Firenze & Ravioli.

Florence was lovely yesterday. FLAMING hot, but lovely nonetheless.
As expected, the Uffizi is bursting at the seams with masterpieces (and tourists) and when I was shuffling through crowded halls of humans and cameras, all I wanted to do was pull the fire alarm so everyone would clear out and I could sit in the Botticelli room alone, fawning over the botanical accuracy in Primavera and the Fortress panel (which I pretentiously think should be made a bigger deal of than is). Surely this plan would have worked.

After a few hours in the Uffizi some friends and I had a shamelessly American lunch of California rolls and veggie friend rice (because what's more American than eating Japanese food in Florence, Italy? ...judge us), then bobbed and wove through the mayhem that is the San Lorenzo marketplace where I found myself accidentally fostering my bad habit of speaking Spanish to Italians, because apparently in my mind, anything non-English=SPANISH!

[As seen in Uffizi. Who doesn't love Medieval pattern work?]

Fast-forward through a 2 hour bus ride (during which the driver BLARED Cyndi Lauper and Alicia Keys the entire way over the loud speakers) to dinnertime back in Cortona. I had the best ravioli I have ever eaten.

This is a big deal, and a bold claim.

I won't say "if you know anything about me you know I love ravioli" because that's not entirely true, but most people who know me really well know that I'm pretty into ravioli.

The ponytailed waiter came to our table of four and wrote down the first three orders (all gnocchi with ragu), and then when he looked at me I whimpered in unpreparedness and asked him what his favorite was. He pointed to the Spighe di Formaggio al Tartufo - Spikes ravioli with Robiola cheese from Alta Langa, honey, and fresh truffle.
I went with his confident suggestion and several minutes later when he brought me the steaming plate of happiness-stuffed love, I took my first bite and nearly shed a tear.

I even waited several minutes to tell my table-mates just how immaculate my food was in fear that they might take it from me (This behavior is a byproduct of growing up with older siblings who would steal food off my plate against my will. To this day, if you move your fork within a certain radius of my plate without at least a warning, I will involuntarily swat or fork-stab your hand in the name of self-defense). But after an internal monologue reminding myself that "it's okay to tell them. They are kind friends. It's good to share," I offered them each a bite. They ate, and agreed. Best ravioli ever.

Firenze. Cyndi Lauper. Euphoria... It was a good Saturday.

New Paintingsez.

One of the greatest gifts of this program is that my daily schedule includes spending hours painting everyday. The fact that the hundreds-of-years-old painting studio is one of the most beautiful in the world doesn't hurt either. The studio is a deconsecrated chapel in an ex-convent. A spiral staircase once used by cloistered nuns is still visible in the top back corner, and a set of gargantuan medieval doors (with enough locks to keep out all the medieval dragons and such) open up to let in beams of natural light, cool breezes, and the occasional curious Swedish tourist.

It's hard to get fully focused in a brand new place. Even after almost six weeks, it still feels brand new. There is so much stimuli to react to, from which to glean inspiration. It is sensory overload in the best possible way, but when it comes to making art, particularly nonrepresentational work for the most part, how is one expected to sift through the stimuli and make something that makes sense? 

Something non-literal, yet complete. Informed, but personal.

Over the past year most of my work has been graphic and abstract interpretations of concrete forms and ideas, but I'm starting to draw from more intuitive places - conversations and street concerts and experiences that are just as real as shapes and colors and forms and light. How do these things relate, and how might the non-physical experiences look in a visual format? 

 texture / layers / reduction / geometry / decay / saturation

Margaret Morrison, the painting professor guiding me through my independent study, is one of the most passionate women I have met. Learning from her is incredibly joyous and challenging. She has pushed me to grow, to experiment, to change, to keep making. She also is to blame for my newfound love of Polycolor acrylics.

AND, I have fallen in love with Severini. More specifically, his cubist prints like the ones in the MAEC Museum here in town.

