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.

Thirty bulbs

 
There have been three batches of paperwhite bulbs this winter—I rather greedily took whatever I could find during various visits to the weekly plant market, for a total of thirty bulbs. Only this past weekend has there been the perfect combination of blossoms, sun & time to create some "story strips" with various components. I had some fun dissecting the seedpods with my X-Acto knife, both lengthwise & crosswise (seen in the detail of the right-hand "page" of the story strips below), as well as the flowers, the buds that never did open, etc.

  

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I also thought I'd share some shots of the second "blooming" which, unlike the first one I shared on the blog, aligned itself with a period of sunshine. (I found the roots from the already-bloomed bulbs to be equally fascinating...)

 

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Other than the fragrance of a few last blooms, this is what remains...

...lots of long stems starting to flop over under their own weight (I was inspired to take this photo because of the way the stems mimicked the pens angling out of the jar)...

...& a random bulb whose initial sprouts never took off despite considerable coaxing (but which I have found to be quite lovely just sitting in the patinaed copper tray)...

 

 

Observing the paperwhites has certainly been a happy winter diversion during the past two months. On the note of such pleasures, I wanted to mention a book I have been rereading & thoroughly enjoying: The Passionate Observer. My dear friend Andrea gave me this book ten years ago, and it is among my favorites in terms of the high-quality production & content. The text is a collection of writings by nineteenth-century French entomologist Jean Henri Fabre, and is illustrated with watercolors by Marlene McLoughlin (who knows how to visually bring out the beauty of an insect as well as Monsieur Fabre does through his affectionate & attentive observations of the creatures).

 

 

Wishing you equally fulfilling & inspiring pastimes in your spare moments too...

Auguri

Happy "Festa della Donna" to all of the wonderful, creative women out there!

In Italy, sprigs of mimosa are given to women in honor of International

Women's Day. Inspired by the mimosa, this week's AlaW* letter is "M"; the

yellow designs were created with multiple "M's"...and the green (for a bit of

contrast to all of that yellow) is made of many "G's".

Auguri!

* More details on ALaW in this post...

Inspired by an orange teapot...

 

This month's color for the ROY G BIV photo challenge is orange. All week long, sun was predicted for today, so I planned my orange-themed activities/photos around the forecast—& then woke to pouring rain. As I went about my day, I continued to hold out hope that the fairly constant drizzle would eventually give way to the sunshine that was supposedly still a possibility.

I went to the plant market in search of orange freesias, but came home instead with primroses in a delightful new shade of fuchsia-y/orangish-red, an orange ranunculus & yet another clutch of Paperwhite bulbs...probably the last of the season. I baked scones (recipe here), worked on my latest letters for ALaW (described in the last post), then prepared afternoon tea (which included a custardy orange curd-cream I made yesterday). Because, you see, the plan for the orange edition of ROY G BIV all started with my new teapot—a "terracotta" Le Creuset 1.3L (which turned out to be a much sunnier shade of orange that gradually deepens to red toward the base).

I have a number of favorite tea cups & mugs, including one that's a sort of taupe color. The other day I noticed what I thought was a lovely juxtaposition with the new teapot, so I decided I would contrast orange & a touch of red with warm, deep neutrals as my starting point for the "orange"-inspired photos. Unfortunately I wasn't able to realize all that this idea entailed because of the lack of sun (my experience is that every time I take photos without sunshine I will be inclined to retake them, so I generally don't bother).

Fortunately, though, I found another path. Orange played a big role in my most recent ALaW letters (the design for the one at the top of this post, 'S', was inspired by the teapot-&-mug palette), so at least there was something to "build" from. I had also photographed a beautiful pile of clementines with leaves one sunny day earlier in the week, & then serendipitously came across a photo of some orange tulips today. I put these together with a couple of photos I took on my way home from the plant market—it turns out that Ferragamo's shop windows featured backdrops in varying shades of orange that went remarkably well with the tulips & clementines. I am always amazed how little things like this end up working out...

Scattered among the photos I've mentioned are also a couple from this drizzly, gray afternoon, which at least was cozy & cheerful in the studio. When she heard me cursing the bad lighting, my daughter suggested I post them as black & white images. In the right situation this could have been an option, but of course orange was the whole point today. In fact, considering how much orange surrounds us, orange pretty much feels like the point of every day! I can't imagine a life without orange.

 

 

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In the last post I had wondered about what I might use the little ALaW boxes for; I found that several of my lovely organza tea bags fit perfectly in the orange, red & taupe box (below). You can also see the Blood Orange & Strawberry Spread in the glass beaker in the background—& on the scone—though it came out more of a lemon-y color, which is made even more so due to the lighting.

 

The design above was inspired by 'B'.
{More details about this project in the previous post.}

 

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And here's the recipe for the Blood Orange & Strawberry Spread (click to enlarge). It began as a blood orange version of lemon curd—we have six kilos of tarocchi at the moment!—but because I used some whole eggs (instead of all yolks) & no lemon juice (but added strawberries), it's sweeter & more custard-y.

 

 

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The ROY G BIV photo challenge was conceived by artists Jennifer Coyne Qudeen
& Julie Booth in 2012. Guidelines are here if you'd like to play along in future; March's color will be YELLOW (followed by GREEN, BLUE, INDIGO, etc.).

 

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...