Beginning/A Letter a Week

 

A new year - > new projects! A new year is also the perfect excuse for a new arrangement in the studio. While things are constantly changing places in our apartment, the studio desk has remained in the same spot for well over a year. This feels like an unusually long time to me...I am a wholehearted proponent of that principal of feng shui that says moving twenty-seven objects brings new energy to a space (I swear it's true!). The desk is now at an angle to the window, & I'm enjoying the new view from my stool, as well as the easier access to the window. Space has also opened up for my easel to go next to the window, & I am excited to resume painting with oils; I've had too many unrealized ideas floating around for far too long.

You don't really get a sense of it from the photo above, but when I sit at my desk at the moment I feel as though I am in a garden of Paperwhites, & it's lovely. The only thing missing these days is sunlight—though the sun did stop in for a nice visit today—& we're now up to a generous ten hours & five minutes between sunrise & sunset...

One project that has started up again is A Letter a Week 2014, edition five. Begun in 2010 by Australian artist Fiona Dempster, ALaW involves creating a letter each week of the year, for a total of two alphabets by year's end. The brief always includes an alphabet that is to be inspired by a particular theme (this year it's "place"), & the other one is open to the artist's interpretation. In both cases the letters must each fit within a 7x7-cm square & ultimately be brought together into a final piece...this can be a book, a wall piece, a quilt, a set of cards, etc. Last year Fiona organized a lovely collective exhibition of the three previous years' work. (More about the guidelines on the blog for this year's ALaW.)

While I completed both alphabets in 2012 (my first year participating) I did not fare so well with ALaW 2013. In fact, I am still working on my "Peace" alphabet, & will likely not manage the second one in the interest of completing both of this year's alphabets. It was not for lack of inspiration or time at the studio table that I struggled with ALaW in 2013, but rather that I had a hard time settling down & committing to a concrete direction...I tend to get carried away with the "process" sometimes, & enjoy playing with/stretching ideas—unfortunately sometimes at the expense of bringing them to a conclusion. If anything, ALaW has been useful in making me understand this; hopefully by the end of 2014 I will be able to say that indeed I did manage to apply what I learned from 2013's attempts.

The structure of this first set of letters, my "free" alphabet, borrows from an idea I was developing for one of the alphabets last year; it will consist of twenty-six "sleeves" that each slide over a 7x7x2.75-centimeter box made of Canson Mi-Teintes paper in a variety of colors. Here are a few shots—with a glorious slice of sunshine—followed by images of the files...

 

The concept for these "letters" came to me as I was creating a gift card for my parents' seventieth birthdays. I started playing with a couple of letters, trying to conceal their identities, but allowing them to guide the design. At first I experimented with blocky, sans serif fonts, but decided to see what would happen with the more flowing English Vivace. Through a series of manipulations—duplicate, flip, group, rotate, repeat—I then grouped the resulting elements into a new object, duplicated it & altered its dimensions (which changed the amount of space between the individual letters that comprised the object). I transformed them further by applying different colors & then began layering the designs (sometimes with a further rotation of the original). This likely doesn't make much sense, but I will try to record the steps of one of the letters at some point to clarify the process.

 

The alphabet in English Vivace

 

 

Here are some of the letter arrangements in a more basic form; you may remember them from my Christmas greeting in this post. The first one was made from 16 "P's," the second from 32 "J's," & the third from 16 "L's" (inspired by "peace," "joy" & "love").

Next are some screenshots of the files for the tops of the sleeves for the ALaW project, i.e. the "official" 7x7 cm squares...

"A"

"E"

"O"

"T"

"V"

Most sleeves will likely just have a design on the top, but these next two images are screenshots of the print files for those with designs on the sides/bottom as well (the lines at top/bottom are guides for the scoring-lines).

Now I just need to decide what will go in the boxes!


I didn't photograph the original card before sending it off to my parents, but here are some of the others that have helped along/further inspired my AlaW alphabet. The first, a birthday card for my sister-in-law, is  based on "A" (the colors are a little off as there wasn't much light the day I sent it off/took the photo). The next two are cards I made for my daughter's birthday, variations on the "E" theme. I'm looking forward to discovering other ways to use these designs...

