I actually am getting an education.

I realized that I've neglected to post ANY of my artwork since I put up those work-in-progress collages that I did like 2 weeks ago. SO. Here's what I've been doing.

INTERMEDIATE PAINTING:
Our only project so far has been to find a subject -- any subject -- and paint it in three different ways. The first is from observation, the second from memory, and the third any method we like. I chose a little red pot with a handle nestled in some shiny blue fabric. I love to paint drapery.

Here, and unfortunately sideways, you can see my painting of it from memory.

Here is my painting from observation.*

This...is whatever method we like. Now, I know what you must be thinking. "That is not a small ceramic object surrounded by blue draperies!" Well, you are correct. I was getting kind of sick of painting that little pot, and as I was somewhat reminded of a little boat on the water, I asked my professor if I could...depart a bit from the original idea. Of course it does not take a great leap of imagination to go: little ceramic pot --> frigate on a storm-tossed ocean. I only act logically.

ILLUSTRATION:

In this class we're working on something called a visual monograph -- we were supposed to find three different shapes in art in Florence (a circle, a triangle, and a square) and meticulously copy them via watercolor. I enjoyed this project, although about halfway through I looked to my right and to my left, and realized that not only are my classmates good with watercolor, they are amazing with watercolor. Points knocked from my ego.

A circle motif! From the Tempietto monument.

A triangle! From the Campanile (bell tower) of the Duomo.

A square! From the ceiling of the Palazzo Vecchio.

ITALIAN FASHION DESIGN:

Well, we've got so many projects going on at once during this class that I simply cannot name them all. Actually just kidding I can.

First off, we were given three categories that describe a collection: style, theme, and target. We picked them out of a hat. I got bohemian seasonal activist. If you think that's a strange combination, you should have seen some of the others.**

This is one of my more refined designs from my collection. We were supposed to draw them on a fashion illustration model -- ie. a person who has a ratio of 10-to-1 instead of a normal, healthy human being, who has a ratio of 7-to-1 on average. That little kitty next to our bodacious lady is saying "THIS WOMAN IS GARGANTUAN". Those legs are no joke.

Other projects for this class include:

• weaving fabric out of other strips of fabric
• researching designers that we like (and giving presentations on them)***
• researching fashion brands that we like (and giving presentations on them)
• felting necklaces (I could not for the life of me do this, and ended up just being covered up to the elbows in soap and bits of wooly fiber. My hands smell like sheep.)
• crocheting or knitting hats out of sheep. Next to me I have about 5 rows of crocheting done in a rather lovely shade of dusty pink. I've discovered that I really like to have something to do with my hands -- whether it's drawing, crocheting, embroidering, or making little friendship bracelets.

Here are a few other things of note. The Italian government has taken my contact lenses and small canvas backpack hostage, and demand 40 euro in ransom. I believe I must concede to their demands. I found one of my favorite books by Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!, in Italian. I am currently reading it an underlining the words that I don't know. I went out for sushi last night with some friends**** and tried wasabi for the first time. NEVER. AGAIN.

*Mostly from observation. That little ceramic pot disappeared after two days, never to be seen again.

**Punk sportswear for people with disabilities.

***Because I am me, I chose designers that I'd found in connection with a Game of Thrones blog that I like, called Game-of-Style. I presented on Abed Mahfouz and Elie Saab, both of whom are Lebanese and make beautiful dresses. Go on, visit their websites. 

 ****They ordered a boat full of sushi. I had chicken. It was quite fun. I had peanut butter gelato afterwards. There was a lot of hysterical laughter.

Shackalackaboomboom

I'm certain that I didn't mention this in last weeks writings -- because I didn't do any! (nothing truly significant happened last week) -- but yesterday I went to Pisa and Lucca on another whirlwind tour. It was quite enjoyable, but just as wearying as my trip to Vinci last week. Let me tell you, my professor can WALK. Apparently she goes jogging after our 12 hour trips, because the exercise of power walking all day isn't enough. Crazy. Anyway.

