specific act of drinking." An artist whose work I have come across more recently, Patti Roberts-Pizzuto, uses tea bags as the foundation for many of her lovely 'dailies' (daily drawings). It should be fun to see where my muslin tea bags lead me...

{A past blog entry about the pleasures of tea time can be found here.}

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Here's hoping that, wherever you are—and whatever season you may be enjoying—you have a comfortable place to sit and read and daydream with something wonderful to drink.