 

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And, on a completely unrelated note, to conclude this post here's a song by the original Journey, circa 1975—a song either new to me or that I had forgotten about for the last couple of decades—Of a Lifetime. Enjoy...

paper + white + blossoms

 

As promised, here are some images of the Paperwhites in bloom. The rain has continued over the last several days, but I thought I'd try photographing them anyway since the forecast predicts rain, rain & more rain for the week ahead. I don't remember a January in Florence as wet as this one has been—even more reason to be grateful for Paperwhites brightening up the studio! And that scent—oh my...

I find it fascinating to compare these photos to the ones in the previous post—the palette of light is so utterly different that it feels as though they were taken in a different season altogether. These shots are in fact more in keeping with winter. I do hold out hope that I may still capture the sweet little blossoms basking in the sun—at the very least those from the second batch of bulbs, which I have just "planted." (I am merely setting the bulbs in a tray with a few millimeters of water, so that only the roots make contact with it, then transferring them to glass containers in order to contain the wayward stems as they grow taller. Talk about easy gardening!)

I continue to be astounded by how much joy these bulbs & their blooms have given me, but I suppose part of it is simply the awe of watching something grow...and at a rate that is at once fast enough to actually take note of, yet also so fast that you can scarcely believe it: the "small" miracles of every day...

New moon/little stars

The imminent arrival of the new moon (10:40pm in Italy) is about to officially usher in the Year of the Horse, so Happy Lunar New Year!

For me, the Lunar/Chinese New Year actually feels like a more natural point to make a fresh start than does the traditional western new year. First of all, its date is determined by the moon, whose waxing & ebbing seem to have a definite influence on my own creative cycles. But it probably also has something to do with the fact that I am usually away from home on January 1st; this means the period before & after is spent preparing to go away/being elsewhere (not to mention that the holidays are inherently distracting, even for someone who favors a low-key approach). As a result, I am apt to return home to a fair amount of chaos—not really the best way to begin afresh. And then there is that inevitable list of things still waiting to be finished up from the year just passed. In any case, January is more of a getting-sorted-out month around here.

I must admit that, even with this second shot at a New Year, I find I am continuing to get organized. (Traditionally, Florence's new year began on 25 March—maybe that's a more realistic date to aim for.) I still haven't finished sifting through my photos & findings from Sydney (which I will share here at some point). The first image in this post does, however, feature some of my favorite treasures from our visit: a handful of star magnets made by my nephews, ages four & five-&-a-half (& who have been Sydney residents most of their lives). I am using the little clay stars to display one of my PaperSynthesis calendars on a magnetic blackboard, & they make me smile every time I see them. A rare day of brilliant sunshine last weekend really emphasized their lovely textures, so I got out the camera for my first studio photo session in what feels like a very long time.

Another subject that got some attention from my camera that day was the mass of Paperwhite bulbs that I had found at the plant market the week before. I will try not to repeat myself, as my passion (some may say obsession) for Paperwhites is already detailed in this post, but suffice it to say I have been reveling in their presence & delighting in watching the bulbs sprout roots & shoots.

By the end of the sunshiny afternoon, the light had managed to coax the very first flowers to split the spathe (as the sheath covering the buds is called—something I discovered while putting together this entry about daffodils); you can make out the about-to-emerge flowers in a couple of the images below. The sun was so generous & vibrant that day that, in order to be able to work at the studio table, I ended up donning the trilby hat passed on to me by my sister-in-law at the end of our Sydney visit. I liked how it caught the last of the light as it sat on my sketchpad, next to the Paperwhites (third set of images, left).

And now the Paperwhites are flourishing, & full of sweet little white blossoms. Photos to come if the sun returns before they start to fade...though, if not, there will be another chance—in an attempt to hang on to one of my favorite parts of winter, I couldn't resist picking up another cache of Paperwhite bulbs at the plant market today...

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 Perhaps I am not as organized as I could be to greet the Year of the Horse, but I have noticed during the last week or so that I can hardly keep track of all the inspiration & ideas that have been flooding in—a good sign, I think. (Maybe it has something to do with witnessing the transformation of the bulbs into flowers—such a good energy to be around.) One thing is sure: it's an exciting place to be. Here's hoping you find yourself in exciting places too...

Glimpses of red

 

 

You may remember my ROY G BIV-inspired posts in the past. The challenge—begun by artists Jennifer Coyne Qudeen & Julie Booth in 2012—has begun once again, with RED. I am still sifting through my Sydney images/impressions, and feeling behind with blog posting & blog visiting, but what better motivation to say hello & happy 2014!

