Ignara e illusa riguardo al peso delle cose, al tempo
nel folle ultimo giorno
molto è stato lasciato nella stanza del motel
un furgone pieno di bellezza nei cassonetti,
lato poco attraente della città.
meritavo di meglio ma
— poi solo aerei.
in un’altra vita
porterei le mie cose. tra le braccia,
come le madri portano i loro bambini
fuori da un edificio in fiamme.
avrei più tempo,
potrei salvare di più.
ma la mia schiena aveva bisogno di calore per funzionare
la mia spalla era ferita
e le mie mani,
le stesse dita lunghe fatte per l’arte, gonfie e doloranti,
unghie ridotte a moncherini.
ci sono voluti tre mesi per riprendermii.
non sapevo che i traslochi, e cio’ che uno possiede
potessero distruggere un corpo
in questo modo.
non dirmi che lo sai
se non hai svuotato una casa
e uno scantinato
di tredici anni
se non sei tornato
dopo ventotto,
se non hai mai perso
mille libri
in questi giorni mi dico
non poteva andare diversamente
guardo cosa è sopravvissuto e
sono grata.
mi perdono.
trentuno scatole.
il resto, immagino, è stato perso in un naufragio,
containers che volavano in mare, nord atlantico.
ho le mie mani. e tutta la mia arte.
la mia vita non è mai stata americana
ma la mia partenza sì
confusa, frettolosa,
alcune cose da sistemare
una fuggiasca
veloce, prima che la dolce california
— una sirena —
ti affondi di nuovo le unghie addosso
veloce, prima che la bella california
canti ‘ma non potrai mai andare via’
ce l’ho fatta ad uscire
non si scrive abbastanza su quanto sia difficile
lasciare ciò che è facile per ciò che è reale
vivere in un paradiso potrebbe costare
l’anima
in un film guiderei via con gli occhiali da sole
non guarderei mai nello specchietto retrovisore
stivali da cowboy, minigonna, sigaretta
attraverserei il confine con il Messico.
non tornerei mai più.
Miti Aiello, Calalunga di Montauro, March 5th, 2024
Katherine Graham writes in her Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir, Personal History:
“There are certain experiences — childbirth is one; moving is another — that nature and time definitely draw a curtain on, so you forget in between times how painful they are.”
As Graham highlights for us, moving is one of life’s great “pains.”
Huff Post
Poetry is a form of confession.
This poem processes an oversea move after twenty-eight years, a return home and inherent metamorphoses. In tectonic life shifts there are bound to be casualties.
Moving is the start of “a new history” (New York Times), and the end of an era.
Moving is so much more than packing, purging, losses, exhaustion, burnout and overwhelm, then unpacking and settling.
It’s about self-compassion.
It’s about surrendering to, and managing, negative perfectionism.
It’s about the gentle dance of needing space and time to process, while seeking and desiring new networks, new sights.
In its highest expression, releasing is cathartic.
My move involved countless cuts; it was funeral pyre. It required mournings.
The innermost workings – and bargaining- required in one of the major tests of our life are invisible and unknowable to even our close family members. As for us, each layer of learning is peeled and revealed over time.
Time- the greatest balm to our sore bodies and minds, covering all aches in welcome veils of forgetfulness.
In short, moving it’s a whole process.
Moves are enormous external work, before, during, and after – yet the massive labor is internal.
I had no idea — and, while the fruit and the rewards are sweet indeed, it was an ordeal- and the most physically Demanding backbreaking work i had to do in my life.
Part of me wishes I prepared myself better but, I realize it was all a demonstration on the impermanence of things (isn’t all of life ?), necessary to teach me about non-attachment.
As with all major life events, life gives you the test first, then the lesson..
Moving is a death experience, Rosemary Beavis writes in her ‘Poem About Moving’. She talks about a ‘process to establish a new root system’’, and how we are given careful instructions for transplanting seedlings, but not ourselves. Michael Walker in Moving House talks about a traveler who may not say goodbye.
In moves we must leave behind “the stuff that has our souls built in “ (anonymous).
‘Saying goodbye to stuff’ and simplifying can be part of a spiritual test of endurance, it is the spring cleaning of our entire lives.
On the other side of the fire, a new life, and fresh energies.
There is something glorious in escaping the past, and certain futures — movies you have seen before. Here is the alternate ending.
Moves, more or less traumatic, are a right of passage in life’s journey. A lot is lost.. but much more is gained- along with resilience and fortitude.
As for me, in the next life I will hire a move manager. Or become a move manager 🤭 so I never have to go through the terrible thing.
“The move manager is part psychologist, part mediator, part daughter, who swoops in with a positive, informed attitude and takes the stress off the entire situation.”
Huff Post
What is your experience with moving?
Is there a line in my poem that
resonates with you?
Watercolor on Primrosia watercolor paper. May 2022.
My dearest readers, I can’t believe almost two years have passed since I posted here! So much has happened since Fall/Winter 2020 and my last watercolors.
Since then, more months of partial pandemic living, but the beginning 2021 saw me traveling to Mexico for an extended stay while teaching remotely, and seeing Italy and Florence ( twice! to make up for the Annus Horribilis).
This year I divided my time between Calabria and San Diego. Transformational times, all – and not always conducive to art. Yet, I learned something new every single day.
I teach History of Modern Architecture at the beautiful University of San Diego now. It was a quality leap for me, and I’m inspired and grateful everyday. I also furthered my studies this year and became a Mayo Clinic- trained Wellness Coach, completing the program in Summer 2022. This is something I have longed to study and practice for a while, and I would like to specialize in a holistic approach of mind-body-soul wellness. The idea is also to combine wellness and well-being with architecture.
Ink and Watercolor on Primrosia paper. May 2022.From the online “Petals” class from Case for Making June 2022.
Art has been at time languishing, at times proceeding in small spurts. Discipline, as my readers know, was never my forte.
What I did make in the past two years ( this summer I was almost back ) I published on Instagram, where I have been focusing on the growth of my account. I started posting all the work from the SketchBloom archives there, and now I have to catch up on my blog with work from my Instagram feed 🫣. Obviously this doesn’t make sense. The new workflow, as of today, is to post new work here first, then use Instagram for teasers and as a gallery. Hopefully my followers there will appreciate my words as much as my art.
I wish I presently had more watercolors from the classes I’m taking from my Maestro Luis Camara ( who zooms from Madrid) , but I’m slowly easing into that again, while I continue my “anthology of Visual Poetry” and collecting ideas for future series ( and there is some exciting stuff coming!) . Some people can churn out creative output even under enemy fire, because art is a lifeline and the non-negotiable to everyday. It is their daily therapy, prayer and supreme act of self-care. I am not there yet, and require a modicum of sustained homeostasis, care, and rest to show up to my drawing table, to my sketchbook, to my brushes and colors. Like a plant needs sun and water. The dream is to also have meditation and yoga equally dialed in daily. But I read, practice before inspiration/ motivation (or something like that) …and I get it. We want to have the good habits locked in for when the storms of life come.
First draft of a flower watercolor work following a class with Luis Camara. May 2022. There was never the final draft 🤦🏻♀️
But, I have been making enormous strides in the self—care and healing department and currently have lots of projects going on. You will see the branches, fruits and roots that have grown since you last read me.
They thought they would bury us. They did not know we were seeds.
Inspiration for work this May in Calabria. I like to go around in my garden and collect sample. More inspiration, mini-apricots from my very own tree. Between apricots in May, figs in July and lemons all summer I was so spoiled!
All along something was missing, though: my long form pieces, writing poetry and cultivating the garden, Sketchbloom, I so lovingly built twelve years ago. Instagram does not allow for a whole lot beyond the canned templates, and, while it was exciting to learn about reels, making videos with my amazing Canvas lamp, and focus on the ( slow,organic) growth of my page, I read about a famous IG personality making a point to post on her blog three times a week. This was the last push I needed to come back to connect and write in a more personal, slow, and mindful way, to take back ownership of my art and write poetry again.
There is something liberating in being able to be in this space without advertising, manipulative algorithms and big corporations. I hope this blog becomes a breath of fresh air to rediscover the quietness of the heart found in art and poetry, and to breathe. I feel like that when I visit DailyZen.
The past in the end, the narrative, the marketplace, as Alan Watts calls it, are all irrelevant, save for the lessons. The last three years have been full of them, and of setbacks both collective and personal. Ten long months of winter. Some brilliant moments and days of absolute joy and beauty stood out: diamonds amongst the thorns, you can count them on one hand.
What matters is this moment, what matters is that I picked up the blogger pen again. My digital studio was never dead but dormant, in hibernation while I solved myself and my life. What matters is that I have not felt this good and this free and this complete in myself since I was a young girl. I read that the prepubescent years are the most unencumbered, spontaneous time in a woman’s life, before hormones, society and the patriarchy begin their programming.
What matters is that I found my voice, and I’m back. Back to myself and here to stay.
Salt, Air. Watercolor exercise from my class with the watercolor Master Luis Càmara from Madrid. December 2020.
La Isla Que Encanta ( The Enchanting Island – A Tribute to Puerto Rico). Watercolor exercise from my class with the watercolor Master Luis Càmara from Madrid. November 2020
Bougainvillea. Watercolor exercise from my class with the watercolor Master Luis Càmara from Madrid. October 2020.
Somewhen else. Perspective and watercolor. Exercise from my class with Maestro Luis Camara from Madrid. October 2020.
The world needs your gift as much as you need to bestow it. May Sargon warns us that “ the gift turned inward, unable to be given, becomes a heavy burden, even sometimes a kind of poison. It is as though the flow of life were backed up.”
My teacher Crystal Marie said that, for the artist not to create, or not to be able to create, it is a kind of death.
So to celebrate my return to art in a more intentional direction in 2020, I offer you my new series. The theme is Spirit Trees : I have been drawn to the healing power of trees since quarantine started in March, and they have emerged as my salvation and refuge since the. I live a stone’s throw away from San Diego’s jewel, Balboa Park, where I go daily to walk, hike, do yoga, read, meditate and even use as an “office” and classroom sometimes.
Never before have I been so drawn to trees, and while I have always wanted to spend time in the park I was always too ” busy” and caught up in a myriad préoccupations with no time to sit in nature. I am thankful that one of the silver linings of this year has been reconnecting to Mother Earth and her beautiful trees.
Trees: they are our brothers and sisters, giving love and life unconditionally; each with their unique personality and look, just like human beings.
In Balboa Park i have my two favorite meditation trees, where a squirrel always likes to hang out and we have become friends. One of these trees is pictured in the watercolor above. I have also been looking at and taking photos of trees –aiming to combine spirituality, atmosphere and nature.