 

 [My contribution to Etruscan exhibition in the MAEC Museum]

 [*THE BEST ACRYLIC PAINTS IN ALL THE LAND^^^]

[My station, trout smock and all]

  [For funsiez: A mini series (in the works) of Gino's girls, re-imagined]

Cortona.

As for keeping a somewhat consistent flow of amusing and adventure-inspiring blog posts whilst abroad, I am the worst.

I have had a home in Cortona for just over three weeks now and have yet to post a single update about my life these days. Let me just say - this place is absolutely beautiful. For the first week and a half or so there was a cold front in town, a MORE than welcome change from the sweat-drenched frenzy that was Rome, Italy.
Naples and Rome were both adventures in their own right, and I would never turn down an opportunity to revisit either place. However, Cortona is homey. There aren't street vendors trying to bamboozle you into buying fake Ray-Bans or mysterious goo-blobs that make sound when you throw them (this is a very real and very perplexing phenomenon in Rome). The streets are cobblestone, the pizza slices cost one Euro, the bells at Santa Margherita wake us up early, the cypress and poppies make the already-colorful meadows stuffed with gold and green even more picturesque. Window boxes and potted plants sit on every doorstep. The walls and their visible layers of medieval, renaissance, and modern masonry quite literally show a story of the history this city holds. Gelato happens everyday. Sometimes twice. I often eat my in-between-classes lunch on a stone ledge overlooking what could easily be (and actually has been) the backdrop to movies and books and plays and art whose sole purpose is to grant the viewer a respite from anything less than absolute splendor. The air smells like jasmine more often than not. Mornings consist of jogs along a road cut into the mountainside, and painting in a deconsecrated chapel with vaulted ceilings and good music. We do yoga in the golden hour on a hillside terrace-field of wildflowers, my goodness... It's ridiculous. Laughable, even. Whenever I feel like it I can saunter into town and visit The Annunciation or Severini's prints. Puppies. CUTE, cuddly, waggly-tailed puppies are everywhere. I love it.

Cortona, as far as I can tell, is laced with magic.
I know it's still part of Earth and is inhabited by hundreds of humans and therefore is sure to have its occasional flaws and shortcomings, but for some reason they are harder to come by here. I suppose that's part of the beauty of traveling - the inevitable tendency to immerse oneself in the magic of a place and still slip away before we start to question if the rabbit was hiding in the hat all along, or if it was one big illusion; or if the happiness trifecta of gelato/back-alley symphonics/evening strolls is a regular part of life here, or maybe just a fluke... But for these few short months, I'm welcoming the innumerable moments of winsome delights with WIDE open arms. Because it's Italy, it's summatiiiime, it's beautiful, and it's only for a few more weeks.

More photos and tales WILL soon follow. Or so I claim...

On Stumbling Upon a Michelangelo.

The Santa Maria sopra Minerva Basilica has a relatively plain facade - pale, nondescript, three sets of impossibly thick doors across the front of the building. Though Bernini's Elephant and Obelisk sculpture in front of the Basilica hints at the place's significance, the church does not boast a flashy exterior.

But in the likes of another Lucy I know, I curiously stepped through a pair of unassuming doors into an enchantingly beautiful world filled with treasures to discover.

After a few days in Rome I had gone through this routine several times - stretching my scarf down into a shoulder-covering shawl, folding my aviator sunglasses over my shirt collar, shifting out of the blistering heat into cathedral shadows and entering into a room where frescoes, oils, sculptures, gilded detailing, and quarryfulls of marble columns and pedestals fill the vision field of anyone who visits. So when I approached the Santa Maria sopra Minerva I wasn't surprised by the magnificent vaulted ceilings, rich lapiz hues, ancient rosaries and altars. And to clarify, not surprised ≠ not impressed (I would hate to ever get used to magnificence). 

