Fashion pays off - blogpost finale

Even the sparkling water manufacturers are getting hip. Pellegrino water on a table looks so much more stylish draped in Missoni knits, don't you think? Quite fashionably frizzante, I'd say.

So "Il Professore" and I dressed up again for our transatlantic flight and the lady at the check-in counter conveniently overlooked 3 HUGE suitcases of extra overweight baggage.

Chuck, however, did not overlook the opportunity to draw sleeping passengers and not so sleep-inducing young ladies (remember the formula from the last blog post: "Old + Italian= not necessarily good. The corollary: Young + Italian+ female = consistently GREAT). They are trained to walk in stiletto heels on those absurd cubes of lava that we call cobblestones and they call "ciottoli." Sounds like chocolate gelato to me. Everything reminds me of gelato in some way or another.

I'm sure there is a GA program in America. We'll be attending meetings regularly when we return. If you don't hear from us in a while, it's because we are in serious withdrawal from five weeks of pasta, friendly people, two hour lunches, walks after dinner, afternoon naps, everything at its peak of ripeness and all the time needed to completely concentrate on art and enjoying life. Will do our best to recreate it here. But will need help from friends. So stay in touch and come to our rescue whenever the mood strikes.

Arrivederci, Roma

Did you know that ITALICS were created in Italy?.. also lots of memorable, singable songs. We promised NOT to hum any in public, but after the requisite coin toss into the Trevi Fountain (could barely get near it with all the tourist hordes), getting Papal Blessings and imagining driving a large car again, we took our last leisurely two-day La Dolce Vita stroll through Rome with a few tunes begging to leap from our lips. All the shops, secret spots and great restaurants are CHIUSO for August - why cater to unappreciative tourists and naive college students? While I didn't get a chance to purchase my Cardinal Socks, we saw enough churches to last a lifetime and picked up a few singularly tasteless religious souvenirs. We went out of our way to not get involved any conversations about Mosques and World Trade Centers. By Friday, we were definitely ready to head home. We'd seen ruins, palaces, palaces built on top of ruins, ruins woven into every aspect of architecture, politics and morality.

I've come to the conclusion that just because something is old AND italian, doesn't necessarily make it good. We have 1673 photos to demonstrate this thesis if you are interested...

Mercoledi Madness

It shouldn't be difficult gathering up students and luggage in a walled village. It's wasn't. Everyone was ready, and the bus headed out of Corciano promptly at 10:00 a.m. There was one last chance to purchase Italian housewives dresses or to grab a "brutti e bouni" ( a good idea) and scratch the mosquito bites on the henna knee caps (perhaps not such a good idea).

We are leaving for rome - BY OURSELVES - tomorrow.

See you in San Francisco on Feragosto.

Jose became Italian

Jose Enriquez is a prolific painter. He is also the student who COMPLETELY engaged himself in the culture. He volunteered to help in the evenings at two "sagras' - local festivals where all the foood is cooked and served by the community. They LOVED him in Solomeo - one of Brunello Cucinelli's workers would come and pick him up every night to bring him to the village. The worked 5:00 until well after midnight. In recognition, Brunello invited him to dinner at his home.

Word travels fast in small towns. The organizers of the festival in Corciano asked if he would help at their sagra at the Taverna. He saw us last night and stopped to say hello to all of us. His energy absolutely contagious.

I've never seen anyone take advantage of an opportunity with such enthusiasm. It is a privilege to know him and watch him work in the kitchen, paint the field and create in the studio. I don't think he ever sleeps but certainly keeps his word when it comes to working with joy.

The Last Supper and Last Night in Corciano

After the painters had their final critique in the S' Agostino Monastery and the all day cleaning, inventorying and scrubbing of the Print makers' studio, all the students returned to their accomodations to pack, sleep, clean, cry and generally get ready to leave. Bus to Rome would be leaving at 10:00 the next morning.