It is no wonder that the Buddha meditated under a Bodhi tree- where he found enlightenment. Krishna is said to have given the Gita sermon under a Banyan tree.
It is in this spirit that I have started my tree series in October. Enjoy.
Colors of the Fall…Birches. Watercolor. September 19, 2020.
Happy Fall!
Is it “oh my God” or “Finally?”
How has your summer been?
Mine was a summer that wasn’t, between the lockdown on international flights and non-stop fulltime teaching plus fulltime academic duties. More work, adjustments, screentime and zoomed/voiced out feelings than i care to admit.
Still, there is gratitude for being able to work, pride in the results achieved with colleagues this summer, and beautiful moments of connections with my students, as we thankfully learn, adapt and evolve to communicate solely through these new media. It was a summer of intense learning, yet the curve was gentler than in the terrible Spring.
The closeness of the human voice substitutes the immediacy of vision – and this whole business of teaching and working remotely is getting a little less painful/ more bearable.
Have patience. All things are difficult before they become easy.
Saadi of Shiraz, Persian Poet, 1210
We are learning, fast, multiple new ways to transmit knowledge, of being there for someone, new ways to stay present, engaging and caring. We are growing and expanding- and this growth will stay with us even when “things return to normal”…whenever and whatever that is. I’m thankful for the enormous adaptability we possess as human beings.
Voyages – Collage June 2020
With more Covid-related uncertainty, rightful continued political protests and unrest against police brutality and killings in the U.S, waves of closures and reopenings here in San Diego, the California/ West Coast fires, alarming news from Lebanon, immense trepidation for the upcoming U.S elections –and these are just the top things that come to mind – the summer of 2020 continued the general trend of this year’s suckiness (yes I just used that term) and moments of poignant glory.
(just added, since drafting this on the first day of Fall, the passing of the indomitable US Supreme Court Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a tremendous loss and the terrifying prospect of trump nominating a third judge to the highest court of the land, with multigenerational repercussions)
—- b. r. e. a. t. h. e. —
Protesting in the streets of San Diego after the killing of George Floyd at the hands of the state. Black Lives Matter ✊🏿 – and that’s just a start. June 2020
Personally, there was heartbreak and loss, hope, and gentle local travel in my beautiful state of California and the West Coast.
Endings and beginnings.
Graphite and Derwent Inktense pencils on paper. August 2020
As ever, the lovely friends and helpful spirits, old and new, God /Universe put in my path —along with a renewed spiritual practice— saved the day.
San Clemente Pier, California. August 2020.
I hope you were able to find moments of peace and beauty in the storms of your life, the nation.. the world. I hope you my readers found oases of joy in nature, friends, loved ones, cooking, yoga, joyful movement….art and spiritual practices. Time for yourself, to learn from solitude and silence. I hope, more than ever, you are taking better care of yourselves physically, mentally, spiritually and emotionally – for we are asked to function normally- and, some of us, to work even more, while there is a war going on.
The Surface and the Deep. Watercolor. July 2020.
“When under, remember the surface. When on the surface, remember the deep”. When our days are turbulent and troubled, our challenge is to remember the wave is not the sea. Though it pounds us, the pounding will pass. Though it tosses us about, the tossing will pass, if we don’t fight it. Often our fear misleads us to stay in close to shore, when the safest place is in the deep, if we can get there. Any swimmer knows: stay too close to shore and you will be battered by the surf and undertow. We must swim out past the breakers if we are to know the hammock of the deep. Stay on the land or make it to the deep. It is the in-between that kills.”
Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening.
I, ever the optimist, even started a running list of “silver linings” which resulted from this uncertain 2020.
Art will save us. Setup for my watercolor classes. One of the good things to come out of this year is my return to art, in form of art classes, and now I can join anywhere in the world, since everything is online! My first watercolor with Escuela Alda con Limón in Madrid. My teacher was Ana Grasset. An attempt at a monochromatic studies when I still could not tell the difference in my Kuretake Japanese watercolor pans.Second watercolor with Escuela Alda con Limón in Madrid – Ana Grasset’s workshop.
Six months into the new reality, and with a full collection of artful masks to wear each day before I step outside —and to remind me of our strange time —these are things I know for sure:
Image from lolomercadito.com
I know right now the good is even better because we all stopped taking things for granted months ago.
Rumi
I know the Global Pause ( as a colleague called it) is a chance for all of us to reassess the “ busyness” a lot of us identified with — and perhaps were distracted by. I know this is a chance for all of us to go deeper, to interiorize, and find the center of calm and stillness inside of us. This is life changing.
Watercolor of my favorite tree and remnants of my “Drawing with scissors: Matisse” workshop with the London Drawing Group. September 29, 2020. Watercolor class with Juan Saturio {take 1} from Escuela Alda con Limón in Madrid. I want to try this again as my street got too dark/muddy ( a danger with watercolors). I think even my imperfect children need to be shown.
I know that the work of lightworkers is needed more than ever, and these times ask each of us to lighten the load of our fellow human beings, in however capacity we can do this. Be a light and help to a neighbor, an elderly acquaintance, a friend you lost track of. We can take this time and insulate ourselves or we can greet our better selves at the end of this surreal journey.
Watercolor experiments in light. September 29, 2020.
Finally, I know and can vouch for the healing power of movement and Nature. Move that body! Move that body everyday, walk or run among trees or by the ocean. Exercise in the fresh air to revive your mind and minimize the dreaded screen time. Open your windows wide ( if there are no fires around that is ..) Make sure you move everyday at least one hour to combat fatigue, depression and what in Italian we call abbrutimento ( degradation, brutalization) which comes from never leaving your home. Challenge yourself to go to different nature spots, to give your eyes something new to look at, and revive your spirit. Rumi also said the soul needs to travel as much as the feet. Daily loving movement, as the FlyLady calls it, is the foremost way we can help our body feel better- and when we feel better we can be better to those around us. Do anything you can not to go default.
The pier in San Clemente beach, which has been my refuge in this strange summer 2020. August 2020.
This summer I managed to steal moments of beauty and time for mini-art and writing retreats in long weekends spent in the beautiful “Spanish village by the Sea” San Clemente, California.
Drawing Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica, California. June 2020.
In June I ran away to Santa Monica.
The Music Experience Project by Frank Gehry, Seattle. Graphite and watercolor. July 2020.
There was a brief visit, right before the 4th of July weekend, to a subdued Seattle. The architecture was galvanizing.. and it was so healing for me to give my eyes different views to see, after months of lockdown in San Diego. I visited the Autonomous Zone there and stood in front of menacing police in riot gears . Of course I will share my photo-dossiers of these escapes of mine. All in good time.
This summer I took A LOT of art classes online to stay sane and “force” myself to show up to my art practice. I am on a journey to develop an authentic contribution and I am exploring a lot of techniques and art workshops to find my voice amongst the languages of art. There is a lot of experimenting… right now I’m more sure of what is “ not me” than what is… but the experience is filled with light and play. There is discipline, too.
I hope you are able to follow me and my progress on Instagram, at least unti I develop the practice to post and write here before going for the insta-fix. Below samples of the art exercises I completed and the outcome from the Summer art classes I attended.
Delicate. Five minute collage, following the method of Crystal Marie Neubauer. Mixed Media. May 2020. The Road Home. Five minute collage. Mixed Media. May 2020. Ombre watercolor class with Jennifer Evans, of Periwinkle Studio. July 2020.Abstract watercolor class with Jennifer Evans of Periwinkle Studio. July 2020Gaillardia watercolor class with Jennifer Evans of Periwinkle Studio.Fall Bouquet watercolor workshop with Jennifer Evans of Periwinkle Studio.She Rests. Five minute collage. Mixed Media. August 2020.Letters to Love. Five minute collage. Mixed Media. August 2020.Love is Fragile. Five minute collage. Mixed Media. August 2020. Abstract watercolor class with Jennifer Evans of Periwinkle studio. September 2020
What else? I finally started a morning journaling practice centered on my art development, and came up with with my approach to life and art, in the form of the French word “doucement”- softly, sweetly. How to bring a quality of luminosity to everything I am, everything I do?
“Drawing with Scissors: Matisse” course with London Drawing Group. August 2020. This involved cutting figures and shapes freehand on sheets of tissue papers( no drawing beforehand).“Drawing with Scissors: Matisse” class with London Drawing Group. August 2020. “Drawing with Scissors: Matisse” class with London Drawing Group. August 2020.
I watched a film that still echoes, Bright Star, on the Romantic Poet John Keats, started rereading Art & Fear and am finally, systematically, going through my possessions and purging with Marie Kondo’s book.
I know I have said this for years but it took been grounded for a whole summer to finally tackle this.
Postcards from Japan. A collage inspired by the Vintage Collage class by Jennifer Evans of Periwinkle Studio.
Namaste Coronavirus. Collage. March 13, 2020. 4”x 4”
The influence of a beautiful, helpful, hopeful character is contagious, and may revolutionize a whole town. Eleanor H. Porter
( american windows and other psychoses )
i remember the cardboard house on the wrong side of the train tracks- perennially in twilight. screened windows shut, curtains drawn on august mornings.
how many layers does it take for you to feel safe
from the outside air
how many fluorescent bulbs for you to feel free
how many guns
we turned the light on to have breakfast. that house never knew breezes, or sunlight.
this saturday night i want to play music from my window — no balcony here. but there are screens, promptly shut if i throw them open to air out the room — the conditioning to fear starts with the white picket fence. the death of beauty with these factory sliding panes, the jail crank, the midwest faux wood panel fan cum light fixture, driveways. You can take the girl out of suburbia but
the great outdoors- a nation of weekend warriors
just not sunlight and breeze in the house
We keep flies away back home, we don’t shut ourselves in
they don’t like balconies too close
to their neighbors either.
~intermission~ suspend judgement~
I walk the earth, the blades of grass
Tender — my instep sinks, my knees appreciate
We are made of the selfsame matter
You and I
are too
The goddess says,
right before Child’s Pose
“Breathe three-dimensionally”.
This is the global pause.
The “Great Pause” you have been waiting for.
The Slowing Down.
Here. is. your. chance.
The earth holding her breath,
so that you could learn yours.
So that “your soul could catch up
with your body.”
Like the building waiting for the sale,
the lease renewal.
We are all waiting to exhale.
Carla says there are two magic words:
Right.
Now.
I keep my phone in a leather holster :
it is the gun that kills
this moment.
That takes me away from the beauty
of this Now — this silence.
This moment calls for quiet acts.
The solemn going in.
It is a mourning time too, not just a collective coming together ( are we coming together or coming apart? The jury’s still in.)
It is a requiem for The Dream
for those who thought themselves
Untouchable, invincible, immune.
He said he never saw empty shelves in his
forty-six years.
