Watching the sky

Time for some "blue," May's ROY G BIV photo challenge color. I had hoped that the Arno would have changed to blue by now, but green was still the predominant hue when I last walked cross the river a few days ago. (You will find a couple of shots of the water later in the post, though they were taken earlier in the year.)

We have been waking up to the most beautiful, deep blue skies——the kind that make you grateful to be alive——so yesterday I decided to photograph the phases of the sky as the day progressed. Not a cloud could be seen when I awoke, but before the church bells had even chimed noon, fluffy white shapes began to invade the vast blueness. All in all, there was quite a bit of action in the sky, saving this post from being a series of homogenous blue swatches.

I've organized those I've chosen (from a selection of nearly 100!) according to either contrasts or similarities.

The first pair of images (above) shows the sky as I watched my daughter leave in the morning (left), and a blush of pink at the end of a tunnel clouds at sunset (right).

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Below is a mid-morning blue & a late-afternoon blue (when the sky was almost colorless in proximity to the sun).

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Fluffy white clouds that became gray as the afternoon went on...

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A cloud surrounded by sky, and another one lost in a sea of gray...

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Left: Trip planning along the Atlantic. Right: The pattern of clouds in this shot reminded me of the eastern seaboard of the United States. (The four- by three-foot map of the US that we bought last year has been on the kitchen wall until recently; as the school year screeches toward summer, it has become an interactive "tablecloth," for more hands-on planning.)

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Sunshine trying to poke a hole in the clouds at 16:40, then painting the sky pink & violet just before calling it a day at 20:43...

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Sunset-time, seen through one of our windows, as well as on the river (another day)...

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Through the large arch of the Uffizi that overlooks the Arno is a slice of sky reflecting on the water. It reminded me of the map-view of a lake (and the building's mottled reflection makes me think of terrain shown on a map)...

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Some twilight photos would have been the perfect way to end this post, but a veil of clouds hid the usual gradations of deep blue (the shades of blue that I love) before making way for the full moon a bit later. I don't have much success with nighttime photos, so it's probably best left in our imaginations!

 

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The ROY G BIV photo challenge was started 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. All are welcome to join in

the search; June's color will be INDIGO. (Guidelines are here.)

Lines of lilacs

Today is the day we celebrate "la festa della mamma"——Mother's Day——in Italy, so I'd like to send a wish to all of the women who so beautifully mother & nurture others, including my own creative, inspiring & loving mother, and my daughter, who has inherited the same qualities.

I also thought this would be a good chance to finally share an image of my lilac "story strips" from last spring (above, left & below). They were made from the Mother's Day lilacs my daughter had given me last year, which I wrote about in this post. Spring was all but over by the time I finally sorted through my photos of the rows of lilac buds/petals/clusters I had assembled, and it felt like the moment to post them had passed. Here are a few notes I had written at the time:

I wish I had created pages & pages of lilac story strips, but that won't be possible for another nine months or so. One thing is certain: lilacs do not overstay their welcome!

I conducted an experiment of sorts, to see if I could entice them into a lengthier visit by snipping the blooms from the woody stems and submerging them in a sink full of water. Not only did the tender, wilted flowers perk up but, almost completely submerged in tall clear glasses of water, they lasted for another several days (image above, right). I was surprised to see that the lilac color began to fade at one point, and eventually the tiny flowers became colorless (essentially white) before shriveling to pale brown.

The flowers that dried right on their stalks, on the other hand, turned a deep, almost-black purple, and have joined the tray of floral remnants left from each month's flower explorations. I find I am equally fascinated by what remains at the end of a flower's life as by the flower at its freshest.

 

 

And here's a glimpse of some of the Mother's Day treats I awoke to: a "bouquet" of chocolate-covered strawberries & blackberries, a pyramid of chocolate-mocha-pecan muffins, a heart-shaped cardboard Mother's Day card & a glass of fresh orange juice (enthusiastically drunk before I snapped the photo). My daughter also took the time to learn how to make coffee with my fun new espresso maker, which I will have to write about here one day——it's an objet d'art in its own right!).

 

Gather ye lilacs while ye may...

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...

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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.

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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?

Suddenly, everything seems to be green...

Considering that green is turning up around every corner lately, the timing couldn't be better for the "G" in ROY G BIV this month. Here are a few greens that have been part of this week...

The first pair of images show the delicious fresh beans that show up every April: baccelli. As per tradition, we paired them with shavings of pecorino, then seasoned with olive oil, salt & pepper. The rosemary in the left-hand image is from my mother's terrace garden in Montepulciano, where we did a little gardening over the weekend—I couldn't resist bringing home some of the purple-flowered branches.

Next is a pineapple, whose prickly outer texture & range of greens I find endlessly fascinating. Though they are not grown locally, pineapples are one of the fruits available year-round in Florence (and found almost without fail on the dessert menu at restaurants). We have been using them for shakes made with semi-frozen almond milk, an egg white & a little vanilla...

 

I realized only now, when the sun is long-gone, that I had meant to photograph the packaging of our colomba, the light, sweet, candied orange- & almond-studded bread that's just as much a part of the Italian Easter tradition as the large chocolate eggs wrapped in shiny, colorful papers. This year we decided to try something a bit different: a colomba made with olive oil (you can see the olive-sprigged paper & wide green ribbon in this photo on the Filippi website).