I have already been to Pisa and Lucca, back when I was 16 and visiting Italy with the girl choir. I had shorter hair back then, and was about 50 pounds lighter, but Pisa was pretty much the same. I got to see quite a lot more of it this time, though, and it was pretty cool. We were pounced upon by African men selling knock off designer items, which was very annoying and creepy. For some strange reason they shouted "shackalackaboomboom!" at us every time we went by.*

FIRST we went to the baptistery, which, like the bell tower, leans, but not nearly as much. Inside we saw the pulpit carved by Nicola Pisano, and a cool acoustical demonstration -- the baptistery is, whether by accident or design, made so that someone standing in the middle and making sounds sounds like several people. It was rather cool, although I wish that the demonstrator had been a real singer and not just some chick.

The baptistery and the Pisano pulpit.

After the baptistery, we went to the Camposanto (literally holy field), which is apparently the oldest modern graveyard in the world. Pretty cool. It was more of a building than a yard, the graves were set into the marble floor rather than in the ground. All around there were frescoes, but they were so damaged that you really couldn't tell up from down, or angel from demon. The building had been accidentally bombed in WWII -- a miscalculation, as the bombers meant to get the train station nearby. Anyway, restorers did the best they could with the walls, but we still couldn't see much. There were also a lot of cool graves, especially this one of a professor in the nearby university, with an allegorical representation of Lady Knowledge reclining on his tomb. She was very pretty. I liked her face a lot. 

The courtyard of the graveyard!

Standing inside of the cool Gothic architrave. Here you can see some of my fellow students, whose names I don't know.

The sadly ruined frescoes...

This is what the buildings looked like after the bombing.

Knowledge, with a star in her hair, relaxing on some books atop a professor's grave.

AFTER the graveyard and a short visit to the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo (museum of the works of the cathedral), and then finally broke for lunch. I had a strange but pretty enjoyable meal with my friend Sarah, our TA Jessie, a girl named Maggie, and Professor Helen. I had pizza. When I was paying, I accidentally said "I had the salmon pizza" instead of "I had the salami pizza". I felt pretty ridiculous -- one of those things that clings to you and makes you cringe.** Sarah and I went for gelato afterwards, and the nice, cute gelato vendor spoke to me entirely in Italian. I knew he could speak English because he switched once he realized Sarah was struggling -- which means that he actually allowed me to use Italian! It wasn't just from necessity! That was a good feeling.

Inside the Cathedral Works Museum we saw the...sketches for the frescoes in the Camposanto. I can't remember exactly what they're called, or how they were made, but the place was FULL of these huge sketches, the same size as the frescoes themselves. It was pretty cool.

Also inside the museum were costumes from various movies set in Renaissance Italy. This is a Juliet dress from "some Romeo and Juliet movie", as my professor called it. Super helpful, Helen. Apparently they used these frescoes as references for making the dresses and other costumes -- cool, huh?

The belltower, viewed from an angle so that you can't see the lean. HAH I got you! Apparently there was a plan back in the 1990s that someone proposed to counteract the lean and keep the tower from falling down: build an identical tower leaning in the opposite direction, and chain them together, to act as counter weights for each other. How silly! Some people went up in the leaning tower, but I didn't really have any interest in paying 15 euro for it, so I stayed on the ground.

After all this adventuring, we left Pisa for Lucca. Everyone slept on the bus, including me, but the 45 minute ride was really not enough to restore me to fully functioning status. That was okay, though, because Lucca was wonderful. I didn't realize how awesome it would be to see parts of the city that I remembered from my last trip. The central piazza, the merry-go-round that I had my picture taken in front of, and several churches that we may or may not have had concerts in. Unfortunately, my camera died just as we got into the city, so I was able only to grab a few pictures.

The facade of San Frediano, a church that I'm positive we visited on the girl choir trip. I think our hotel was right nearby, and I think I glimpsed a lobby that I remember.