Afterword
If we could only put poetry
ahead of tidying up
ahead of our lists, even now that we are
home bound
ahead of laundry
I hear my neighbors laugh outside for the first time in 11 years.
The Italian nurse says she works with the same people day and night fighting this war, but she can’t even hug them.
“I haven’t seen their smiles in so long I don’t remember them, their faces before these mask”.
Still the body to still the mind
Only meditation is “like meditation”.
This is the year where everything gets canceled.
Except love
Except time, her hindsight gifts.
The padded silence.
Except our being naked as people, as countries.
Those who lose themselves in crowds in parties in bars now, finally, face themselves. Or not.
If you’ve been saving something for a special occasion:
Well, you are the occasion —
says my art teacher.
This is the time to
Write with fountain pens
on expensive paper
imported ink.
She taught me to work in silence
So I could hear myself.
I told her about wells, not puddles.
This is the time to burn the incense, aromatherapy of supreme self-care
Light all the candles in all the churches of Italy
( the priest holds mass in front of the photos of the parishioners – and there is police tape on street benches, they are “closed”- we have crossed into the absurd)
I forgot to tell him
In my dream I was on the rooftop of a train
Flying between the skyscrapers of New York
I was exhilarated
In my dream I was riding a motorcycle, free
I forgot to tell him
New York is the beating heart of this country.
[This post and poem were written in March 2020 and only edited today, May 26.]
Collage. Mixed Media, Golden matte medium and glue. March 15, 2020. 9” x 12”
I return.
With some scraps pasted on watercolor paper, with a draft of a poem. Like a pater familias who periodically abandons the domestic domicile and neglects his duties to answer the siren, wearing only a backpack.
Wanderlust. It’s in my blood.
Five minute Collage. Mixed Media, Golden matte medium and glue. March 13, 2020. 4”x 4”Ten minute response Collage. Mixed Media, Golden matte medium and glue. March 14. 2020. 4”x 4”Ten minute response collage. Mixed Media, Golden matte medium and glue. March 14, 2020. 4”x 4”Three element collage . Mixed Media, Golden matte medium and glue. March 14, 2020. 4”x 4”Five minute collage. Mixed Media, Golden matte medium and glue. March 13, 2020. 4”x 4”Five minute collage. Mixed Media, Golden matte medium and glue. March 13, 2020. 4”x 4”
So, before they shut down California and closed all her beaches ( I can just see the headline of Italian newspapers: California Surrenders), I attended a mixed media workshop taught by an empowering teacher, Crystal Marie.
These are the outcomes ( and voyages ) from Collage and the Intuitive Voice — A Collage and Writing Collaboration , hosted at the idyllic Way Art Yonder Studio, owned by my friend Jana Freeman. My heart rejoices when we take the right turn to the house on the hill, where my spirit can sing, where it is okay to play.
My station at Way Art Yonder Studio ❤️ Taking shots for the ‘gram. By the way, you can see more process photos, work from my fantastic colleagues, read the quotes I collected – aaand follow me and my wanderings live – on Instagram : @sketchbloomLaying down the pieces from the “piles of possibilities”. This collage prompt came from our morning pages. Finished piece! It is very joyful to me. How to grow an artist. How to grow SketchBloom, my digital studio. A process that requires support, mindfulness and grafting, as in growing a new type of fruit. “ How To Grow An Artist.”. Mixed Media, Golden matte medium and glue. March 15, 2015. 9” x 12”
I was able to join Crystal last year for an encaustics and collage workshop last February , with exciting results and exposure to new techniques. I posted my work from that workshop on Instagram and will feature it here next.
This time the experience was deeper. I came away with sooo many lessons, quotable quotes and insights: the journaling/writing aspect of the workshop was incredibly soothing and therapeutic in personal fraught times ( Italy was preeminent in my mind). I love returning to writing, my first love. Most importantly, I was able to reflect and share and CELEBRATE what it means to be an artist.
Redacted morning pages. Quedate con lo bonito = Only keep the good. Quotes on being an Artist. Collage. Mixed Media, Golden matte medium and glue. March 13, 2020. 9” x 12”A small tribute to the most beautiful country of the world, now mortally wounded.
Now, I could berate myself for only producing artifacts at this intense levels once a year when I attend these workshops, but let’s not do that. Other duties and career and life commitments vie for time..I just enjoy the return each time. Like a soldier returning from war, knocking on a door— as as they say in Mad Men.
Dichotomy: my architecture world vs. my art world Response Collage (10 minutes) Mixed Media, Golden matte medium and glue. March 13, 2020. 4”x 4”
Each day is a new beginning, like the title of the little book I found in the alley of my building, full of smoke and the story of a recovering alcoholic. Each breath. Each spring.
These are the days of stasis — the dormant days or deepening ones.
Collection of 5- minute Collage. Mixed Media, Golden matte medium and glue. March 13, 2020. 4”x 4”A work in progress, beautifully unfinished.My wonderful teacher Crystal Marie! One of Crystal Marie’s motto : Just Glue It.What I see of my work/myself ….How other people see me/ my work or … what I let people see… Here my work and my desk — all cleaned up— on Final Presentation Day ( pardon my archi-speak). Ciao Way Art Yonder Studio! See you soon!
Before I leave you to my draft poem ( upcoming post ) and artifacts from my latest retreat — and a retreat it was, from life and obligations…Art is always a refuge…before I push publish on these collages of words and paper and sticky stuff, I just want to say that this is the time to finally read ”La Noche que Volvimos a Ser Gente”or “The Night We Became People Again” by José Luis González, inspired by the big New York blackout of 2014.
Postcard from the Chagall Exhibit at the Palazzo Reale in Milano, December 2016 | Fountain ink drawing of Krishna’s silhouette on Muji thin sketchbook paper.
Art is a refuge from the busy hive of activity…and I’m lifted.
Sometimes I even float.
A fleeting instant, the diver coming up for air.
Digital painting on Sketches app. January 19, 2020.
Istanbul. Hagia Sophia or Church of the Holy Wisdom. Digital sketch. Built by Isidorus the Elder and Anthemius of Thrallos under Emperor Justinian in 537 AD.
Maybe Istanbul was the city in the sky where the people who were our reflections lived.
Burhan Sönmez
A quick trip to Ahmet Square in Istanbul on my way back from Italy, to visit Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque. You can see my photos and a video on @sketchbloom
These are my first architectural sketches using my new Ipad and the SKETCHES app.
Learning the tools and the limits of the app was really interesting, as was experimenting with all the different tools and lineweights. I completed these few days ago on the plane ride from Istanbul to Los Angeles- looking at photos i took. The first one took me 15 minutes, the second one three hours. No ruler was used, tracing or overlaying – just a stylus with different tips and a brush.
Last time I was here, back in April, the subject was New York. I think it would be poetic to end begin the year ( and begin this post ) with a postcard from my latest visit.
Here are the sketches and sketchnotes from lectures I attended that I compiled in my sketchbook in 2019. I have not been good at sharing them here (or being disciplined about doing art regularly) – but here they are, proof that I haven’t given up on my art or drawing entirely; I hope you, Single Reader, never give up on me.
This past week I read that, in Norway, the period between Christmas and the New Year is called RomJul. Jul means Christmas and rom, or room, is the space one makes in his or her life for the New Year. It is a time to pause and take time to reflect and clear out our lives before the arrival of this new page, or chapter, or book we are about to write.
As Mark Nepo says in The Book of Awakening:
Creation is ongoing. The world begins anew each day. We think it is night that covers the world, but everything living is recreated in that mysterious moment of rest that blankets us all.
And each time you open our eyes, you can begin again.
My wish for 2020, for you and for myself, is for this year to bring calm amidst the pace of contemporary life – analog time to reconnect with ourselves and intentionality and mindfulness in productivity.
Nobody can counsel and help you, nobody. There is only one single way. Go into yourself. Search for the reason that bids you write; find out whether it is spreading out its roots in the deepest places of your heart, acknowledge to yourself whether you would have to die if it were denied you to write.
This above all — ask yourself in the stillest hour of your night: must I write? Delve into yourself for a deep answer. And if this should be affirmative, if you may meet this earnest question with a strong and simple “I must,” then build your life according to this necessity; your life even into its most indifferent and slightest hour must be a sign of this urge and a testimony to it.
[…]
A work of art is good if it has sprung from necessity. In this nature of its origin lies the judgment of it: there is no other.
In this spirit I offer you, Reader, this poem and these images, stemming from one brief November visit to the city than never sleeps – and several months of correspondence.
In a New York Minute [Glissando]
“If you can receive it at the wavelength is is playing at, you may love it.”
From a review of the series “Forever”
We existed
in the ellipses between
words appearing on screen
and giving up
Suspended above the city
you loved how I used the word luscious
We kissed with our souls
on the tip of our tongue
this is from Spoon River Anthology
You are morse code
and I need continuity
–when I asked if we were ships in the night
and you said yes did you notice me wiping the water
on my cheeks? I barely noticed too.
But then you said : “Body and heart.”
Body and heart.
You spoke of fire between our souls,
as if you knew about souls.
You only know about fire.
My tears don’t fall
I do
every single time
— how many goodbyes did it take?
So elegant in your detachment, like it was an art form.
Precise in your choice of words,
I fell in love with your philosopher brain.
I still fall in love with it every time — liminal.
A New York minute.
You were the space separating
Love and reason
I was addicted to a city
giddy at the thought of walking her streets beside you
how do you fly and walk
at the same time?
Even if you don’t see her torn feet
the effortless dance of the ballerina
is a flower bloomed out of pain.
Take each sentence, rearrange as you wish.
This is not to scale.
The timeline is not linear.
To hear you whisper, half-asleep: “When?”
Zero things better.
I heard that New York is the heartbeat of the world.
In that heartbeat a part of me is marked by your passage.
I think it’s valid to still say that, as long as we are still in January.
Last night I attended the last Friday night Jazz at the Handlery Hotel. I had only some copy paper, a bic pen and an Arabic calligraphy in my bag ..but was so thirsty for drawing that I started something I was hoping would just be an exercise…but I’m actually happy with it.
I am sure You, Single Reader, have been wondering if the Earth swallowed me whole…
Since my last post I visited Oaxaca, Mexico, then was in New York (each for a long weekend) and finally, in Milano for the Christmas holidays.
Instagram is the reason I have neglected my blog..it is much easier and more immediate to share work there..where in here the point is to craft each post. But I am here today because (thankfully) the Instagram Gods thought my drawing too long to post it there in its entirety..and so I am following my own advice (which I never do) and posting here first..and then a “teaser” on IG.
I have been working on a long New York poem, and still have to share my photos and a drawing from there…same with Oaxaca. I also have couple of artist features to share with you (and which you will love). But, this shall suffice for now…the demands of life and career are calling me- the forces which prey me away from my craft and from this digital room which is my calm and my natural habitat.