At the Slow Food dinner at Taverna Del Duca, Jason Bowen - who has organized the program fro the last three years - received a hearwarming toast from faculty, Italian friends, family and students with Aqua Mineralle and much emotion. The night concluded with walks about town to partake of art, art book exhibitions, concerts, gelato, music, fond farewells and a realization that the experience in Italy would soon be a memory.

Zanzare Tigre

Farewell

Tiger Mosquito!

It has been fun to memorialize our experiences with these enormous dive bombers (the drawing is to scale). I was happy to sell many prints of my Zanzare Tigre to faculty and students. Chuck was my "artist agent" for the evening and with a handful of euros in our pocket we were able to enjoy a wonderful medieval dinner at Taverna Del Duca - a community "sagra" of grilled and roasted meats, risotto, desserts that were cooked and served by the townfolk. Now I know where crab feeds, spaghetti feeds and all those wonderful seasonal community endeavors got their start. This one, however, goes on every night for fifteen days!

Farewell Corciano! The students leave Wednesday and we'll drive circuitously back to Rome (via some new to us hilltowns and perhaps even find the Prada Outlet) on Thursday. Home to San Francisco with paintings, prints, books and memories to last a lifetime. We will leave some supplies here with the hope, prayer and toss of a coin in the Trevi Fountain that we will return.

Final Days - Final Shows

The final days in Corciano have been spent hanging the painters work in the Piazza, completing printing editions, putting finishing touches on our final book projects and inviting the community to Nostra Mostra (our show). Every evening at sunset, nooks and crannies of the town come alive with selected italian artists exhibiting their work, poetry readings, concerts and gatherings. It seems twice as big compared to last year and people come from all over the region. "Santa Rita" and Alberto, the owners of the gelateria, presented each one of us with a handmade little gift - I'm sure that most of us will be going through gelato withdrawalwhen we get home.

Could this be a CROSS walk?

If you can figure out the meaning of this sign, you could win a glow-in-the-dark crucifix.

Many changes to win: we purchased a handful at the Official Clerical Apparel Boutique in Rome - alas, they were out of purple cardinal socks and the selection of sensible nuns shoes was very limited. Lots of pilgrims this year.

Closed Sunday and August

CIVILIZED shopping requires discriminating taste, appreciation for quality and shops where proprietors are patient, friendly specialists or proud artisans. And time. And a strategy.

So, knowing that shops are closed Sunday and mid-day every day, on Saturday afternoon (while Chuck drove a group of students up and across Italy to a little island in the Ligurian Sea called Giglio) I drove with friends to Florence with a plan to see - and perhaps buy - only THE best.

Throughout Italy, around every corner are bits of beauty, sweet notices of births hung on front door knobs and a seamless convergence of celebrations, life and commerce. But, alas, in Florence most of the shops were celebrating the entire month of Agusto - the apex being a HUGE mid-August-eat-all-day-national holiday. Sensible shop owners have pulled down the curtains, taped a little paper note on the steel roll up door and headed to their other passions, out-of-town or out-of-country beating both the heat and tourist crowds. Many complain that it is a ghost town in winter, so also take extended vacations during the dreary months. For shopping in the future, we'll plan to come back in Spring or Fall.

Perhaps then we'll catch the artist who crafts exclusive signs out of enamel and brass - but we can't be certain. His sign says: "Aperto quando sono in vena" - "Open when I'm in the mood".

Farmacia Il Corvo -The residue of an antique pharmacy

Tonight the XLVI Agosto Corcianese begins. We got a sneak preview of one of the art installations - one of the more eccentric residents has turned a small living room into an antique pharmacy. He says "I wanted to create a nightmare" with bottles of arsenic, vials of liquids, anatomical dissections, medical books on various deformities, diseases and disabilities, instruments of experimentation (surgical and otherwise) and random collections of dusty insects, childrens' toys, water pipes and mustache waxes.

One of the students in the painting classes is a medical illustrator - she will probably be fascinated by the brittle, yellowed drawings in this curious context. Carrie Ann Plank and Macy Chadwick - who were brought to their knees by La Madonna della Gamba in Cortona - are living around the corner from Corciano's modern Farmacia. It seems only fitting that they, wearing proper printing apron vestments, offer up an "anatomical salute."