I must admit that the light (or lack of it, rather) hasn't inspired me to do much photographing since I've been back, but as I walked home from the post office the other day I passed an installation that appeared in Florence a few months ago & thought, "ah, red—perfect for this month's ROY G BIV!" I managed only a few blurry, dim shots in the pre-dusk drizzle, so returned to Vicolo dell'Oro today to try again. While the sky was an uninspiring white—an invitation for overexposure—I suppose the best you could say is that the red bits on the bicycles stood out all the more. Part of a series of cycling-related pieces created in honor of the Mondiali di Ciclismo (UCI Road World Championship) last fall, these 22 sky-bound bicycles scaling one wall of the Gallery Hotel Art have certainly been catching the attention of passers-by.

Below is another piece from the installation: two bicycles parked upon a giant 'hand'-mirror. The red Leica signs continued the theme of RED...

And another unofficial red-themed 'installation', which is in fact city-wide (and starting to reach beyond Italy), also has a presence in this little corner of Florence. In the last few years, French artist Clet has added a new facet to his work: a series of fairly discreet stickers that he places on street signs, rendering them quite whimsical while retaining (or perhaps you could even say, in some cases, drawing more attention to) their original purpose. His studio can be found in the little neighborhood of San Niccolò, by the church. Below are two of the stickered signs marking either end of the short street with the bicycle art.

 

I was impressed by how many shots of red—really quite necessary to these gloomy gray days, when you think about it!—I noticed on my short walk back home...just one of the effects/benefits of participating in ROY G BIV.

Guidelines for the ROY G BIV challenge are here if you'd like to play along in future;

February's color will be ORANGE (followed by YELLOW, GREEN, BLUE & so on).

 

Merry Merry

 

 
I just wanted to wish everyone a Merry, Merry Christmas from down under!

 

More on my adventures in Sydney soon...

From Venice to books & letters, writing & running, persimmons & milkshakes...

Once again, SORRY for the long absence since my last entry. This one covers a whole slew of topics, at times only tenuously linked, but you could probably say it's a fairly accurate representation of the state of my mind, & my studio.

It's funny how things seem to go in phases, and I have been in a rather 'closed' one—probably as a response to not having much time in the studio over the summer. I think, also, that the lapse of blogging has something to do with not taking so many photos lately; in part this is because of the diminishing hours of sunlight and the considerably fewer blue-skied days...nothing inspires me to take photos more than the presence of sunshine.

I have, however, been immersed in images that I've taken over the course of the year (and earlier), while putting together several new calendars for my recently opened Etsy shop. One of my favorites of these is the Venetian Quartets shown below, but I've also collected photos of things I like to photograph locally—the Arno's reflections & Florence's rose garden, as well as still lifes of produce & flowers.





Speaking of images, I have been enjoying dipping into those of the second volume of 500 Handmade Books, juried/curated by Julie Chen. One of my artist's books was chosen (Where Sea & Sky Meet), so I was delighted to find a copy from the publisher in my mailbox recently. Below it is opened to a spread with two of my favorite discoveries: on the left-hand side is Ying-Ting Chen's Dictionary of Textile Terms, made of tea-bag labels, banana fiber & cotton thread (I can't seem to find any info/links for the artist); and on the right is the evocative, somewhat ethereal, Bottled-up Emotions, by Leslie Pearson.

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Exhibition image by Anastasia Kariofyllidis

Another creative endeavor I am thrilled to have been part of is A Letter a Week: Artistic Travels through the Alphabet, a six-week exhibition at the Butter Factory Arts Centre at Cooroy (near Noosa, Australia), which ran from 10 October to 16 November 2013. Fiona Dempster, an Australian artist who created A Letter a Week (ALaW) in 2010, organized this exhibition of pieces made during the annual editions thus far. Unfortunately, I was not able to attend, but it sounds like it was a great success. Hop over to the ALaW2014 blog to learn about the upcoming edition.

I ended up recreating both of my 2012 alphabets for the exhibition. For Be Amazed (& other words to live by), I took advantage of having an excuse to redo the cubes as I had meant to the first time. (In this blog entry I explained how I had wanted to mask each of the nine cube faces for each color to be different, i.e. so the spotted pattern would be different.) 

Here are a couple of photos I took before sending the piece off; the second one perhaps clarifies how the newly 'masked' patterns are each different in this version...