The central piazza, Piazza dell'Anfiteatro. Top Gear actually did a special in Lucca, so it was a pleasure not only to walk over ground that I had already traversed, but that had also been beneath the shoes of James May, Richard Hammond, and Jeremy Clarkson.

We also visited the churches of St. Giovanni and St. Reparata. St. Reparata was AWESOME because there's a huge Roman excavation underneath it, which you can access from the apse and amble about inside. There were about six different buildings whose foundations they could recognize, dating back to a Roman house around the first century AD. That's pretty cool. There was also a Roman bath complex, an early Christian church, a later Christian church, all of which was topped by the current Christian church, in Romanesque style and dating from the 1100s, I believe. We then visited St. Michele, which had medieval graffiti on some of the columns (or so the historians claim) which depicted an elephant and some fish. An elephant? Awesome.

After we had seen all of these churches and ruins and graffiti, we stopped for cake. Vegetable cake. It was actually pretty good. St. Zita***, the saint whose body we actually got to see, in all of its strangely well preserved glory, is said to have come up with this recipe. It's only found in Lucca, and it's made with pine nuts, which are very expensive in Italy. Yummy. 

Here's another thing about Lucca: it felt so much more comfortable to me than Florence, and I'm not super sure why. It may have been because there were lots of children and dogs there. The birth rate in Italy has been sinking over the years, and there are very very few kids in Florence. Lucca was overflowing with 'em! They were all really cute and spoke in squeaky Italian voices. There were nearly as many dogs as there were children, which was really nice to see. They just ran around and played with children, sniffing and people and then galumphing back to their owners.

It would be super awesome to have a little dog with me here in Italy. I'd be like "hey, Small Dog, let's have an adventure!" or even "let's go to the grocery store!" and Small Dog would say "yes I love doing things with you let's go!!!", like any excited dog would say. As I was an Adventure Assistant for much of my childhood, I know the importance of the role.

I think in my later life, I'd love to do a lot of travelling, and perhaps live in a different country for a while...but I don't ever want to do it alone. Friend, sister, boyfriend, parent, I don't care who it'd be, but so many of my fears and worries would be smoothed over if I had an Adventure Assistant.

Maybe I'll just get a Small Dog.

*I hate being a tourist.

**(four years later) "I can't believe I said that!"

***Here's her story. She was a pious girl who worked in the kitchens of this rich guy, and she gave out the extra bread that he didn't eat to the poor. When he confronted her about it, saying "What's in your apron?!" she just said "Oh it's just flowers teehee" and MIRACULOUSLY IT WAS. So now they have a flower holiday in Lucca where they cover her tomb in flowers and put them in the central piazza. St. Zita was also a big baker, so she's a patron saint of recipes. Like green vegetable cake.

Yawning in the Halls of the Mighty

Wow, okay. Yesterday was one of the longest days I have yet experienced -- not just in Italy, but in my life. I don't know if I mentioned that I was going on a class trip to Vinci and the Medici villas in my previous posts, but that's what I did yesterday.
The day began incredibly early, as we had to meet at Piazza Indipendenza at 8:00 am. As that's about a twenty five minute walk for me, I had to get up at like, 3 am (this is only a slight exaggeration). We all clambered onto a bus there and drove for about an hour to the town of Vinci, where our most famous Leonardo was born. There we visited the Museo Leonardiano, or the Leonardian Museum. I find that name rather funny. The majority of the exhibits there were miniature reconstructions of Leonardo's inventions from his drawings. There were drawings and machinery made by other smart men as well, but they were basically all for building cathedrals, making textiles, or hammering gold into gold leaf.

These are some constructs for building cathedrals -- basically they're very complicated wooden gears and pulleys to move big big stones.

Check out this nifty clock! I can't remember if Leonardo designed it or not! But it's pretty nifty!

Vitruvian Man sculpture. You know, tons of people actually drew their own Vitruvian Men, but Leonardo's is the only famous one.