The good news is that I am teaching a Drawing/Representation course for design (not Architecture) students, so I have been practicing what I preach. And, there is more freedom and anarchy to be outside of the realm of my chosen profession.
I finished my visual journal a week after Roxanne Evans Stout’s beautiful workshop, but left right away to Oaxaca, Mexico ( photos forthcoming 😊). Here are some photos taken outside of Jana Freeman’s fabulous Way Art Yonder workshops (above) , Day 2 of the workshop ( details from Roxanne’s teaching table and my work area with “preparatory piles”) and, finally, my completed journal.
At home, I had to co-opt my kitchen ( I need my studio back 🤪)… but thought this would make a nice tableau, so I’m sharing it here. This is how things looked deep in the night, two Sundays ago..
And finally…c’est fini! My first art journal – and first video posted here on SketchBloom.
All of the lovely journals from the workshop:
A closing plen air celebration at the end of the weekend. Can’t wait for my next (February) art workshop…
I attended the first day of Roxanne Evans Stouts’ workshop at Way Art Yonder in Jamul, California. This was my second workshop in this wonderful art studio – and another opportunity to spend a day fully with my art, exploring mixed media and collaging.
Today’s workshop involved learning foundations and advanced tools for making an art/visual journal. I learned countless new ways of using acrylic matte medium along with pastel, plaster of Paris, Golden high flow acrylic, distress stain and different papers/ glazing uses to achieve translucent effects.
Then there were demonstrations on how to use plaster of Paris with stencils and ink pads.
We made the background pages of what is going to be a visual journal based on the concept of windows and daydreams.
This was the official workshop prompt.
“Daydreams and Window Light”
A book of expressions in mixed media and collage about the changing seasons with Roxanne Evans Stout
Imagine creating a handcrafted artist book in which every page is a window into the story of you… either symbolically, or perhaps even a literal window that we will make out of metal, plastic or cardboard. Our covers will be made of plexiglass, that we will sand, texture and glaze. Our inside pages will include vintage photo frames, mica and distressed metal sheets, all of which I will provide. Join Roxanne and she will guide you in creating beautiful books with pages that are rich in color and texture, and pages that sing of the light and magic that is uniquely you!
Some of the keywords of the days were texture ( of course), story, China marker, gesso,wax paper, deli paper, parchment, distressed, embossed, awl, hole punching, tacky glue, gloss and matte medium, layer, pan pastels, high flow , tracery, filigree, aluminum, gold and copper foil paper, plexiglass, sandpaper, etching, unfinished/open, assemblage, vignettes, patterns, glazing, negative space, russett and burnish.
It was really interesting to know that my professor was a botanical artist before coming into the world of mixed media/collage- she used to draw photorealistic flora and fauna for publication, but found mixed media and it re-lit the fire of art in her soul, a fire that was lost in the technical precision required of her former profession.
These are some of the background pages I produced today- tomorrow we will work with collaging and creating our windows.
And finally, some observations around the studio: photographing a a stack of stencils, and a single well-burnished ones. Washing the stencil, stenciling water on concrete.
The last three pieces are from my talented and formidable art-friend Carla Bange 🙂
Butterfly Closures (a type of band-aid for deep cuts and stitches sold in the U.S). Mixed media on paper, ink and graphite. Better Buzz Coffee Roasters, Mission Beach, San Diego. September 22, 2018
The belief that women talk too much is rooted in the understanding that women should be silent. “The talkativeness of women has been gauged in comparison not with men but with silence,” is how well-known feminist Dale Spender explained her reasoning in her book Man Made Language written decades ago. “Women have not been judged on the grounds of whether they talk more than men, but of whether they talk more than silent women.”
Emily Peck
This is another novella.
“Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.”
William Wordsworth
…
Angel comes from the Greek angelos, the messenger, the sent one.
Who more than the poets can speak about love?
-she said I contain worlds-
after six days his kisses stopped
he who told me all my no’s became yes’s
he who brought the wind
he who said I talked too much
-but could not spell-
and taught me to stay
by being the one who left.
“Never gift a book to someone who doesn’t understand vowels.”
I’m just removing the pebbles I’ve had in my shoes for two months, yes tonight- yes he was sweet, boiling ice. Yes he was heartless.
It’s the light in your eyes I cling on to save me
-or distract me-
my fallacy
the shine of yet another city – and i am the magpie with butterfly wings.
Of eyes i like when they tighten to focus like the lens of a camera
a mind is sometimes a beautiful forest, and layered people
a cosmos
he was my mirror, but you are on the other side of this screen
I have been running for seven years
but i was never more beautiful than the night we first went out – that glow was hope.
Seven years is what it takes for all cells in the body to renew
therefore in November I am, molecularly, a whole different person than the one she knew.
In July the old woman asked me why I was not married.
“God has to send me an an angel.” I replied. “An angel.”
We made fire in August. Consume.
We were southern blood, I was like sea.
To suffer for love is the greatest privilege.
In the morning the sun would wake me up by warming my feet; at one the vendors made their way back from the beach. We passed black bodies picking tomatoes in the fields of Sardinia.
They started pulling the umbrellas from the sand in the clubs in September. The light in the house was always crepuscular, like Tara in Gone With The Wind.
I guess it boils down to a lack of belief, a lack of patience
I am impetuous, and impulsive – female like guerra
if two pieces in a puzzle are too much alike, they don’t lock
I never thought your tattoos could cut me
I followed their path : they taught me the root of the word “seduction”
your eyes stopped seeing me, and it felt like violence.
Poetry is making pain elegant, and writing with broken hands.
Cruelty is not giving the beautiful words you say you have- to someone who lives by them. Mercy is never knowing when the last time comes.
“What we initially fall in love with is what hurts us the most in the end; he dressed really well, he was early, and his hair spelled trouble.”
I ran away to the ease of palmtrees and terracotta tiles (a cop-out)
because you cannot heal where you got sick – and I know you take yourself wherever you go, but 7,000 miles in between help.
They say it’s enough if only one of the two loves
and we know that i’m in love with the feeling,
the person is just an excuse.
it is not you who i missed- but what came with you;
I belong to freedom, and my art.
I steal words from my travels.
I can tell you in real life (IRL) men do not come in the middle of the night to tell you they don’t want to lose you- no matter how pretty or intelligent you are. nothing is fought for any more, and stories end for a nothing, for fear, on cloudy mondays.
Poets are one soul in the end, share one collective heart
the only ones who are not ashamed of being publicly immolated
but on the contrary, they show their wounds to the sun
The Feast of the Redeemer (or Festa del Redentore) is one of the most important Holy days for Venetians. For one day the whole Basin of San Marco is transformed into an immense piazza/party with hundreds of boats and revelers enjoying dinner on the water and waiting for sunset. The religious day is held the third Sunday in July, and chronicled here is the day before.. the secular fête. I had seen a painting of Tintoretto depicting the yearly ceremony of the City of Venice’s marriage to the Sea.. and when my cousin, who is from nearby Mestre, told me he was invited to the Feast I suspected it would be a once-in-a lifetime occasion, and I begged him to let me tag along.
At night, beautiful fireworks light up the already dreamlike city of Venice. It is a dream within a dream ( lucid Venice) .. just like the hallucinatory Carnevale.
This tradition was started in medieval Venezia, in 1576, when a Feast was planned to celebrate the end of a particularly disastrous Plague (Venice suffered many) which killed more than 50,000. The painter Titian was amongst the perished. None other than Andrea Palladio was commissioned to build the Church of the Redentore, which was completed in 1576.
The Doge ( the Venetian ruler of the Imperial Serenissima) would walk on a bridge made of barges from Le Zattere area of Venice to the Redeemer Church each year.
There is no way that a camera, let alone a phone ( with, what I suspect a wet lens) on a moving boat could capture what the Redentore is, being surrounded by thousands underneath the summer night skies, all in love and in awe of one city. The energy of seeing a people dancing and celebrating on a sea of boats was awe-inducing ….but here I offer some impressions, pale comparisons to the live Lady at Night.
Just as wonderful as the Feast and the fireworks, was the ride through Canal Grande to admire nocturnal Venice. The Canal is only open to boats without resident permits once a year: on the day of the Festa del Redentore.
On Sunday I was lucky enough to spend the afternoon at my friend Jana Freeman’s Way Art Yonder Studio for one of her monthly open studio days. I met Jana at my school, first we were friendly colleagues then mischievous friends, and now she is living the Dream running her own art studio and hosting incredible workshops with Mixed Media artists the world over…
Here is a sample of the work I was “curiousing” on on Sunday ( yes, I am making up this word). Most of the vibrant work I photographed is by Suanne Summers, then there is the dreamy stitch/ fabric art of Shelley Watkins and the layered collages of Krista Jarrard. Jana, the studio owner, can be seen completing one of her exquisite pieces. This is my Art tribe, comprising of Carla Bange who could not make it this time.
Paintings by Suanne Summers
Collage in progress by Krista Jarrard
Jana in the process of assembling one of her captivating mixed media works on small square canvases, painted black.
This cool collage is by a sweet lady from Minnesota (!) . I will find out her name 🤔[[[[[[
Fabric/stitch art by Shelley Watkins. She dyes her own fabric 😮
Above, Jana and her regal ring touching one of Shelley’s distressed samples of fabric. She uses a process involving peroxide to “ eat through” the fabric. We named this “ Dickensian Orphanage, or the street urchins.”
Here is more of Suanne’s work:
What can I say, these ladies have been at this a long time and I need to up my game and get back to my collages instead of collecting drawerfuls of materials (but if I say so my self I have lots of exciting materia prima from my travels).
But first I want to finish my “flower portrait”- here is the work-in-progress ( which will include poetry and mixed media). The
The original was GORGEOUS, made for me by a very special person who ” painted” my portrait with handpicked flowers. {swoon}
Work in progress, acrylic on canvas.
Jana and I at Way Art Yonder, my happy place!
Thank you Jana!
I will soon be back under the portico with my bags 😉
This is one place where I don’t feel bad lugging all my stuff with me- as all the other tribe members do the same. I think I found my people.
Digital drawing done on IPhone 7 Plus with Sketches app by Tayasui. June 27, 2018.
Napkin Sketch for fundraiser auction; poem La Ciudad by Octavio Paz. Fountain ink on Napkin paper. April 2018.
Yann Tiersen in concert at the Theatre at the Ace Hotel in Los Angeles, June 20, 2018.
Quick sketch using colored pencil and pastels. June 30, 2018.
My corner in the plaza of the Getty Villa in Los Angeles. June 2018.
One more post before the month is done.