As in an Italian chapel, upon exiting, we paused and glanced at various pamphlets. Francesco, the artist, gave Carrie Ann a token of appreciation - a 18th century illustration of animal magnetism: an amorous Thomas Jefferson with a huge ram's head seducing a ewe-headed who knows who.

Simple Saturday Pleasures

Basically, life in a town with a population of 180 people is pretty simple: The goats in our meadow are the garbage collectors, colorful laundry decorates the entrance to the city gate daily, cars go unused (perhaps for years) and "neighborhood watch" is conducted by a little man who, impeccably dressed, circumnavigates the town like clockwork at least six times a day (In a gentle act of defiance against his daughter who does not want him to smoke, he has secretly stashed single cigarettes behind bricks and in hidden pigeon holes in the walls so that he can enjoy his little pleasure. Everyone in the town knows about his little game. Some of us have been thinking that as a hostess gift we will surreptitiously add cigarettes to his collection before we leave).

And the bells in the tower ring every hour and quarter hour to make humans, doves, crickets and chickens pause ever so briefly.

Ultimi Venerdi

Printmaking and Books Arts Classes officially ended Thursday after the gelato break.

The mosquitos have gotten word that we are leaving, so have come out in full force.

Students have today and the weekend to assemble their complete editions of drypoint, mezzotint, monotypes, relief prints and finish their sketchbooks, spy notebooks (my personal favorite), carousel book, accordion books (how Italian), final book project and final exchange edition that will be put into their handmade portfolio boxes.

The painters have gone to Assisi for one final opportunity to paint "en plein air." They will have done 40 paintings during their stay here in Italy. In addition to experiencing espressos at Autogrill on the Autostrada, everyone has gotten a chance to spend time sketching, painting or exploring Assisi, Perugia, Cortona, Todi, Montepulcino, Orvieto, Florence, Venice and Rome and, if they are ready for final critique on Monday, many will go to the beach on Giglio Island on Saturday.

The whole experience has been like swallowing a bouilion cube - thank God for Aqua Frizzante!

Sideways to Solomeo

After classes, a thunderstorm began to threaten a leisurely pre-dinner piazza gathering so Chuck and I headed off (code word for "willing to get lost with a general idea of an end destination and a great sense of humor") to Solomeo to visit the Brunello Cucinelli factory and the village after their Sagra Festival. It was a ghost-town. I understand that Italians don't like rain, but Solomeo had been teaming with activity just a few days before. However the vision of this 21st Century Renaissance Man is breathtaking. He has created an industry, restored a village and given the people of the region an entirely new recognition of their place in history, honor to their labor and a place for cultural enlightenment. He is a true visionary.

The shopgirls (size 3, long waisted, delightful, sophistacted, wordly) were happy to show us a 340 euro ($420) sleeveless cotton t-shirt. The craftsmanship and quality is beyond description and his philosophy is tangible, ancient and generous. We discovered that their cotton is actually stretchy fabric so they cling to every moveable body part (so I am NOT a potential customer). The cashmere is like nothing I have ever felt - except Joe Biden's jacket. Do you suppose he shops in this little reconstructed medieval village?

Una Cuppa di Aqua Alta

After bidding our resident fresco repair stud muffin, Nicola, a hasty "Buon Giorno e Buon Lavoro!" we both headed off to paint, teach, gather photographs in a hill town (Chuck) or print at the Studio di Estampi e Libri Fatto al Mano (Tina).

Alas...the beautiful book box that I'd taken days to make was drying while weighed down by a few city stones and a water bottle. The bottle had a tiny pin prick in the bottom and leaked ever so slowly throughout the night. So about a cup of water was turning the handmade Venetian paper, beautiful book cloth and two days worth of work into a paper mache glob. The box had to go immediately to BICU (a newly established Book Intensive Care Unit in the window sill) and will be in rehabilitation until we leave on Wednesday. I am reminded of the floods in Florence in the late 1960's and the regular floods in Venice - what disasters!!

