Done-zo, I have finished up the semester in one big bang. There is so much that I have done these past few months, I feel like this semester went by so fast, but then I recall the things I have done and the places I have been, and I am confronted with contradicting evidence; this semester went by in one graceful and epic crawl. I've been from the arctic circle to the Alps, from glacial mountain lakes to the Mediterranean sea, I have fought and I have loved, I have danced and I have stumbled, I have made friends, enemies, acquaintances, admirers, and mentors.... and I am only half-way through. My life is an illuminated manuscript and my journeys and encounters are the inks to which my story plays out.
Melodrama aside, here's my artwork through the semester:
Here are some snapshots of the places I've been to:
Bologna
Modena
Como Nord Lago
Menaggio
Finale Ligure
Genova
Portovenere
Viareggio
Valpolicella
Carrera
Verona
Venezia
Monterosso
Roma
Stockholm
Siena
FLORENCE
And here are some of the things I consumed:
An average breakfast.
Well that was sort-of my best-of segment there, I've got to go cook dinner with my friends so I'm headed off. I'm off to Paris on Friday and Switzerland on Monday, I'll get back to you guys over the break. Happy holidays. Also best wishes to my friend Peyton, he was hit by a car this past weekend and was in critical condition, the doctors report that he will have a quick and full recovery. Get well soon Peyton, you'll be back to bruising in no-time.
Lemme jump off into the deep end and share a really pressing concern I've had in the past few days right off the bat.
Middle aged ladies: Know when it's appropriate to wear yoga pants.
I'm all for appreciating feminine beauty and all of that, and I have no problem with older women being proud that they still got it. Key words being 'still got it.' Today I walked about town for about 4 hours doing errands and such, and not ever in my life have I been so concerned for the dignity of these women and that of their children. I will leave to you the things I saw to your imagination, but know this, boys and girls, it wasn't flattering. This point also carries on to larger gals who wear tights that are a few sizes too small, cause let me tell you, if you're ready to wear leopard print tights a short jacket and cowboy boots, make sure that the rest of the world is.
My point being goes to all men and women, no matter what their body size is, you can still wear amazing and stylish clothes which emphasize the right parts, as well as your style. However if you're wondering if you can fit into your friend's size XS tights (Or shirts and pants, men) for tonight, after downing two plates of pasta and a 500ml tub o' gelati, maybe you should hold back that urge for you to star in a public anatomy class, and say "Hey, I'm going to wear my Jeans, and be damn proud of it."
Jeans are nice,
Jeans work,
No-one wants to see your privates compressed against 60% Nylon, 40% Polyester blend. Wear Jeans.
That is all I ask.
Now on to other matters...
Awrt:
Did an average amount of work this week...
In my Marble class I finished the figure pretty much, now it's on to the backround.
In my Jewellery class I took a new root and made an entire piece in one day, It was a simple chain bracelet, the picture is of it half-way done (no lock and unpolished) but still nice looking.
As for the sitting guy, I was supposed to get that all done on Thursday, however I was so hung over I literally felt like a trailer park. SO I went out to cast the piece today, spent 2 hours searching the whole of Florence for a whole in the wall nogozio that casts silver, and ended up finding out that the place is closed on weekends and this lazy bastard considers Friday part of that. Who does he think he is, me? I'll cast it Monday...
That's it for art.
Life:
This is the second to last weekend of the first semester here. I have reached my halfway point almost, and it is daunting. I try to imagine that this semester went by in a flash, but pulling out my memories here is like reading the Lord of the Rings, I've done and felt so many things that to even try to summarize it in one blog paragraph is unfair to Italy and me and all included. At the end of the semester I will share some of my short stories that I have written while I've been here.
My time here in Italy summed up.
Tomorrow I will head out on my own to a random city of my choosing in the Toscana province. Perhaps Lucca.
Drinks:
My new drink of the week section provides you with something new and unheard of, though it is not winter-esque I've had a few lately and it's been... well it's been just great.
However the bartender I befriended added a little twist
Keep the vodka, replace the ginger-beer with Schweppes Limone and Ginger-Ale, and also throw in a long slice of cucumber rind. It works, trust me.
I now would like to share with you this awesome discovery I have made:
There is a art movement in a small town in named Grottaglie(pr. Grow-ta-lee-ay) in Southern Italy, it is called the FAME festival.