Every detail of design, per usual, was impeccable. This would have been sufficient reason to be dazzled, but then a friend pointed out a marble sculpture to the left of the main center altar of Christ carrying the Cross (Cristo Della Minerva). It's a piece made by a man named Michelangelo Buonarroti in the early 1500s. Michelangelo was an insanely talented man. Duh. He was a Florentine sculptor by choice, a Roman painter largely against his will (note the subtle portrait in the Sistine Chapel of himself being dragged into hell by Bartholomew.. though that part of the painting doesn't get brought up too much), as well as an architect, writer, and he was probably secretly good at things like singing and making pizza. But I'm no expert. Regardless, he is an icon. A distant, remarkable, inconceivably deep mine of artistic ability. No one can argue that he possessed unparalleled levels of talent.

The sculpture of Cristo Della Minerva is unguarded, and apparently is the only Michelangelo open to the public to approach, to touch. Five hundred years later and the masterful work of a Florentine man is revered as equally immaculate as it was in the Renaissance - possibly more so. 

It's incredible how time holds virtually no adverse power over things that are truly beautiful. 

And maybe I'm just saying this because I've studied him, admired his skill, learned about his childhood, and am an artistic person (though of an entirely different caliber), but my goodness. I spent several minutes at the sculpture, running my fingers across the anatomically perfect joints of the Christ's stone toes and the slight contour on the back of his ankle, clenching marble drapery between my fingers and letting the jagged texture of the chiseled base leave impressions on my hand.

It's a crazy/funny/embarrassingly-giddy realization that even though we are separated by centuries and cultures and skill levels, MICHELANGELO AND I HAVE THE FEELING OF RUNNING OUR FINGERS OVER THAT PIECE OF POLISHED MARBLE IN COMMON.

I like to imagine that if he and I ever found ourselves casually chatting at an Italian dinner party, I might be able to give a knowing "ah yes, I totally know what you mean" nod if he were to bring up this sculpture...

Napoli.

One thing that continues to stand out about this place is the intentionality of beautiful design. There seems to be no generic facade. No plain white ceiling. No surface left unconsidered. It's not even excessive adornment - I've seen little extravagance so far. Just incredible attention to beautiful design. 

The marriage of practicality and artistry is everywhere, and it is incredible. 

The sans-serif lettering on the hotel sign doesn't need to be formed with tiny, polished, monochromatic pebbles in order to be read, but someone did it anyway. 

The support beams don't have to be shrouded in cerulean and ivory Moroccan tile to hold the building up, yet they are. 

There's no rule that windows need to be flanked by bright green shutters and window boxes bursting with begonias and lilies, but sure enough, they are. 

And why not? 

Aesthetics are important. Art is important. It might not cure diseases or win battles (though at times it has played a role in both), but it brings great significance and weight to things that are otherwise considered ordinary. 

People gathered the stones, laid the tile, planted the flowers, and chiseled the marble not out of necessity, but out of an appreciation for beauty, and I like to think, as a service to anyone who might catch a glance of these lovely places. 

The Thing About Milly.

Maybe the word is quirky.

But "quirky" has multiple meanings. At times it means charming, eclectic and full of hidden gems. She wears colorful sweaters, uses glitter in homemade birthday cards, only writes with Micron .005 pens, collects cicada shells and arrowheads, and does little tap dances in public places when pleased*. She's strange and hard to explain, but I guess kind of adorable. Other times, it looks less like Zooey Deschanel and more like an annoying middle schooler who can't take social cues. The sweaters are obnoxious, I find flecks of glitter from that birthday card on my desk months after my birthday has passed, the pen thing gets weird, and I start to wonder if the "collections" are actually indicative of the less-endearing habit of hoarding. And if it weren't for that heart of gold I might grow immune to the charm in her quirks.

Whatever the word is, we know it when we see it. And I first saw a very specific version of it August of 2010 when I moved to Milledgeville. Beautiful antebellum homes flanked by corinthian columns, oak leaf hydrangeas, the quaint downtown, the bluegrass band at the farmer's market. The logging trucks.

But sure enough, years go by, everyone learns a lot, we cut our hair, underestimate a few people, grow our hair out, make new friends, change our minds, read books, find new normals, develop passions, get into yoga, get into shenanigans, and witness kale and quinoa go mainstream right before our very eyes.