This Spring was filled with intensity in and outside of my University.. the final stretch of the school year. Accelerated timelines, accelerated heartbeat. Stealing time between deadlines to go up to LA once more for a life-changing Yann Tiersen concert ( of Amelie fame), participate to sketching and art+Jazz events and jot down few lines to be shared later (after all, poetry is emotion recollected in tranquillity).
Stealing time from time… to be and to feel alive. Sketching (almost) everyday is doing wonders for my spirit- and glow!
Single reader, I hope you have time to disconnect and renew. Happy Summer.
Here a quick watercolor from two weeks ago – a day trip with my Graduate students in the Architectural and Urban History Class.
We visited the Getty Villa- a replica of a Roman House in Santa Monica, California ( replica done with some poetic and unpoetic licenses…), contained in the Silvetti Machado contemporary expansion, a poem in stone that sets the Villa in an imagined archeological dig, with strata of travertine marble and concrete to pay homage to Roma.
Architecture is poetry in stone
The days since my last post have been filled with school activities, gratitude, beauty, poetry, reading, and finally.. some sun after the May Gray and June Gloom burned off. Oh, and I’m finally getting my place to where I want to be ( thankyou Marie Kondo).
Things are ( finally ) falling into place. It’s funny but I used to produce more art– and share more poetry — when my life was more chaotic, and centeredness has meant more introspection and less output. Now I’m much more deliberate and mindful of what/when to share…
I still have to steal these moments for art ( the demands of the modern living condition!) but I realize that there will always be more work to do, and let us all stop glorifying being busy.
Art helps us being in the Now- and that is all we have…I want to do less and be more. Thank you for reading, single reader.
Do you meditate? I have been for few months…and have added short gratitude prayers, reading and alignment to start the morning right. They say if you conquer the morning you conquer the day- and if you conquer the day you conquer your life.
Some days are better than others- and this weekend I will be going to my first spiritual retreat.
I just got back from another lovely stay at my personal retreat away from the world and telephone connection: Bahía De Los Ángeles in Baja California, Mexico.
I brought *all* my watercolor stuff with me (acquired some pretty awesome new pearly Japanese watercolor pods) but, typically, not watercolor paper- so the first experiment on drawing paper turned out a bit flat.
One of the guests i met at Mauro’s Posada, my Baja California home, had watercolor paper with him (!) so the water/sand beach scene shows a bit more promise. Still learning/ playing with watercolor techniques…
I also (re)discovered the zentangle technique and it has been fun to conduct a little tangle class with my friends –they call it “yoga for the mind” or meditation in action. I find it very freeing and love, as with collage, not knowing the outcome.
Below are some of the best sunrises and sunsets I have ever witnessed.
I put all my best photography from this trip on my Instagram page, @sketchbloom, so if you want to see more saunter over there.
The time in Baja California- and México- never fails to transcend into the magical, to bring unexpected gifts. The ones always awaiting are authenticity, peace and heart-naked beauty.
As for the others…who else/what else are you going to find and meet in a place named Bay of the Angels?
This place is an anachronism, the last Macondo…off-the-grid living, with no telephone towers, post office, atm’s or even too many people. It is a place for dreamers, wanderers and seekers. It is hard to get to – and always heals.
It is a place for reading, for the mind to be quiet. I took down some poetry lines, to be shared soon.
Some things are only meant to be burned on the altar of poetry, liquid like skin
Two planets colliding:
orbits not meant to ever meet again.
Some cities, like kisses that have no right to take and give so much, go to your head.
Where to start? Perhaps from the end
– going backward.
We danced on the H of the Hollywood sign
‘Tis the time of rose gold here
The color of California sunset
The spring of Lana Del Rey and Lorde
Laidback, the occasional listlessness
Head tilted backward on a convertible
We don’t know how lucky we are
His reckless back was softer than your silk robe. I’m not forty, I’m in my second twenties.
In an Uber, real tired, I realize the city I live in possesses the quality and repetition of a videogame,
“what should a town look like”- the approximation fails at convincing
I put the matchbook in your pocket so that one day you may find it in your hand and smile- go back to that night, that rooftop. that’s the scene from a movie.
If your man is gentle, and a good lover, you have two women to thank.
“While I had at this point been drawing and painting for many years, and had lots of exhibitions, the revelation of seeing/drawing turned upside down all my views on art and of what it means to be an artist. Being an artist does not mean covering clean pieces of paper or canvas with ink or pigment. It does not mean solo exhibitions or prizes. It definitely does not mean labeling ourselves “an artist.” When I hear someone proclaim: “I am an artist,” someone in me whispers, “That so ?” But if they say : “I paint,” or ” I draw,” or “I play the piano,” I like to talk about painting, drawing, or playing the piano with them. Saying, “I paint” or ” I am a painter or pianist” may be a factual statement, but artist is an honorific. Proclaiming oneself to be an artist is all too pretentious. Art is neither a profession or a hobby.
Art is a Way of being.”
Frederick Frank
Zen Seeing, Zen Drawing. Meditation in Action.
From now on I will no longer say that I am an “artist”… but an art-maker.
Three hours in New York City in December. Some flânerie and a visit to one excellent bookstore. A dose of “cityness”.
New York has been called the capital of the twentieth century and an architectural battleground. Here are some of the stories I found at Rizzoli.
The playful books of architectural sketches (i also found this and this at the Museum of Contemporary Art store in the airport) reminded me that flawless execution is not as important as
1) discovering your own graphic “voice”
and
2) developing the trust, consistency and playfulness needed to making it heard.
Other books looked as delicious as desserts in a literature bakery.
That’s what a book is, a single serving of story and ideas you can carry with you and devote yourself to, like listening with intention to one speaker. Attention is, after all, the best form of generosity.
Sometimes the tabs of my internet browser become a cacophony. Sure all of the books of Rizzoli, William Stout and Hennessey + Ingalls too, could be contained in a thumb drive. But what those people that consider bookstores obsolete don’t understand that bookstores are not just purveyor of books: they curate selection, there is a mind at work.. one that reads and knows about books. Perusing books on Amazon versus holding these portable maps in our hands is the difference between buying produce at a Walmart superstore or handpicking heirloom tomatoes in a farmers’ market. Bookstore owners are the farmers of knowledge. Once bookstores are gone from a city, soon will civitas and intellectual discourse [see San Diego. the only one of the major 6 cities in US without a bookstore… panem ( or rather vinum) et circensis is what fuels downtown.. when it should be the arts and local businesses.]Books like these in your satchel could make the difference between being a tourist or being a pilgrim, and inspire to sketch the city playfully.
Carillon. December 16, 2017. San Diego, California.
“They had put together a delightful album with the postcards that Pietro Crespi received from Italy. They were pictures of lovers in lonely parks, with vignettes of hearts pierced with arrows and golden ribbons held by doves. “I’ve been to this park in Florence,” Pietro Crespi would say, going through the cards. “A person can put out his hand and the birds will come to feed.” Sometimes, over a watercolor of Venice, nostalgia would transform the smell of mud and putrefying shellfish of the canals into the warm aroma of flowers. Amaranta would sigh, laugh, and dream of a second homeland of handsome men and beautiful women who spoke a childlike language with ancient cities of whose past grandeur only the cats among the rubble remained. After crossing the ocean in search of it, after having confused passion with the vehement stroking of Rebeca, Pietro Crespi had found love. Happiness was accompanied by prosperity. His warehouse at that time occupied almost a whole block and it was a hothouse of fantasy, with reproductions of the bell tower of Florence that told time with a concert of carillons, and music boxes from Sorrento and compacts from China that sang five-note melodies when they were opened, and all the musical instruments imaginable and all the mechanical toys that could be conceived. Bruno Crespi, his younger brother, was in charge of the store because Pietro Crespi barely had enough time to take care of the music school. Thanks to him the Street of the Turks, with its dazzling display of knickknacks, became a melodic oasis where one could forget Arcadio’s arbitrary acts and the distant nightmare of the war.”
…
“Habían hecho un precioso álbum con las tarjetas postales que Pietro Crespi recibía de Italia. Eran imágenes de enamorados en parques solitarios, con viñetas de corazones flechados y cintas doradas sostenidas por palomas. «Yo conozco este parque en Florencia», decía Pietro Crespi repasando las postales. «Uno extiende la mano y los pájaros bajan a comer.» A veces, ante una acuarela de Venecia, la nostalgia transformaba en tibios aromas de flores el olor de fango y mariscos podridos de los canales. Amaranta suspiraba, reía, soñaba con una segunda patria de hombres y mujeres hermosos que hablaban una lengua de niños, con ciudades antiguas de cuya pasada grandeza sólo quedaban los gatos entre los escombros. Después de atravesar el océano en su búsqueda, después de haberlo confundido con la pasión en los manoseos vehementes de Rebeca, Pietro Crespi había encontrado el amor. La dicha trajo consigo la prosperidad. Su almacén ocupaba entonces casi una cuadra, y era un invernadero de fantasía, con reproducciones del campanario de Florencia que daban la hora con un concierto de carillones, y cajas musicales de Sorrento, y polveras de China que cantaban al destaparlas tonadas de cinco notas, y todos los instrumentos músicos que se podían imaginar y todos los artificios de cuerda que se podían concebir. Bruno Crespi, su hermano menor, estaba al frente del almacén, porque él no se daba abasto para atender la escuela de música. Gracias a él, la Calle de los Turcos, con su deslumbrante exposición de chucherías, se transformó en un remanso melódico para olvidar las arbitrariedades de Arcadio y la pesadilla remota de la guerra.”
…
“Avevano fatto un grazioso album con le cartoline postali che Pietro Crespi riceveva dall’Italia. Erano immagini di innamorati in parchi solitari, con illustrazioni di cuori trafitti e nastri d’oro sorretti da colombe. “Io ho visto questo parco a Firenze,” diceva Pietro Crespi sfogliando le cartoline. “Stendi la mano e gli uccelli scendono a mangiare.” Certe volte, davanti a un acquarello di Venezia, la nostalgia trasformava in tiepidi aromi di fiori l’odore di fango e peoci marci dei canali. Amaranta sospirava, rideva, sognava una seconda patria di uomini e donne belli che parlavano una lingua da bambini, con città antiche della cui passata grandezza restavano soltanto i gatti tra i ruderi. Dopo aver varcato l’oceano alla sua ricerca, dopo averlo confuso con la passione nei brancicamenti pieni di veemenza di Rebeca, Pietro Crespi avevo trovato l’amore. La ventura portò con se la prosperità. Il suo magazzino occupava allora quasi un isolato, ed era un semenzaio di fantasia; con riproduzioni del campanile di Firenze che davano l’ora con un concerto di carillon, e scatole musicali di Sorrento, e portacipria di Cina che se aperte cantavano temi di cinque note, e tutti gli strumenti musicali che si potevano immaginare e tutti gli artifici a molla che si potevano concepire. Bruno Crespi, il suo fratello minore, dirigeva il magazzino, perché lui non aveva tempo che per badare alla scuola di musica. Grazie a lui, la Strada dei Turchi, con la sua abbagliante esibizione di cianfrusaglie, si trasformò in una gora melodica per dimenticare gli arbitri di Arcadio e l’incubo remoto della guerra.”