Nicola, however, is methodically moving along every day in the arched portico of the monastery carefully securing the plaster and then cleaning it with some sort of bicarbonate/ammonia solution. The transformation is astonishing! The monastery was built in 1690 , so a 320 year accumulation of soot, grime and a few battles has taken a toll. The students will be having their final critique in the monastery courtyard on Sunday - perhaps with the Filarmonica Di Corciano (since 1876) playing on the ramparts of the city wall in the background. I think everyone in the town is a member of the orchestra. They have been practicing every afternoon and evening - I particularly love hearing the teenage drummers at the entry gate and the Madrigal singers lamenting in the courtyard.

Renee Fleming Lemmings

Chuck taught painting all day and, after Macy Chadwich showed us how to complete our personal "portfolio box", I made a dry point etching of our Italian summer mascot: the mosquito.

We finished up the day and hoped into our little Alpha to drive over to Cortona - think "Under the Tuscan Sun" - to the Tuscan Sun Festival to see and hear Renee Fleming in person. We arrived early enough to hear her rehearsing with the Puccini Orchestra.There was no microphone for the rehearsal but we could hear her THREE BLOCKS aways during our quick dinner of piped ricotta mouse with grape must, carmelized figs with pecorino cheese, country watercress and walnut salad and pork with porcini mushrooms and, of course, Cortona Sangiovese.

The concert started at 9:00: imagine walking down into a sloping medieval piazza with towering walls, lanterns and some 500 very stylish people speaking every European language and very little american english. After a remarkable prelude "A Dream of Tuscany" composed by a 15 year old Californian named Arcaini and selections from Bizet's Carmen, we were in for even more of a treat. Instantly, all of us (children included) were mesmerized by "The People's Diva." She sang arias by Strauss, Massenet, Leoncavallo (the other La Boheme) and tried to end the concert with "I Could Have Danced all Night." Four encores later (from Gianni Sacchi to Porky and Bess) , we left completely enchanted.

If she had asked us to follow her off a cliff, we all would have done so quite willingly.

Eat, Print, Love

Lauren has returned to California from her scuba diving in the British Virgin Islands and we hear is headed off to lead more Backroads Bicycle Tours. Lisa and Clarke survived their first camping experience at Pt. Reyes with style and without water. Venice is still afloat, Rome still eternal and Corciano remains the green heart of Umbria.

We just found out that Slow Food (they call it Kilometro Zero) will be part of the Corciano Festival - 15 days of art, poetry, and reenactments of medieval pageantry. And we will be here to experience it!!!!

For me, the experience this year is really Eat, Print, Love. Today we made a book box for our "print exchange" - something like a cookie exchange, where each one of us does a complete edition and then we each get to take home a set of original prints. People in Corciano are already beginning to inquire about purchasing prints, paintings and commissions.

Chuck is being a Prince-Professor and the ever-gracious driver, counselor and best-dressed tourist. He continues to impress the locals with his Italian, sense of style and height. He, however, completely FAILED the Leonardo DaVinci's Vitruvian Man Contest - simply tooooo tall.

Room with Perfume

We've been in Rome since Friday retracing our steps from last year and retracing the steps of THOUSANDS of people over the millenia.

There is our favorite middle eastern catacomb that is filled with beads, lamps and glassware in five underground rooms - not having been dusted since the birth of Christ.

I also decided to get an asymmetrical haircut by a stylist who didn't speak a word of English to go with my Venetian bug-eye glasses - the look will be absolutely complete with my diamond studded Lamborghini baseball cap.

It's great to be back in Corciano, but we thoroughly enjoyed our stay at Hotel Smeralda two short blocks from the Campo di Fiori. And our room was high above the mosquitoes, noises and clatter - but right in the direction of Roscioli - the best bakery in all of Rome. The smells of fresh baked breads, sweets, phenomenal pizzas and cakes somehow wafted up to wake us in the morning. Couldn't have been closer to heaven even if we were one of those little "putti" - you know them: those little busy-body angelic faces with no bodies with wings coming out of their ears. We've certainly seen the clouds that they "live" in.