As you all know, fame in English is to be popularly recognizable, have a high status, to be a celebrity. However, in Italian fame (pr. fa-may) translates to starvation or hunger. The combination of these two very different meanings is poetically contrasting, and has nothing to do with fund-raisers.... (I think). The town of Grottaglie is famous for its ceramic the Fame Festival "[hosts an] artist for [a] variable length of time
(from 1 to 4 weeks) and [offers] them the cooperation of the local
artisans for the production of pottery works and limited edition prints. Furthermore the artists will have at their
disposal several walls to paint around the city, in order to upgrade a
few areas which are aesthetically depressed.At the end of their stay, everything created, including new original artworks, screenprints and ceramic pieces made with the collaboration of local artisans will be showcased in a final group show.it will take place in one of the most ancient ceramics workshop of the area." -Famefestival.it
The whole approach is glorious, here are just a few images of the different styles of work thrusted upon this old city.
This portrait was made by a hammer chipping away at the soot covered wall.
HAWT-dog truck.
Parallel universe karma.
Music:
I got too distracted to pull up a good list of songs for you guys for this post, so I offer you this:
A simple music radio program, which gives you a square template with a plethora of small rectangles inside. On the top and bottom of the square there is energetic and calm, the left and right say dark and positive, the rectangles inside of this square are different stations that coincide with the location between these two opposite emotional scales. You can also tag what era of music you want to listen to and what genres you do or do not want. It's a simple program, but it works, more importantly it works in Italy, 'cause almost everything else doesn't.
That's it for now dear readers, I'm done for the weekend, I'll update you later. I would now like to take a second to address a serious issue, though.
This past Thanksgiving morning a boy from my town passed away, I don't really know why or how. He and his twin brother were my friends in middle school, however our paths estranged soon after middle school ended. I hadn't talked to them at all in the past 6 years minus an occasional nod or passing mention. Aaron, I didn't know you in life, and I probably never would have, but I hope that you rest well and that your brother finds peace in your absence. I know your friends and family are missing you something fierce, and in the end of it all, that's all we can hope for. May your passing bring absolution to those who you left behind.
I'm never eating again.
So much food... too much food
What year is it, who's president?
I can't feel my legs...
As you may know, yesterday was Thanksgiving, and my room mates and neighbors in my apartment complex decided to have a feast. The goal was to have everyone make a dish and have a potluck of a feast, a few of us decided to create a dish that had to do with our heritage, so I decided what would be more appropriate than embracing my Native American roots for Thanksgiving. I use to eat this bread as a kid on the native American reservation that I would visit in eastern Oregon, it's always reminded me of my history and also is a delicious dish.
In the end our thanksgiving meal had an expansive selection from Armenian food to Stuffed Italian Mushrooms to Cinnamon Sangria. We couldn't find any cranberries anywhere, however, we did find cranberry juice, so we had vodka cranberry to celebrate the evening, a good call indeed. A few of my flatmates parents were in town and decided to randomly drop some cash on the situation, we ended up having an accordion player named Maurice (or at least I think it was that, it could have been Murry or Mario) play while we cooked and ate appetizers, but I digress, I'm here to tell you how to make my dish:
NAVAJO FRY BREAD:
This is a pretty simple dish and requires very few ingredients, but ends up being a fantastic side plate for any big meal this can serve up to about 8 people. What you'll need is
-Some vegetable oil for frying (I used corn oil, I'm gonna try peanut oil next time) (In Italian: Olio di Mais) -2 cups of flour (Farina) -1/2 teaspoon salt (Sale) -2 teaspoons powdered milk (latte in pulvere) -2 teaspoons baking powder (lievito) -1 cup water (Acqua Naturale) -Butter -Jam
Mix together all of the dry ingredients in a bowl, pour all of the water into the bowl at once, stir it all together until the dough with a fork or a butter knife until it is completely lump free and one solid piece of dough. Toss that shit into the fridge.
STOP RIGHT THERE PILGRIM. WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO PUT ON THAT BREAD?!
The best things that go with indian fry bread, in my opinion is huckleberry jam and butter, so here's your intermission and the next step to the meal. Unfortunately I couldn't find huckleberries in Italy, so I thought I'd use Lingonberries, which you know are, if you've read my earlier posts, dank. Unfortunately I couldn't find that either. So I chose to make a qucik blackberry sauce for the bread.
What you'll need:
Sugar
Blackberries
Take about 4 hand fulls of blackberries, toss them into a cooking pot and begin cooking the berries, while that's going on take a fork and crush the berries, crush them until the berries turn into a sauce, pour in about a tablespoon of sugar, let the berry sauce reduce a little and let the sugar soak in. You can either stick the berries into a jar and freeze it so it goes cold with the bread, or put the flame on simmer so you have a hot berry sauce to go ontop. (I prefer the latter)
Now back to the bread.
