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...

Orange joy

 

Once again, it's time for the ROY G BIV photo challenge, and this month we have been looking for "orange." For January's edition I let paper inspire me, so I thought I'd continue with a paper theme again this time. As is often the case, other tangents tempted me, and I must say that it's the most fun I've had for a while (things are still not the same around here since the beginning of the year).

Orange is my favorite color, so the hardest thing was probably deciding what to photograph. My day is full of orange: I brush my teeth with an orange toothbrush, my hair with an orange hairbrush, use amber shower/hair products and orange towels. Orange curtains frame the windows, which look upon terracotta roof tiles, blankets & wraps in shades of orange keep me warm, I pour tea from an orange pot into a cup with a sliver of orange rind. And since it's citrus season, the fruit basket is inevitably bursting with the delicious blood oranges that are at their best right now. However, I opted not to catalogue my orange life here (at least not visually).

In the image at the beginning of this post you should be able to just make out some letter forms for one paper project I'm working on, belatedly: the "place"-themed alphabet for A Letter a Week 2014. Originally I had planned to include several more photos at the end of this post, but have since decided to create a separate entry——so this post is less paper-y than I had first envisioned.

Here are some notes on the photos that have remained...

First is an image of the confetti (known locally as coriandoli) I made in honor of carnevale this week. When I emptied the hole punch of the orange and copper circles I had cut, out fell the remnants of a long-ago project, adding some other colors to the mix——certainly more in the spirit of Carnival. 

After the confetti is a picture from this morning...it's not the first time I have posted an image of the early sun falling on the roof tiles and so beautifully highlighting their curved edges, but this "crescent"-enhancing moment delights me each time I catch it.

Next is a selection of my favorite orange-spined books. The one on top——All the Little Live Things——is my current read from Wallace Stegner, an author whose writing I savor. Not page-turners, but rather stories with a painterly sensibility, told at a pace that invites on-the-page reflection, I have been taking my time working through Stegner's collection. You may notice that Witold Rybczynski's books compose a good chunk of the stack...I've always enjoyed how he writes so engagingly about the multiple facets of architecture/building. (I only just realized he has a blog, which I have yet to peruse.)

And then are some chili peppers that have been slowly drying (shriveling!) over the last several weeks. They began as a bouquet of bright oranges, reds & greens, but had changed considerably by the time I rediscovered them when making a pot of chili earlier this week. (In fact, they are perhaps even more photogenic now——definitely more patinaed——though I will spare you the dozens of photos they inspired me to take).

 

I thought I'd finish with this photo of an orange freesia that I took a couple of years ago, against the temporary "garden" of freesias that popped up on the studio table during a photo shoot. I liked the image so much that I gave it a title——OrangeJoy——and offered it in my Etsy shop for a while (plus have sent many post card versions as thank you's). It remains one of my all-time favorite pictures, and fills me with joy whenever I come across it.

 

Here's wishing joy for everyone, in whatever shape, form or color

that happens to be. I'd actually love to hear which color symbolizes
joy for you if you'd like to note it in the "comments" section...

And Happy Year of the Goat/new moon!

*

For those of you who are not 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.

Hope + Comfort

 

As is true every January, the paperwhite bulbs are beginning to bloom. Witnessing tiny miracles like this always fills me with hope, something we could do with around here right now. Things are still very sad as I watch my daughter going through the most difficult period she has ever faced. Disbelief continues to be my overriding emotion, and acceptance seems far away.

Besides hope, comfort is another thing you need in times like this. When I opened up Natalie Goldberg's Long Quiet Highway to a random page the other day, the first paragraph I read led into these words:

Whether we know it or not, we transmit the presence of everyone we have ever known, as though by being in the other person's presence we exchange our cells, pass on some of our life force, and then we go on carrying that person's body, not unlike springtime when certain plants in fields we walk through attach their seeds in the form of burrs to our socks, our pants, our caps, as if to say, "Go on, take us with you, carry us to root in another place." This is how we survive long after we are dead. This is why it is important who we become, because we pass it on.

-Natalie Goldberg

I always find Natalie's words to be relevant, reassuring, full of compassion and hope, and this time I found comfort in them too. So I typed them up to keep nearby, as a reminder that those we lose will always be part of us. It will also remind me how important it is to live as well as we can, since we will one day be passing that on to others...
 

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.)

*

 

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...

 

*

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.

Eighteen years

This post was originally going to be called "Three years," alluding to today being the three-year anniversary of Arzigogolare on Blogger. But instead of taking some time over the last few days to revisit the past & consider the future of this blog, the week took a very different turn from what I had planned. Unfortunately it was not the pleasant, creative kind, where you're following whimsy & finding serendipity. Instead, the week began with the unthinkable news that one of my daughter's closest friends had died, very suddenly and very unexpectedly, of a fluke medical complication.

I have been lucky that death has taken few close to me in the last forty-seven years——and never a dear friend who was part of my every day. This means, though, that I don't really know how to deal with such things. It's hard enough to comprehend the hostage situations, killing sprees, plane crashes and other tragedies that happen all-too-often around the world, but finding a place in my mind for this quiet, but very intense, close-to-home event has been a terrible struggle...and I hardly know how my daughter and her tight-knit group of friends are managing to get through it. Well, actually, they are the only thing getting themselves through it. They have clung to each other, cried with each other, supported each other, and are beginning to find ways to honor the friend who is no longer with them.