The French poet Paul Valéry said that all things are generated from an interruption. I learned this from my favorite Italian thinker, Alessandro Baricco, here in en español, whose lectures – to be found only in Italian – I listen to to learn about literature, writing, and life.
There were many interruptions this year, and not just personal. I can think of the devastating Hurricane Irma in my beloved, beautiful Puerto Rico, or the September 19 earthquake in my favorite city this side of the Atlantic, Ciudad De México – which occurred on the 32nd Anniversary of an earthquake that killed more that 10.000 people.
My personal earthquake and hurricane happened on August 21 of this year, when my dad passed away. I can now finally begin to write this sentence, and about it, without being swallowed up in the chasm that this loss left in my life. I know his spirit went back to his sea, where he returned, and I feel he is near, both inside my heart and dancing around in freedom and light. I like to think I can take him with me wherever I go now, and share my life in a more immediate way. I like to think his energy was transformed into waves of the sea. The sea can hug you, yet you can’t hug the sea, his immensity. I like to think he is in a butterfly, sometimes in a song. A friend of mine wrote “I heard your dad went back to the Universe”. I like that.
My dad loved the Old Man and The Sea, drawing boats and fish, Jonathan Seagull, reading, Venice, watching documentaries on nature, fishing, and working on his boat. He loved his friends and he loved me. He is the reason art is in my life. He is the reason I read One Hundred Years of Solitude in middle school (I used to raid the books of his youth unbeknownst to both my parents). It became my favorite book, it still is, and magical realism, anarchy and arcane literary worlds shaped who I am.
I thought about coming back to SketchBloom with a post on Van Gogh, and the film Loving Vincent, which I saw this month. The movie reminded me of my dad, of his love of painting, his simple bedroom , and his fisherman shack on the beach, La Baracca Del Bucaniere, which he lovely composed for the last ten years of his life here on the Earth school.
That post is in the pipeline, and I took new photos of his sculpture when I was last in Calabria – but I wanted to return with a sketch, a return to art.
I just got back from Mexico (that is how the locals call it, Mexico…no need to use “Ciudad de”) yesterday, where I finally got over my protracted artist’s block.
Here, a simple sketch (above) and some photos/vignettes/stories I bring back from my trip.
Walking in Coyoacán – Frida’s neighborhood:
Scenes from Roma, one of the neighborhoods of DF:
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This is Barba Azul, a cabaret from another era, where salsa is danced from midnight till dawn, where there is an altar upstairs (I have seen them in parking lots, too) and where the exit is a tiny rectangle carved into a decorated garage door- something out Pinocchio’s Paese dei Balocchi (toyland)…or a circus in a Fellini movie. One of the many surreal vignettes of this metropolis.
Unfortunately I could not take a better photo of it (with the usher emerging!) but it is on my list for next time. I also learned about the ficheras , the ladies of the establishment who sell a dance for a token (and more, at their discretion).
The obligatory photo of the Palacio De Bellas Artes, November 2017 version:
Where I had the chance to see Diego Rivera’s murals…
…and learn about the Rojo Mexicano (the red pigment from cochinilla bugs found inside the cactus fruits in Oaxaca, which was utilized in paintings around the world from the XV Century to the XIX) and see Van Gogh’s Bedroom At Arles with my own eyes (!!!).
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I also visited Cuernavaca, La Ciudad de la Eterna Primavera (The City of the Eternal Spring), where i completed my yearly self-evaluation for #work in a garden within Jardines de Mexico, surrounded by butterflies. Talk about INSPIRING.
Italian Garden at Jardines De Mexico (my favorite, obv)
In Cuernavaca, I stayed in a copy of Unité d’Habitacion (but if you follow me on Instagram you already know this).
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I want to close with a poem by Octavio Paz — who is considered the greatest Mexican poet and thinker — and, of course, was a native of Mexico City.
This is his poem Hablo de la Ciudad | I Speak of the City. Below the text in the original Spanish and the translation in English.
This poem perfectly encapsulates what Mexico City is. I have more posts on La Ciudad to craft, from my previous visits, and more poetry- but this shall suffice for tonight.
Here is to more gentle earthquakes and hurricanes in 2018, inner ones to bring soul renewals, and to a kinder year.
For the Aztecs, this was the bellybutton of the Moon.
A Thousand Churches (Your Eyes). Graphite, Watercolor, India Ink. August 12, 2017.
Dear Single Reader,
You might have thought I had disappeared, and would be the third person in a week to ask me what happened to my sketchbloom…but I’m back for the summer.
An international conference in Hong Kong , research writing /presentations and academia have absorbed me until the end of June…not to mention that thing called life, and heart, and two moves in two months ( apartment renovation). It has been CRAZY.
I just got back from two amazing weeks in Puebla, Mexico where I was part of ArtFest17 and went to teach at UVM (Universidad de la Valle México) a workshop called Myth of the City.
Here you can see all the work done with my students and read about Puebla, the “Second” city – the first being of course, Mexico ( Ciudad de). It was an incredible experience, after having co-taught the course in Santa Fe, New México in 2013 and 2014. One could say I went from New Mexico to “Old” México with this.
In Puebla i was surrounded by “my people”, migente, artists, intellectuals..the bohemians and the romantics, and got back my creative juices! Now, a new beginning…
I have lots of travel photography and new poetry to share so stick around 🙂
Thank you for reading me and not forgetting about me ❤️ your support means everything to me, as art is and always be my first love- and the true love of my life.
I am on an art-recovery program but I don’t know what to do about those pesky writing deadlines…#thestruggle. Life is so full, and exciting new design opportunities –like being a juror for Orchids and Onions in San Diego and a Pecha Kucha presentation on Storage Cities — keep presenting themselves. It’s accelerated, beautiful life…yet art needs the half-time of dreams.
Well, wish me good luck, there are some posts in the pipelines so I will see you soon and… work in progress as usual!
I do hope you are having a glorious summer.
Below are some photos from lovely, lovely Puebla… two of my students’ models and the City that is home of so many incredible riches. A true treasure of humanity/ patrimonio de la humanidad.
PS: I have been posting on Instagram but have to confess I always feeel guilty if I don’t post drawings/sketches/watercolor/collages… after all it is called Sketchbloom not Photobloom ( but you can follow me [@sketchbloom] there and it would make me so happy😊.)
Puebla, Estado de Puebla, México:
What a magical city: Baroque churches where Tllaloc and Quetzacoatl are venerated, the fusion called Barroco Indígena ( San Francisco de Acatepec and Santa María de Tonantzintla – Barragán’s favorite church), Aztec temples and cities, 400 year old stone buildings, the tallest church towers in Mexico and the greatest covered stepped pyramid in the world ( Teocalli de Cholula)…finally the oldest public library of the Americas. Puebla is where the battle celebrated during Cinco de Mayo took place and where the Mexican Revolution started. Wow.
The final full moon of Winter 2017: the Worm Moon {Native Americans} or Storm Moon {Pagan Rites} or Lenten Moon {Christianity}. Also known as the Seed Moon or Chaste Moon. This is the final moon of Winter 2017 and the last full moon before the Spring Equinox. Tonight is also the time that Daylight Saving Time ends in most states of the U.S… returning time and hours to their natural cycle and us to a more harmonious rhythm. The days will be longer thanks to moving the clock ahead one hour -in the UK this is called “Summer Time”. This is the moon of nature’s rebirth from the dark winter months; its meaning is new, fresh starts.
//These poems were typed, not copy-pasted. It makes a difference.//
Venus Just Asked Me
Perhaps
For just one minute out of the day
It may be of value to torture yourself
With thoughts like,
“I should be doing
A hell of a lot more with my life than I am
Cause I’m so darned talented”
But remember,
For just one minute of the day.
With all the rest of your time-
It would be best
To try
Looking upon your self more as God does.
For He knows
Your true royal nature.
God is never confused
And can see Only Himself in you.
My dear,
Venus just leaned down and asked me
To tell you a secret, to confess
She’s just a mirror who has been stealing
Your light and music for centuries
She knows as does Hafiz,
You are the sole heir to
The King.
Hafiz
…
The Size of the Love-Bruise
The
Gauge of a good poem is
The size of the love-bruise it leaves
On your neck.
Or
The size of the love-bruise it can paint
On your brain.
Or
The size of the love-bruise it can weave
Into your soul.
Or indeed-
It could be all of the
Above.
Hafiz
…
The Shape of Laughter
Let my words become like a skilled
Potter’s hands,
Quieting,
Smoothing your life
With their knowledge,
Reaching into your tender core
And spreading you out
Like the morning
That leaps from the sun’s amused wink
Onto hills, brows and backs of so many
Beautiful laboring beasts.
God’s duty is to make perfect
All your movements of mind, of limb,
And your ascending shape of laughter.
Watch the way my hands dance
With their diamond-edged brilliance
Cutting you open with music,
Reaching into your heart
And spilling the night sky- jar you carry
That is always full of giggling planets and stars.
Stealing 1.5 minutes from Chronos to roughly sketch out surroundings. Academia has claimed the time reserved for Art, yet Art shall overcome. Cafe Bassam. January 2017
The Eyes of the Poet
Let me try to explain the way
the poet sees.
To the poet the sparks of electricity
zapping along the trolley cables
are falling stars
A thread on the blue carpet
curls in the shape
of butterfly wings
The poet writes on the bus
and carves
tiny offerings to the Muse
out of dense, secular days
The poet sees a sky of pink
when she looks at the facade
under fluorescent street lights
(that’s when they started killing nuances)
The poet is always, always somewhen else
For example, when she closes her eyes she is in a city of spires and
horizonless turquoise
Here, wings tethered to a chronograph,
longing only for infinity,
and the only time that matters,
art
In her chest the poet keeps:
incense and ink
the space between words
certain nights
Her soul is already beyond the asphalt,
Through the pavement to become light
She understands exile now
and the words of those far
from the land of the two domes, from Beauty
As she walks through a city with no past a man tells her:
Let me guess. Size six.
Variation on a theme. The power of the rule of thirds and fourths on a 16:9 ratio.
I‘m working on a couple of deadlines ( or three) for another version of my Self-Storage Cities paper and related major presentation ( which involves writing a script and turning an academic paper into a story!). I am exploring new formats and taking layout and storytelling to the next level. The layout study above is for the visuals to accompany my narrative.