Pour the oil into a large pot and heat it up until it's at a good frying temperature, you can tell if it's ready by taking some dough and tossing it in, if the dough begins frying then your ready. OR you can stick in a wooden spoon, if the oil starts to bubble around the spoon then you're set.
The next step is to get a cutting board and some extra flour for your hands and the board (Be generous with the flour, this shit is real sticky). Flour the board and flour your hands, take a handfull of dough and toss it on the board, flatten it as far as it can go without breaking. it should be just a half centimeter thick give or take a few milimeters, think the thickness of a coffee plate, and a few inches in diameter, it should be thin and long, and it doesn't have to be round. Grab the dough and toss it into the hot oil (Remember to turn the heat down on the oil once it's reached the required temperature or else it will begin to burn, which will make the bread taste burnt). The dough will fall into the oil, sink, then rise quickly, it will quickly expand and the dough will become airy. Once one side is fried flip the floating dough and keep it going. Once it's finished toss it onto a plate with wax paper or a paper towel on it. Continue with the rest of the dough, if you have enough room in your pot toss in as many pieces that can fit, as soon as they're done frying they're ready to eat, the warmer the better.
Slab on some butter and pour on some berry sauce or jam, and feast. Bam, Navajo fry bread.
Now onto other matters of business...
ART
My sculpture got alot of progress done this week, and I can finally see it coming to an end, and even more this week I did some of the small details on it and had fun doing it, it was more than refreshing IT WAS INSPIRING.
I started working on an old crafts project I came up with when I was 18, I call it 'Mapvelopes'. Essentially what my idea was back then was to print out google map pictures of places where I had very fond memories and good stories, and then turn the printed out maps into envelopes. After that I would write my stories down and put them inside and then hold onto them until I was older. After I read the blog 'Post Secret' I thought to myself maybe I'd create a blog and have people send me in their stories and their locations, I'd then post them on the internet. I still would like to do it when I have some time to myself, and I think it would be a great idea, but I just don't have the dedication right now. However, I did make a few mapvelopes out of some old Milanese street maps and wrote down the stories I had from that place in the first person. Here are some photos that show a small glimpse of them. Maybe later I will post the stories with the maps. Please if you read this idea and liked it let me know, if I get enough people to encourage me maybe I'll start it.
The mapvelopes, my knife that I use for everything (including cutting out the maps), and a postcard from Florence.
My amulet of the man in the ring is coming along well, I finished carving all of the wax and all that is left to do this weekend is cast them, then next Wednesday I will solder the pieces together, ad a tube for the chain and then the chain will be put through the tube so that one (I) can wear it.
I will also try and carve out an anchor, and a sun being enveloped by the moon and have those finished by the end of the semester. Here's my small man:
My last project which I started doing, even though it really doesn't have anything to do with art, is me translating a short Italian book, La Verità(The Truth). My Italian is still shitty at best, but I have a dictionary, and I'll have some time during my travels to translate, and hopefully it will really help with my Italian. Alongside that I purchased Zaire by Voltaire, which is in French. Once I finish La Verità I will most likely be traveling through Paris before I head home, so this will help me refresh with my French as well. The goal of this year is to be fluent in Italian and to be re-competent in French. Here are the two books I picked up in an ancient bookstore hidden away in a nearby street.
Also I think I'm going to paint my Ukuklele.
AND LAST BUT NOT LEAST
MUSIC: OK Thanksgiving has now passed which means that we are all in on winter. So it's time for some frost filled melodies. They're mostly acoustic and folksy, because that's how winter should be, deal with it. Le Bleu et L'ether - Stranded Horse: I love a good music video, so of course I love La Blogoteque. They capture the unsurpassed beauty of music when it's natural and (a)live. Please, if you love a good song and a good video visit their blog.
Two Doves - The Dirty Projectors Matches the mood of winter, put this song on a playlist for that special someone and you'll see snowflake shaped fireworks.
Your Protector - Fleet Foxes Fleet Foxes are the new kings of the folk world. I don't need to say much more, they're from my hometown, they're the kings of my favorite music genre, and they are perfect for any situation. I love this band and all of its members, and I hope you do too.
The Sandman, The Brakeman, and Me - Monsters of Folk The Connor Oberst brainchild band Monsters of Folk has some great range and some good music to boot. If you havn't heard of this band I suggest you look em up and check out their song "Dear God"
I aint a Christmas guy myself, I lean more towards Chanukah. However once in a while I enjoy a good Christmas tune, especially if it's Zooey Deschanel... because I'm going to marry her, just you wait... sorry Ben Folds you had your chance; I'm guessing you whined too much.
Well that is about it for this week folks, I've got stuff to do and food to digest, so I'll catch up with you later next week. Stay warm.