After Vinci, we took the bus out to Anchiano, where Leonardo's birth house is. When we got there, though, it turned out that someone was having their wedding there, strangely enough. We sort of hovered awkwardly on the sidelines, all 46 of us, until my professor bullied someone into letting us see the interior of the house. We were there for about half an hour too long because of the wait, which was rather annoying, and as cool as it was to see the House Where Leonardo Was Actually Born, we could have just looked at the outside and gotten the same experience. Still, there was a lovely view from the mountain atop which the house was perched, as you can see in this fantastic photo.

After we left Leonardo's boyhood home, we went to the Medici villa of Poggio a Caiano, the country home most associated with Lorenzo the Magnificent and his Golden Age of Florence. This was a very beautiful house, and we got to have about 10 minutes of lunch in front of it, which was nice. Very much like the Palazzo Vecchio, this place was positively covered in beautiful art -- paintings and frescoes galore, as well as some nice sculpture. Of course, it was acquired by Vittorio Emanuele in the 19th century, and he added quite a lot of decoration, so nothing was quite in its original state. I also couldn't take any photos of the interior, but let me just say: it was pretty badass.

The view from the terrace in front of the villa, the villa itself, and the stream in the back of the house. Someone wrote a fable about a nymph named Ambra who lived in that stream.

To address the title of this post I have to say that I was doing a lot of yawning while we were inside, but simply because I was very very tired, not because I was bored. My professor is a very talkative woman who probably has not forgotten anything in her entire life, and so we heard possibly the entire history of every single piece of art we came across. It took a while.

Poggio a Caiano also has a pretty horrible story behind it: Duke Francesco I and his wife Bianca Capello were most likely murdered there in October of 1587. Nobody likes the Medicis very much, or at least not enough to allow them to live past their 30's. Examination of Francesco's body recently has shown that he was most likely poisoned with arsenic, and as Bianca died the day after him, she probably was too. Not so pleasant.

We had a nice jaunt around the villa at 1:30, then finished our lunch and peeked at the garden, then went back inside to see the huge collection of still lifes -- or nature morte -- on the third floor of the villa. We left at 3:00 for our next stop, and you can imagine by this time that we were all really tired. 

AFTER Poggio a Caiano, we went to Castello, another of the Medici villas. We had a nice walk around the garden there, because the house isn't open to visitors, at least I assume it isn't otherwise our professor would have used any means possible to get us in to see the Very Interesting Things. There is a cool grotto and waterworks in the garden, but as they are under renovation, and have been for the past ten years, we didn't get to see them. I was okay with this though, because I'd already seen a very fantastic grotto and waterworks at the Peterhof Palace in St. Petersburg two years ago. From what I could see of the grotto here, it was much the same. I know this sounds a little jaded, but I was bone tired and had already seen many wonderful works of art.

Despite my slight grumpiness, the garden at Castello really was beautiful.

AFTER Castello, we walked about 20 minutes to see Petraia, another of the Medici villas. They had many many villas. We waited around for a while until we could get in to see the house. It is at this point that I have to address a flaw in my personality that I don't especially like, but as it came up during this trip I feel I should probably talk about it.

I have made a few friends here already, some nice people who are fun and easy going and get my jokes. As they are friendly people, they are fun and easy going and get the jokes of several other people. These included two girls, who I will describe thusly. They've got big eyes, big mouths, big hair, big voices, and other features that are large. This will sound mean, but these two girls did not strike me as the sharpest tools in the shed. They're dumb. And loud. And really, really disrespectful of the beautiful places we visited. They took pictures where we were strictly told not to, held up the group by buying ridiculous tourist junk, and stole fruit and flowers from the gardens. At one point I just turned to one of them, we shall call her Big Girl B, and said "Stop that. You can't do that." And, because I am a huge nerd and goodie two shoes, I said "Haven't you ever heard of 'take only pictures, leave only footprints'?" She of course looked at me with her big ole eyes like I was a dumbass, but damnit, I hate it when people act like this. She and her compatriot, Big Girl A, are the reason why people hate tourists, and one reason why I feel like four months is a long, long time.