And this next photo is from a more recent 'photo shoot' of the water+oil concept that inspired the patterns I created for the Be Amazed piece. Please see the Persimmon Shake recipe (later in this post) for a new 'dotty' design to come from my latest experiments with this concept. Just as with traditional marbling, I found a 'size' of some sort was necessary—otherwise the multiple circles quickly became one. Once again, I tried the ground cornmeal used to make polenta, and it worked perfectly.

As for Twenty-six/Fragments, I was concerned about safely shipping a piece measuring 50 x 50 cm (approx. 20 x 20 inches) to Australia, so I re-did the letter fragments as a 'meander' book, i.e. a single sheet of paper scored/cut & folded into a 7 x 7-cm booklet. (The original piece is shown in this blog entry.)


 

Exhibition image by Anastasia Kariofyllidis

And here's a photo before sending the piece to Australia, showing it in book form...

 

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Another activity that's kept me busy lately is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). The challenge is to write a 50,000-word novel during the month of November (i.e. thirty days). The emphasis is on quantity over quality, which is completely the opposite of everything I believe in...but I suppose is equally useful for that very reason. My daughter also participated, so I have been in good company. This is our third year, and though it's surprisingly difficult to stay on track with an average of 1667 words per day, it always feels great to have strung together those 50,000 words. In fact, they equate more of a novella, as opposed to a full-length novel, and each year I have actually continued building on the first year's story. As someone who reads more non-fiction than fiction, and is also more comfortable writing non-fiction, I have to say that NaNoWriMo has been a great experience; I love how characters wander in & out, and how the story evolves & takes on a life of its own. And it's possible that another few years may even see a completed novel (though, as of tomorrow, it will be good to have an 'extra' few hours each day)...

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C25K, or 'A cautionary tale' ~

My daughter & I also joined forces to motivate one another in a different kind of challenge: C25K. The nine-week program gradually builds you up to a thirty-minute/five-kilometer run. I was horrified to find how out of shape I had become—my usual form of exercise is yoga/simply walking around Florence to take care of business, so to speak (those fifty-five steps up to our apartment should count for something too). The last time I had run was about twenty years ago, and even this gentle program, which introduces brief spurts of running between periods of walking, proved a rude awakening for my body; within two weeks I had developed extremely painful shin splints. While running doesn't really appeal to me as a form of exercise, I found myself already hooked during those first 'workouts', and was truly disappointed at the thought of not continuing. (Besides, I hate giving up on something once I've started.)

I tried various treatments and, interestingly, the most helpful one ended up to be rolling the arches of my feet on a tennis ball frequently throughout the day (apparently several ligaments end somewhere down there, and 'massaging' them in this way helps to release the painful tension). I was able to pick up again within a couple of weeks, and came to quite enjoy this new routine—which brought a few firsts for me in Florence: my first time wearing running shoes (something locals don't do in public, except the few runners, of course) & my first time experiencing the city while listening to music. I must say that I've enjoyed observing the nighttime reflections as we ran along the Arno, and noting the rise & fall of the water and its turbulence vs calmness as it followed the usual cycle of autumn rains. I was surprised to find I didn't use the time to work out details for projects I'm working on, but rather to simply 'be'. While I'm turning more to yoga again now that it's grown so cold, I do hope to still get out there in my running shoes a couple of times a week. And one thing is sure: it feels good to be in better shape again.

If you're interested in the details of the C25K program, please click here.

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Locally, the persimmon trees are some of the few to take on ragingly gorgeous, track-stopping colors; first the leaves turn shades of gold & orange, then the leaves fall to the ground, leaving a ring of color under the tree. Any unpicked fruit continues to hang from the bare branches like orange Christmas ornaments, reminding me of my maternal Grandmother, whose Christmas tree for many years was decorated completely in orange. (Surely memories like this have caused me to gravitate toward orange, the color I most associate with joyfulness.)

We usually eat persimmons as one would a pudding—by simply piercing the skin with a spoon and scooping out the soft flesh. Sometimes I add a generous dollop of plain yogurt & a sprinkle of cinnamon. But recently I decided to try making a persimmon shake as one of our end-of-the-running-week treats. Very autumn-y, almost reminiscent of pumpkin (though possibly this is merely suggested by the inclusion of spices and the pale orange color).

As always, I offer recipes more as suggestions/starting points for tailoring to your own preferences & what you have on hand; I'd love to hear if anyone comes up with a new twist. (Drag the recipe below to your Desktop/right click to save for an enlarged view.)