The second image is a collage-in-progress. It seems that everything in my life is in a permanent in-progress status but I guess it’s better than standing still.
Though some things move at a glacial pace, still they move, still they come to completion in their time. So yes, I rejoice.
Deadlines are a time where I get everything else done in all aspects, in this case carving half an hour for my art, organizing my office/art studio and finishing decluttering my place ( more on that when I can show off the remarkable before and after)
I like all my engine firing at once.
And I’ll make sure my fountain pen is never far away from now on.
Reflection through glass of my favorite morning view, the terra-cotta tiles from my windows. I feel my gaze is always southward, Mediterranean, drawn to the Sun
I love the aging cracks of my favorite lilac mug. These cracks represent our relationship, and countless mornings where the heat of coffee or tea strained the enamel into a filigree of imaginary landscapes, or sea creatures
When choosing amongst different photographs of a subject, I always ask myself “Which one makes you dream more?”
I want to leave you with this quote today, shared by my Yoga teacher Michael Caldwell:
The Prophet described iman, or faith,as such: “Faith is to acknowledge with the heart, to voice with the tongue, and to act with the limbs,” (Chittick 6).
This outlines the hierarchy of bodily domains that human beings consist of: the heart, signifying innermost awareness; the tongue which articulates and expresses; and one’s limbs, the source of action.
The art of poetry incorporates all three of these, for one cannot compose a poem without the cognizance of the heart, the use of speech or the physical use of limbs to write out the words.
Poetry channels the three spheres of the body so that awareness, thought and activity fuse to create one product.
Beyond Words: Chronicling Spiritual Ecstasy and Experience in Sufi Poetry
Yesterday I was lucky enough to visit the old section of the town of Vittorio Veneto, in the region of Veneto, in Northeastern Italy. Present-day Vittorio Veneto is the result of the fusion of the municipalities of Ceneda and Serravalle after WWI.
The photos below are of the old Jewish ghetto of Ceneda, and the centro ( center or downtown) with its villas, park and piazzetta ( small piazza).
The Church pictured just below was a surprising find: it is the oldest churchsite I have ever visited, and dates from the IV century (!!!). The Church you see was rebuilt in 1400, a millennium after the first structure was erected. The timing boggles the mind: in 313 CE Constantine declared Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire with the Edict of Milan, and on this site a church was built shortly thereafter.
Serravalle, like Treviso, the regional center of the prosperous region of Veneto, features frescoes on the façades of buildings. This is something fascinating that I learned during this trip (from my mom, who is from Treviso) Frescoes in Serravalle- a town of Roman origin-were not just relegated to the interior of churches, but graced the buildings’ street elevations and were painted by notable local artists. Most of the palazzi date from the 1400’s. What was depicted on them? Hard to say from what remains in Serravalle. I could discern some courtly scenes and patterns/coat of arms. Both here and in Treviso, the frescoes were plastered over during one of the bouts of the Plague, in a misguided effort to ‘disinfect’ homes.
One of the photos depicts the winged lion of Venezia (Venice) on top of a tall pole. This whole area was indeed part of the inland empire of La Serenissima (the most serene) Republic of Venezia.
The best part for me, as a flâneuse was walking through the many porticoes of Serravalle. Enjoy my flâneuring..
Venus is one of the five planets that are visible with the naked eye. Due to its easy visibility, the ancient people were well aware of the planet’s existence. They also kept track of its movement in the sky.
Venus is 10 times brighter than Sirius, the brightest star in the sky. Venus’s clouds project the light of the Sun as a mirror would. In addition to Venus’s amazing luminosity is the origin of its name.
Venus derived its name from the Romans who religiously followed the Greek tradition. Venus is the Roman version of the Greek goddess, Aphrodite. The Roman and Greek goddess of love, beauty and fertility is Venus and therefore, the planet was named after her. Perhaps the fact that Venus is the brightest planet in the sky contributes to how it got its name. It is quite possible that the Romans found the brightness to be so enchanting that they felt it deserved to be named after the goddess of beauty and love. Furthermore, the Romans were aware of 7 bright objects that existed in the sky, moon, sun, and the 5 brightest planets. These planets were named after the most important gods. Due to Venus being a goddess of womanhood, all of the features on the planet, except for one, are named after women. The main craters, for example, are named after influential women that existed during various times. One of them is the famous ballerina, Anna Pavlova, who lived from 1881 to 1931. Sacajawea, the Native American tribeswoman who explored the West with Lewis and Clark, has a crater named after her as well. The greatest female poet of ancient Greece, Sappho, has a crater named after her too.
The planet Venus represents woman hood, pride, and love in many ways. The symbol for the planet Venus is the symbol of a circle with a cross at the bottom, which stands for being a woman.
And, suddenly, you are gazing at the eternal sublime. Venice’s borders are the dream realms. This is a city that starts on water and ends in the soul. Venice is a portal between reality and myth. A city that is real, but also impossible. My little cousin declared, at ten years old, that ‘this is the most beautiful city in the whole world.’ In no other country man-made and natural Beauty is so entrenched with the national psyche and identity. Beauty is elevated as the greatest national virtue, privilege and asset. Beauty is Italy’s doctrine and her true religion. We are, after all, Il Bel Paese.
Venezia, Italia, January 1, 2017.
‘There is still one of which you never speak.’
Marco Polo bowed his head.
‘Venice,’ the Khan said.
Marco smiled. ‘What else do you believe I have been talking to you about?’
The emperor did not turn a hair. ‘And yet I have never heard you mention that name.’
And Polo said: ‘Every time I describe a city I am saying something about Venice.’
Digital experiment using layers from the Tayasui Sketching app + Procreate app on IPhone 7. Excerpt from the novel Chokher Bali by Rabindranath Tagore. November 15, 2016.
For lifelong companionship, it’s not necessary to live together.
We have gone as far as we had to go.
From here, our paths diverge.
It’s better for both of us.
I will atone for my mistakes by serving other people. If you settle down, I swear, I will be really happy.
Now I have no grievances in this life. Life has done us a big favor by bringing us together again. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have been able to resolve our grievances.
I was at fault, but you didn’t let your love for me wane.
Your Binod will learn to live with the help of this thought.
Before leaving, all I will ask is that…
..in our next birth, you should only belong to me.
Don’t belong to anybody else.
From the last letter of Binodini to her beloved Behari.
Digital painting made on ProCreate app for IPhone. November 11, 2016.
Dark days here in California.
Days of mourning, but also poetry, catharsis, resolve for Resistance.
The Sun broke through the clouds today.
Words, thoughts, and memories flowed and something beautiful is emerging from the summer blush, the gentle nights, the dawns of Bahia de Los Angeles down in the peninsula.
The blood and ink spilled on the battlegrounds of a war lost before it began.
Red like the heart, yellow like the fire, orange as the light.
Some days all of this will make sense. The humbleness of things not going your way, not going as predicted.
For now huddle with your familiars, write manifestos, memorize lines of poetry
To leave as flowers as you bid your adieu.
In the end nothing mattered, not eloquence, preparedness, not even expertise.
It boiled down, as it always boils
down
to
emotion.
In love, in war, in politics.
These scars will become constellations.
…
I recently switched to an IPhone.
I was always an Android/PC person, but did it all for the camera (and the IPhone 7 larger screen, which brings it closer to a tablet). Today after some research I downloaded ProCreate, a painting and layering app and Tayasui Sketching, a drawing and watercolor app. I’m looking forward to exploring them with my Sensu brush. The layers aspect of ProCreate pushes this app beyond what I was used to with Paint Commander, my Android painting app. If I don’t sound as my usually excited self is because I’m still numb.
The spontaneous construct above was an experiment with ProCreate inspired by Rothko, some photographs I took in September in Baja California, the recent elections and the high-strung feeling running through social media- especially related to some alarming episodes of intolerance already happening.
I guess things have to fall apart before they are made anew, and I guess the heart has to break in a myriad of pieces to become a mosaic, a kaleidoscope. This was the autumn of earthquake faults and fractures, of buildings and people.
There is a Japanese custom of repairing broken antique vases with gold, making the wound not only visible, but the whole more precious for having being shattered.
I was dead then alive. Weeping then laughing. The power of love came into me and I became fierce like a lion then … then tender like the evening star.
Here is what I have to show from the months of June – September: the publication of my first academic research paper, presented to the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) International Conference in Santiago de Chile. I went there in June, and from there onto Buenos Aires.
This, and irresponsible happiness.
Late September was Baja California, Mexico, and its searing sunrises. Halloween saw me as Frida; Diwali, the Indian Festival of Light ( October 30- November 3) saw my home, and heart, ablaze.
…
“Being a candle is not easy; in order to give light one must burn first.”
Rumi
Happy last night of Diwali, the Indian Festival of light. This is a time where light banishes darkness,a time of renewals and new beginnings.
Strawberry Moon and Solstice, an event that occurs every seventy years.
Full moon as the Sun stops to take Her in; the union of the masculine and the feminine. I hope you have been casting spells, and were looking skyward.
Mission Beach, San Diego, California. 19th of June, 2016
Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter. The sitter is merely the accident, the occasion. It is not he who is revealed by the painter; it is rather the painter who, on the coloured canvas, reveals himself.
In case you are wondering what happened to me and why I’ve gone M.I.A during the month of February and most of March, the board above is one of the reasons. As it happened in 2010,
our school underwent an enormous accreditation visit, which meant preparing for months collecting, documenting and providing evidences.
One of the best things to come out of the work leading to the Accreditation was that Faculty was once more asked to prepare a record of what we have been doing – outside of teaching- the past five years.
It is a monumental task to audit, select and curate five years of life, work, art – yet I welcome the chance to take stock of where I have been, for it points to where I want to go. This process of self-evaluation is a privilege not afforded to many professions, and I was thankful for the challenge.
We were also asked to write a brief narrative. I worked on this more hours than I care to admit and I am happy to now share this with you: words, drawings and travel photography — some of which hasn’t been seen here yet! Hope you enjoy it.
“The French writer Daniel Pennac describes the notion of the passeur, of the ‘transmitter’, as intimately connected to the ownership of culture. He considers pedagogy as a branch of dramaturgy: a great teacher is a playwright, a vector of knowledge who instills curiosity, personifies her subject, and communicates passion. As an academic, designer, artist, and poet , storytelling is central to my work.
When I was six years old, fascinated by a book of folktales of Northern Europe, I decided I wanted to be a collector of legends. Though my path took me to Architecture and Fine Arts, teaching History of Architecture brought me to travel to Latin America, the American Southwest and the Caribbeans where I began to record the history of place through the stories of its native people, These ‘stories of architecture’ become the framework of my courses. Through drawing, urban sketching, collages, photography, and writing, my preoccupation has been with collecting, documenting, processing and communicating narratives – while letting the spontaneous unfold.”