Anyway, Petraia was gorgeous, and because I am a goodie two shoes I didn't take any pictures inside. Let me just say, it was fabulous and I wished that I could live there*. The garden was beautiful too, and there was a wonderful fountain statue made by Giambologna**, who is considered to be the second Michelangelo. The fountain is an allegorical representation of Florence emerging from the Arno (the big river), wringing her hair out. In the days when the fountain worked, water dripped from the end of it, and it was quite lovely.

Florence in all her bronze-y majesty and two shots of the garden. The sunlight was lovely at 5 pm. That was something to see, especially because you could see the dome of the Duomo in the distance from this garden. MAN.

After that, we got to go home. I was so tired after that long day that I went to bed at 10:30, which is quite early for me. It was a pretty nice trip, but...

I'm sitting here, covered in scabs from mosquito bites, thinking about the strange homework I have to do***, wondering why the brand new computer that I love is giving me a blue screen every hour or so****, wishing I could use the washing machine (I am 3rd in line after my two room mates, and we all have to use the little drying rack in the kitchen), hating that I'm 6 hours ahead and approximately 4,158 miles away from all the people I am missing, and hating myself a bit for not being happy.

*Except I don't want to live there because I'd still be all alone.

**He also made the beautiful statue that's in front of the Palazzo Vecchio, The Rape of the Sabine Woman. It's gorgeous.

***My Italian Fashion teacher is making me a. weave fabric and b. design an entire collection. Well, I'm stumped.

****And neither I nor the most computer loving of boyfriends can discern what the problem is.

The Old Palace

I went to the Palazzo Vecchio today, sort of by accident. I had been meaning to go to the Boboli Gardens which are across the river, but I'm quite glad that I didn't, because I got to see something really cool instead. I don't have class on Fridays, so I slept until an obscene hour this morning (hint: I've been awake for a little more than three hours). Most museums don't close until around 6 though, so I figured it was fine to be lazy -- I've had to get up early a lot this week and I wanted to treat myself.*

Anyway, my room mates and I still haven't discovered a good place to dispose of our household trash yet. Apparently there's a piazza nearby with big honkin' trash bins but we hadn't found it. When I went out today, towards the Boboli Gardens, I took out two bags of trash with me. It took me about half and hour to find a place to put them -- you'd be amazed at how hard it is to find things in this city. Wait, no you wouldn't, just take a look at this map.

If you aren't confused just looking at this then you must be a wizard.

Because Florence is a rather hellish place to navigate it took me a while to find anywhere where I could dispose of two relatively small bags of trash. I finally did, though, although I'm not sure I can give my room mates instructions to it other than "it's the piazza with the merry-go-round in it". Anyway, by the time I'd finished that errand, I was not really looking forward to a 15 minute walk to get to the Boboli Gardens, and it was getting cloudy anyway. It was then that I espied the tower of the Palazzo Vecchio not too far away -- that's an idea! I'd been wanting to check it out anyway.

I had been told that I should visit because it's a cool place, but that suggestion was NO WHERE NEAR enthusiastic enough. The Palazzo Vecchio isn't cool. It's really, really cool.

These photos are horrendously out of order but I'll do my best to explain. Oh, and my iPhone camera is horribleterrible, so I apologize for that as well.

Sala dei Cinquecento (room of the five hundred) -- a most beautiful room that seemed as though it were the size of a football field in all dimensions, and positively covered with paintings from floor to ceiling. I'm not kidding. Every possible inch of wall or ceiling was painted, and beautifully. The huge walls were lined with huge paintings depicting huge people. It was breathtaking.