 

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While accompanying my daughter to the airport today, I saw plenty of green: several leaf-green spring jackets, suitcases both dark & light green & bold green beaded jewelry. The best photo would have been of a young passenger at the ticket counter—his hair was dyed bright green, and he was also wearing a green t-shirt! But, as I said to my daughter, I am just not the kind of person who blatantly photographs people (surreptitiously, yes, but not if I think they might notice). Though I had brought my camera for the walking portion of my journey home from the airport, once I had said goodbye to my daughter I just quietly observed the many greens that surrounded me...

Once I was back in the center, and walking past the church of Santa Maria Novella, it clicked with me that the intricate façade designs are in green (and white) marble, so out came the camera at last...

As I continued on toward the river, I thought about how I hadn't been to our favorite gelateria, La Carraia, in a long time. While we moms used to take our children there after school once upon a time, it's something they usually do on their own now. I love the "After Eight" flavor—mint with bits of chocolate—and though it's a subtle green because they don't add artificial colors/flavors, it tastes even greener than it is. The gelateria's logo (the arches of the bridge it is named for/located next to) is also green, but I was too busy catching the drips of my cone to photograph it.

 


The Arno has been green much of April, so I had a feeling it would be part of this month's ROY. Below are a few snaps from today; I liked the patterns the wind made as it blew opposite the current, and the varying shades as the water caught the light, the sky & the greenery along the banks...

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For links to more green-inspired photos, please visit the

blogs of artists Jennifer Coyne Qudeen & Julie Booth.

Putting (the final touches) in place...

Twenty-five+ months later, I am finally finishing up the final edits & last round of test prints for my BookArtObject (BAO) edition. I have mentioned my work on this project infrequently here, but it has been an ongoing part of my studio routine all this time.

Each edition of BAO has used a selected text as its starting point; the first year it was a poem by Rosemary Dobson, Learning Absence (1986), and the most recent is a series of one-hundred titles that artist Sarah Bodman chose for her book of short stories, An Exercise for Kurt Johannessen (more details about this on the BookArtObject website). Many of the titles had been claimed by the time I found out about this project, but I was quite excited by the one I ended up with: "Mise en place." At the time, I had little idea where I would go with this seed of inspiration, but I did know that I was constantly finding parallels between the studio & the kitchen—and that I was becoming more & more interested in what took place in the kitchen.

One aspect of Edition 4 of BookArtObject that I appreciated was the loose deadline. The artist's books I had created in the last few years had mainly come about in response to the calls for submissions at art galleries, which meant that deadlines always loomed too close to allow me to "live" with a concept for a while, to let it evolve organically (or to live a normal life during the frantic experimentation & creation phases!). It was a painful way to go about the pleasurable pursuit of making books.

While I'm afraid I have in fact interpreted the generous deadline more loosely than was expected—most of the artists have completed their editions by now, and a couple of exhibitions have already been held—I am finally close enough that revealing a snippet or two should be just the push I need to finish. I don't want to give too much away before the other members of my group receive their copies, but in this post you will find a few images of a print I made to check the content (independently of the final format, so as to see it in a fresh light), as well as some of the initial notes I dug up from way back when. I found it interesting to see what survived—and remained important—through this very long, convoluted (but enjoyable) process. 

It feels good to have made what I hope is the last to-do list for my edition of seventeen!

Celebrating spring with sunshiny yellows

 

Mimosas play a big part in my photos for this month's ROY G BIV challenge; they were in bloom earlier this month and (as I mentioned a couple of posts ago) sprigs of mimosa are traditionally given to women on 8 March (La Festa della Donna/International Women's Day). I must confess that I don't really care much for mimosas but, as usual, after spending some time considering them through the camera lens I have come to appreciate them more than before. Above & below are some shots of the "story strips" I created with the various elements, and I found I quite enjoyed the tiny spherical blossoms on their own (especially the shadows they cast)...

 

The packaging of the bunch I bought also emphasized the shape of the little yellow balls (left image on this first pair below).

A fascinating video of the mimosa leaves closing can be seen here.

 

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Here's the design for the top of the sleeve that slips over the box for "M" (seen on the right of the second pair of images above). The rest of my latest letters for the ALaW project can be seen on the A Letter a Week blog.

 

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I finally started a new oil painting a few weeks ago—my first in a long while. I typically/instinctively use a lot of yellow in my oils, and this one appears to be upholding the tradition. I don't have an updated photo of the latest incarnation of the painting, but here are a couple of shots after the initial session...

 

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And, to finish, here are some snapshots I took on my outing to the weekly plant & flower market in Piazza della Repubblica today... Yellow seemed to be everywhere, as if acknowledging spring's arrival this afternoon (17:57 local time). Happy Spring to everyone in the northern hemisphere!


 

Something strange has been going on with the colors of the photos in both this entry & the one I just posted on ALaW's website; I will try to update the images if I figure out the issue...

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For more yellow-themed photos, please visit the blogs of artists 
Jennifer Coyne Qudeen & Julie Booth.