 

Alternatively, you can use persimmons at room temperature; the consistency will be more like a smoothie, as opposed to a luxuriously thick milkshake. (I often keep frozen almond milk on hand, which can also lend thickness to a smoothie/shake if the fruit is not frozen.)

To celebrate completing the C25K program, we made a persimmon shake with ice cream instead of yogurt -> delicious! You could get very creative with complementary ice cream/yogurt flavors as well as other spices; I hope to be able to try out more variations before the persimmons disappear for another year.

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Marathoners brightening up Piazza Pitti last Sunday; a band played as spectators danced & cheered on the runners.

And I'll leave you with a song by Manfred Mann's Earth Band, The Runner. I like to live-stream the weekly Sunday Classics show on K-SHE95, the rock station I listened to as a teenager in St. Louis (a  l-o-n-g  time ago), and they played The Runner this past Sunday. I had forgotten this song even existed, and loved that the reminder came on the day of the Florence marathon (24 November)...which was also the day of my daughter's and my last official run for the C25K program.

Into the arms of fall...

Hello again (after so long). As I returned to the draft for this blog entry, which has been awaiting attention for quite some time, I wondered if maybe I was procrastinating because I didn't want that last entry—about cherishing those last days of summer—to be replaced...

Yes, autumn has definitely reached Florence. We're living in that unpredictable balance of passing the day in a shroud of clouds & trying to take in as many hours of breathtaking golden light as possible. I think often of my early visits to Florence, which were at this time of year. Leaves are changing to yellow, beginning to fall, and the produce stands display a whole new palette: the deep purples, dusty greens, rich oranges & variegated reds of figs, grapes, plums, pears, persimmons, pomegranates & apples.

After a few months of inactivity, the oven is back in use again. We've made scones (recipe in this entry), fig tart (using the sweetened version of the crust in this entry) & (twice!) a lovely rustic plum cake from my friend Tessa Kiros' first cookbook, Twelve. Unfortunately it's now out of print, but she's had several others out over the last decade. I treasure my copy, as it has the black & white cover from her original self-published version.

On the subject of books, the one shown in the image at the top of this entry (along with the fig tart) is a lovely adaptation by Peter Sis of The Conference of the Birds. I first came across it in the US during the summer, and was compelled to order several of his beautifully illustrated books once I returned to Florence, including this one. I remember some of his children's books from when my daughter was younger, but The Conference of the Birds is his first adult book. I love the story itself—a metaphor for the journey that this life is & the many ways people choose, or are destined, to live it—and the illustrations eloquently complement the text. (Details on the original poem, written in Persia in 1177, can be found here.)

Returning to the fruit... Shown in the apothecary jars below are the small green 'Claudia' plums & uva fragola, 'strawberry grapes', which are deliciously sweet. Their brief season has already finished, but now is the time for the intense little grapes found in schiacciata all'uva...a sweet flatbread with a bit of crunch from the little seeds, which remain among the sticky, semi-caramelized grapes.

 

And it's already time for the olives to be picked, so we can expect new olive oil soon—the first pressing always produces the most fragrant & flavorful oil. And on that note...

Below are some more 'story strips' from last month, using fallen olives from my favorite olive tree up at the rose garden. I was attracted to the intense purplish-browns & rough texture of these random olives, which had shriveled on their stems and then dropped to the ground. The leaf at the top of the right-hand 'page' (second image) is unusual for an olive leaf, but somehow they occasionally end up with irregular edges. I can hardly wait to get back to the rose garden again one day soon...I'm sure that its palette has also undergone quite a transformation.

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And here are a couple of shots of the Arno—the view looking east(ish) from Ponte Vecchio, and then a detail of the reflections. The colors seem to convey the feeling of autumn around here right now...

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One reason for my absence in Blogland lately is that I've been immersed in working on a new line of items for my online shop, PaperSynthesis. You may also have noticed a new addition in my sidebar—an 'Etsy mini'—as I'm in the process of moving items from my former shop to this new 'space'. I'll post more about the whole process once things are a bit more settled/organized. And one of these days I will reestablish the pleasant ritual of visiting all of the blogs I have been missing in the last couple of months...

So, to conclude this long-overdue entry, writing the words "deep purple" earlier in the post made me think of Deep Purple and, consequently, a song I re-discovered through my daughter earlier this year: 'Perfect Strangers'. I love the rhythm (and it's truly ingrained in me after hearing my daughter playing it on the drums for the last several months!). Enjoy...