And as things shift and change in the way things do, the sometimes-precious-sometimes-exasperating manner of life here becomes, more than anything, comfortable. Not the complacent kind, but the cozy kind. It no longer matters if it looks weird, because everyone knows it's weird and is SO okay with that. We realize the only place to find fro-yo is the back section of a warehouse attached to a Cross-fit gym, that you can rent puppies on the weekend from the street corner by Hibachi Buffet, and quite frankly we're proud of the fact that no one has dared touch the knit leg-warmers some anonymous hero affixed to the stone calves of the bobcat statue on front campus a couple years ago. Milly is a special place.
It's beautiful, and it's home.
And after being gone for a weekend, a week, or a month, the feeling of exceptional repose that comes with veering off I-20, rolling down the windows, and heading south on 441 for the last 45 minutes of the drive past pastures speckled with cows, pecan groves, and the glittery lake is still unparalleled.

I'll miss a lot of things about my college years in this weird, funny, beautiful, little miracle of a city:
-Living in the same home and on the same block as my best friends
-Getting up early and curling up on the porch swing with breakfast and a french press in time to watch the rest of the city wake up around me little by little
-Torry, the most fabulous lady/dining hall employee you will ever meet. She is honestly the bomb and I'll miss holding up the sandwich line as we chat about her weekend plans and she fills me in on all the exclusive behind-the-scenes work drama.
-Eating ice cream most days... Though this habit (lifestyle) is actually pretty sure to carry on, it won't take place with the same people, and for that reason I will miss it.
-Not spending money
-Walking everywhere
-Eating meals outside
-Sneakily clipping camellia and gardenia blooms on campus to bring home and put in vases on the kitchen table
-Debatably-legal situation(s) involving displaced farm animals
-Potlucks and pancake feasts with friends
-Living in a culture where wearing real pants constitutes as "looking nice"... And on that note, overall cutoffs are totally acceptable, as are scrunchies and Birkenstocks. (disclaimer: Contrary to what this bullet point may lead you to believe, I don't always look like a kindergartener in the 90s)
-Coming home to find a group of friends playing Monopoly on the coffee table in my bedroom
-Going to the pool at 1:00 on a Tuesday
-Falafel wraps from Metropolis
-Game nights
-The quiet
-The church bells
-Friends with home decor consisting of gargoyle statues, cardboard cutouts of people I actually know, troll dolls, high school trophies, holographic motivational posters, and lava lamps
-All of the other things

And to be fair, there are a few things I won't miss:
-The bountiful quantity of feral cats
-Cockroach season (a.k.a. anytime not winter)
-Waking up to the loud and profane monologue of the same confused man shuffling down the street past my house most mornings before the crack of dawn
-Limited restaurant options
Really, the cockroaches are the main thing. I just can't handle them. Spiders? Sure. Ants? No problem. Cockroaches? NOPE.

In a matter of days, I will no longer be a resident of this fine city. I don't care to answer the notorious "so, what's next?" question, because like all other non-psychic humans, I don't really know! Or maybe I do and I'm just saying that to spite everyone... I'm fleeing the country next Thursday (studying abroad), taking three last classes to make this whole "graduation" thing stick, and then after that I plan on moving, finding a job, working very hard, and making friends, but I'll keep you posted as specifics begin to take shape. Until then, you can find me enjoying my last couple days in Milledgeville. I'll be the one in overalls sneaking past the GC Grounds Crew with a fistful of Gardenias.

*Based on real-live friends of mine

Preconceived Notions.

The painting of a place I had never been.

"Paint what you know"... Or, paint what you would like to know - what you imagine to be true - the preconceived notions of a place or time.

This painting is part of an abstract series I have hanging in Blackbird Coffee in downtown Milledgeville. It is my idea of a rather specific city that I had never seen........ Until last Friday!

As it would turn out, Charleston is a lovely place. I only made it's acquaintance (I was there not even a full day) but it was enough of a meeting for me to decide I like it there. The cobblestoney streets, gardens upon gardens, NON-floridian-esqe waterfront (it's nothing personal, I'm just not that into Florida as a state), and its ubiquitous charm make the city something special.