One of the paintings on the walls. I think there were about six of them. It's not a perfectly flat view because I was standing at the base and I'm quite a bit smaller than it is. Still, you can see how amazing this is: a night battle scene with horses and men and lanterns and all sorts of intricate chaos going on.

A rather horrible photo of the ceiling. I'm not at all exaggerating when I say that every room in the entire Palazzo had ceilings like this. ALL OF THEM.

"Youth and Goose" makes another appearance! Who is this guy and why does he hang out with a goose?!

The Medici coat of arms was EVERYWHERE. It's a shield with anywhere between 5-7 balls on it, framed by big keys. No one is quite sure what those balls are supposed to be, but the two most prominent theories are these: they are golden apples to represent the wealth of the family, or they are oranges to signify the family name, Medici, relating to doctors. Doctors often used oranges for curing people, apparently.

Painted on the ceiling. I like the giraffe, don't you? ps. note the Medici sigil to left and right!

This wicked fairy guy is awesome. Just another design of probably thousands that cover the walls of the Medici apartments.

Another part of the fresco in which Evil Fairy Guy is featured.

This is a terrible photo, but this circular design was painted on the ceiling IN A HALLWAY. Not even a grand room! Just a hall way! The borders are foliage, and in each of the squares there's an animal or a face or a figure. Amazing!

One of the rooms was called the Room of the Elements, and on three of the walls a huge fresco depicted the anthropomorphic representations of Water, Fire, and Earth (I think). This lady was part of the water painting, and I thought she was rather magnificent.

Even this little cupboard was like a palace. These people must have had money running out of their ears.

Sala dei Cinquecento again, this time seen from a balcony that ran along the back wall.

There were a couple of these beautiful little chests of drawers. Can you see the birds on the drawers? All of the designs are inlaid mother of pearl and other precious materials. Look closely at the bodies and wings of the birds and you can see the striations. CAN I PLEASE BE A MEDICI.

This room was fascinating. There was a huge globe in the center, and the walls were lined with these huge displays of maps. I can't bring up a list of all the countries that are depicted in the maps, but it was a hell of a lot, let me just say. Incredibly detailed maps of almost every region of the world. How expensive must those have been? How long must they have taken? It's just incredible to stare at those things and imagine.

A closer view of the maps. I believe these are of north Africa mostly, but they didn't seem to be in any particular order.

The exterior of the Palazzo Vecchio. You could go up into the tower if you wanted to spend an extra 4 euro, but I felt like those palatial rooms were enough for me.

Another of the ginormous paintings in the Sala dei Cinquecento. These really are out of order.

The floors were all, of course, amazingly beautiful as well, if a little rougher. Cosimo de Medici, duke of Florence!

 So this palace commands the best view of Florence that I have yet seen. Probably the best one there is, and this isn't even from the tower. I wandered out of some gorgeous room onto a lovely outdoor space framed by columns, between which was this beautiful view.
I didn't mind that I had gone by myself -- it was easier to wander and think that way -- but I did get a sort of Rose Arbuthnot feeling at that moment.

"How beautiful it was. And what was the good of it with no one there, no one who loved being with one, who belonged to one, to whom one could say, "Look." And wouldn't one say, "Look--dearest?" Yes, one would say dearest; and the sweet word, just to say it to somebody who loved one, would make one happy."**

Another one of those gorgeous inlaid cabinets. Just look at that!

So that was my adventure. I hope to have many more like it in future.

oh ps. as I was picking up my bag at the coat room, the guy asked "Where are you from?"

Me: America...?

Him: What state?

Me: Pennsylvania.

Him: (turning to his fellow coat room guy) Pennsylvania!

Other guy: Um...Harrisburg!

Me: ...what

First guy: He knows all the state capitals.

I found that rather amusing.

*If you don't think sleeping in is a treat, then you must be one of those soulless creatures they call "morning people".

**From The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim. Just to clarify, I really didn't feel miserable like Rose Arbuthnot, but I did wish I had someone whose sleeve I could tug on so I could say "look!" to them.