All week I have been trying to understand why I can't seem to come to terms with Marco's death. Maybe because there is no explanation or reason, no logical chain of events: he wasn't hit by a drunk driver, he wasn't doing drugs, he didn't have a terminal illness. He was a good kid. There's no lesson here; he was valued, he was loved. I could try to look at it from the standpoint that he had the best eighteen years that a person could, that he is a vital part of memories that his friends and families will always hold dear. But I can't help but mourn the future he will never live...the future that so many had counted on sharing with him.

And I mourn for his family——for the younger brother who shared a room room with him, for his parents having to bury their beautiful eighteen-year-old son and all of the dreams they had for him.

I mourn for his many, many friends, and the musicians in the multiple bands he played guitar for. And there's been that core group of friends that my daughter is also part of, nearly inseparable, who have been like a second family to one another, helping to navigate the waters that take some teenagers on a pretty scary journey. I've admired how there was no drama among them, just music & memory-making. At least you can say they didn't waste their precious time together (though I am not really at the point where I can use "at least this..." and "at least that..." to rationalize or find comfort).

I mourn for his girlfriend of the last year-and-a-half. She has been friends with my daughter since first grade, and it has been amazing to see her blossom in the time since she met Marco. They were the couple who everyone assumed would be always be together——the ones who must have given the rest of them hope for someday finding someone too.

In trying to work through this, I realize that one reason this tragedy feels so close to home is not only because of Marco's importance to my daughter and her dearest friends, but also of course because losing a child is the always-present fear of every parent. I have been extremely lucky as a mother; my daughter brings joy into my life daily, and our household is a harmonious one. I will admit that my mind sometimes wanders to what it would be like to lose my daughter——you never know what tomorrow holds, as is glaringly clear now——but in the light of such thoughts I always comfort myself with the knowledge that she has lived seventeen years fully and beautifully, and that I have had the privilege of loving, cherishing and being proud of her every single day. I know now, though, how naive it is to think that would be enough. To lose her would be unbearable...

I suppose it boils down to this: we don't know which day will be our last on this earth. All we can do——or at least a start——is to live every day as well as we can...to recognize the beauty each day holds, and to find & give joy.

 

 

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...Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.

― John Donne, No Man Is An Island - Meditation XVII

 

*

 

 

I do hope that others of you out there have had a happier start to the year, and may you find comfort in the sadnesses and difficulties that, inevitably, do come. But may they be few...

Wishes for peace, love & joy in 2015

It's been a while since I've put together a blog post but, as we are all beginning to slip——one time zone at a time—into a fresh new year, I'd like to take a moment to wish you all a very happy 2015. May it be full of promise, and abundant with peace, love & joy!

❄︎

Since I haven't shared anything in this space for so long, I thought I'd include some photos of the series of greeting cards I've been working on in the last few months. My plan was to develop a palette for the holidays (shades of red, gold, green & plum + some blues as backgrounds for the "snowflakes"), and to incorporate designs I made for ALaW earlier this year (these inspired "ornaments" & "snowflakes"). I've also been working on a series of typography posters for the new online shop I will open in the spring, so I tried a couple of designs using text as well. Plus there were some festive "garlands" & stars... It was a good learning experience, but a much more involved process than I expected!

 

I hope to be more present in this space in the New Year, as well as in visiting the many other blogs that I have missed following lately.

Once again, wishing you a very happy & creativity-filled 2015!

Chocolate brown

November's edition of the ROY G BIV* challenge fell on my daughter's birthday this year, so here are a few photos of what was happening in the kitchen yesterday... Lots of chocolate, as I went about preparing her cake, which fits perfect with this month's theme of "brown." After the success of the ice cream cake that my daughter concocted for my birthday last month (inspired by the sublime mint "After Eight" gelato at our favorite local gelateria), I knew I would have to create a gelato-based variation for her special day too.

While I never could bring myself to order a Caramel Macchiato from Starbucks when we were in the US this past summer (the only "sweetening" I like in my coffee is milk), the concept is pretty fascinating to us——we are used to a very different coffee culture here. (In Italy, a "latte" means a glass of milk, and jargon that is normale in coffee shops across the US doesn't exist.) My daughter did enjoy the Caramel Macchiato she tried over the summer though——and she loves the caffè-flavored gelato from the gelateria of the "After Eight" fame, so I decided to use it as the starting point for what turned out to be the tallest cake ever made in our kitchen!

I made a sketch of the "anatomy" of the cake to make sure I had everything straight as I assembled it...

The cake was also drizzled with caramel sauce...

Between all of the birthday preparations & festivities yesterday, I didn't have much time for photos, but here are a few more of the 500 grams (!) of chocolate used for the ganache frosting...

admiring...

melting...

whisking...

So, today is all about transforming the chaos of the studio (lots of studio-made gifts) into some kind of work-able order again...and eating leftover cake!! Wish I could share...

*

The ROY G BIV photo challenge was first begun by artists
Jennifer Coyne Qudeen & Julie Booth. Each month is devoted
to a different color of the rainbow, though at the moment we
are deviating from the actual ROY colors. All are welcome to
join in the search. To conclude this year's edition, next
month's color is blogger's choice! Please visit their blogs
for links to other participants. Guidelines are here.