Miti Aiello, San Diego, March 2016
Writer Update:
My abstract on my research on Storage Cities has been accepted by one of the two main Architecture academic bodies here in the U.S for presentation at their International Conference! They are sending me to Santiago, Chile in June, and will publish my academic paper. Too excited for words. If you want to get a sneak peek and read my abstract check out my academia.edu page.
This is likely a hello/byefornow.
I wanted to update my blog now that classes have ended for the quarter, and before once again leaving for Mexico, this time in Baja California Sur for a week of volunteering. Faculty and students of my school are going to help build a healing center using natural architecture in a location that is three hours away by car from the closest road. It will be very remote, challenging and, I am sure, transforming. I will document everything.
Few weeks ago I wrote that, sometimes, we don’t have time to do art because we are too busy living a life that is art itself.
That is a true blessing, amidst the inherent challenges.
Although I have not posted here, I have not stopped taking photographs, seeing, collecting, thinking. My hope of hopes is to get caught up with my posts this summer…Promises we have heard before…
“You don’t need motivation.
What you need is discipline, young lady!”
We are the stargazers,
we are the memorykeepers
the nightwalkers
the moonseekers
we are the solitude dwellers
we pause, head lifted to look at clouds
moving fast through the night skies
like steam raising from hot coffee
in a makeshift cafe.
[ stop looking at your phone
and look at the stars ]
We are impractical madness.
We are the timeconjurers,
propelled through dark hours
chasing follies
– we pause to take photographs when we’re late; we always answer the muse
and she comes at the most inopportune moments.
We are the harbingers,
we are the jesters.
We sit on street corners in the cold, listening to the banter of clochards.
Our hands hurt
we write poems no-one will read.
We are the stargazers,
we are the memorykeepers
we are the storytellers.
We are the art warriors,
we battle against the loss of words,
which come unexpected and vanish so quickly, like the tendrils of love in the morning.
We fight against time which consumes.
We succeed – and steal one verse or image from the frenetic chasm.
We indulge in vain attempts to capture stars.
We are the dreamers,
we are the songcollectors
we are the last romantics.
Our job is to always have innocent eyes.
We are the wanderers.
Our job is to remember and coalesce.
We preserve life’s gossamer fragments of beauty, we keep them like strands of lights in a jar.
We are the butterflies,
we are the petal priests,
we run red lights.
We wander at night and are consumed by fire.
In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni.
You might remember this drawing from November.
I finally finished at the beginning of January, on a cold (for San Diego) night, sitting in front of this 100-yearY building, under a portico.
Balboa Park always takes me back home. This entire drawing was done plen air and took me few sessions over several months to complete.
It will be on its way to San José, Costa Rica soon.
This is a quick photo, but i have a piecemeal scanned version ( sheet too large for my scanner, and the wide format at work is not very kind to graphite).I will try to compose the image and sub for it soon – but it has already been a whole week since this post languished in the draft purgatory and i want to get to my next night photography post.
Clouds make nocturnal old San Diego heartbreakingly beautiful.
By the way, i hope you all had a fantastic Holiday Break.
I just got back from another trip to México, and i have Mayan pyramids,cenotes, colonial towns and caribbean waters to share. I cannot believe i haven’t had the chance to share my two trips to Ciudad de México D.F from last July and November (¡Frida!) ..yet.
So next there will be a series of posts on México “lindo y querido”.
As a Christmas gift to myself this year, and a commitment to my art and digital studio, I finally took the plunge, folks.
After five years, SketchBloom has its very own domain.
This means not only that the sketchbloom name is now mine…all mine ( and that I will need to update my business cards), but that I am able to post videos (eek!)
Beginning of a collage, or perhaps the finished piece. Santa Fe, Summer 2013.
The material you see here comes from that magical city, Santa Fe, New Mexico. I have been going through drawers as part of my decluttering project with The Life- changing Magic of Tidying Up- The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing and found two collages, loads of beautiful art magazines and some cutouts.
As mentioned before, there are many moments of art in the past three years that never got recorded here.
The cutouts came to life last night:
Snow Hare and the Reading Man. San Diego, December 25, 2015.
I have been inspired by my blogsister Ghadah at prettygreenbullet and her Eve silhouettes which inhabit nooks and crannies of her atelier.
Perhaps a (re)viewing of Nightmare Before Christmas at the San Diego Symphony on Halloween inspired the surreal. I dig it. I hope you do too.
It is too late to wish you a Merry Christmas so I will just say I hope the New Year brings a lot of art, beauty and wonder to us all.
I am finding a lot of presents through my decluttering process…a lot of things that are new to me again, books and gorgeous butterfly binders, for one!
I highly recommend it as a end-of-the year/new year resolution.
The best way to find out what we really need is to get rid of what we don’t.
[ Updated, more crisp scans.
I hereby promise not to post phone photos when I can provide scans. ]
On the evening before the Winter Solstice, I rejoined the group that meets in the lower level of the San Diego Arts Institute {The Museum of the Living Artists} in Balboa Park, for “One Last Hurray”– tonight was the last night Live Modeling will be hosted in the Gallery . These rendez-vouz became scarcer with the passing of the last few months, from every other Monday, to one Monday a month, to a late summer hiatus, to this…the end.
Once more I am reminded that the only constant in life is change. I will miss these evenings of art, self-paced, the bodies of the models always surprising once translated into the page. The outcomes always tell me more about myself than them. I had not attended these Live Modeling sessions since October, when the school year resumed and I found myself teaching First Year again on Mondays and Wednesday evening (which was exciting, and cyclical at the same time…because as things change they do, occasionally, repeat).
It was nice to say goodbye tonight. I pushed colored water with brushes, with no expectations, reminding myself that I am a painter more than a drawer, and reciting my farewell to painting/drawing nudes. My interest lies in making (collages and pantings that do not involve bodies) and these ‘art therapy’ sessions did much good in helping me find time for art, but it is time to move on and find the discipline within me.
Watercolor on the wrong paper- Strathmore Bristol. San Diego, December 21, 2015
Speaking of discipline, this time physical, this Fall I was also pining for my old Wednesday night zumba/dance class, taught by one of the best teachers in town and, lo and behold, that class is also no more. Everything is telling me to let go and let myself be unmoored because routines, and certainties, are only illusions of the mind and of time.
I am reminded at least few times a day that, since I became Assistant Professor, a title that I longed for and a milestone for me, the time that I used to have for Art and SketchBloom has vanished, leaving me with scraps, and occasional posts during school breaks. It is bittersweet, because when I had more time, I also had different challenges. On the plus side, I feel that my classes are getting stronger and that all the energy put into what I do is bearing beautiful fruit, and my travels a re translating into lectures, thoughts, incipits of papers. My students have been blossoming , and what I offer them, though intangible, is perhaps my greatest art…the words and the stories shared in the intimacy of the classroom. My favorite part of this Fall was new lectures on Native American Architecture and the Empires of the Sun (Aztec, Maya, Inca), along with those for Hindu and Buddhist Architecture. It was wonderful to share my travels to Teotihuacan and Mexico City, DF (July and November) and various museum visits. All these will be documented here in the coming days.
I am going to visit new Mayan sites soon 🙂 and I feel blessed that what I love to do (travel) also makes me better at what I do. One of my students wrote me that what I shared from my travels was her favorite part of the History of Architecture and Urban Design course, and that made me smile inside. Another told me that I am, indeed, a ‘collector of legends’, what I knew I wanted to be at 6 years old as I was put in charge of our classroom’s bookshelf.
I have been reading a lot on Hindu and Buddhist philosophy and there is a whole section of advice on, basically, doing your best, and letting go. Letting go of what you think is the idea of perfection, because life is already perfect, in secret ways that we will only understand in time. SO many ways to convey a message that I run into again and again.
I swear at least once a day in the past few months I have encountered and recorded places, people, feelings, stories, books, quotes, readings, images that I wanted to share here but pressing obligations and life prevented me. I trust that what I have been collecting (the speed and quantity of memories accumulated akin to hoarding for its sheer size) will be shared and enfolded in time. The thought of living hard and traveling harder to make memories for my old age has crossed my mind. One thing I did not do is draw or paint, but I believe, now, there are other ways to make art.
Photography is one. Or writing.
Also, creating the space and conditions that allow art to emerge: clearing your life and decluttering, physically and emotionally, to make room for art, for the NEW.
Is not prepping the canvas also part of the painting? Then I have weaved that canvas fabric with the threads of days full of wonder, struggle and discovery, primed it with an unshakeable faith, and strengthened with tireless service, resilience and endurance.
Please forgive me, it is the end of the quarter, and the end of a stupendous year …and I am waxing poetic. Time to sum up the past 12 months. I wanted to count all the things I was grateful for in 2015 and I counted 41. How many things are you grateful for? Every difficulty came with a breakthrough and a blessing for me, a strengthening lesson. I hope the same for you, Reader.
I know it is not the end of the year proper yet, but for me it already has come, with the close of another quarter and the time, silent and special, to calculate grades, my students’ and mine. I wish all my readers and visitors a great journey in 2016, untroubled by worldly events and guided only by that ‘light that never goes out’, our own.
Watercolor on the wrong paper- Strathmore Bristol. San Diego, December 21, 2015
Watercolor on the wrong paper- Strathmore Bristol. San Diego, December 21, 2015
Sunset and stars, for Martha. Acrylic paint and Encaustics. San Diego, 2003.
I finished this painting with encaustics (wax dripping) in 2003, for Martha, my oldest and dearest friend in San Diego.
This is how the painting looked for years:
I was dissatisfied with it.
It just seemed an ‘experiment’ with golden acrylics, was too heavy on the left side and just, in general, looked like a 90’s Dave Matthews Band CD cover gone wrong.
While there were some reedeming moments ( the night sky/ starry side had a loveliness to it) the demarcation line was too abrupt and the piece as a whole did not make sense
.
So, I took it back sometimes in 2010 to ‘work on it’. Poor Marthita..who does that? Thank you, ever-patient friend.
This untitled ‘thing’ sat on an empty wine rack in my kitchen for years, becoming mine again, in a way, a de facto piece of furniture.
I was at a loss…I knew I had to give it back at some point, yet had no idea how to fix this obvious statement on dichotomy that just looked wrong.
Enter Beverly. One night, a couple months ago, my very eclectic, ageless, artist neighbor Bev was talking to Mingus, her black cat ( I am pretty sure it’s a familiar 😉 ) on the walkway we shared.
It was one of those rare days my place was guest-ready, so I invited her in for a glass. She was interested in the painting on the easel, still turned the ‘wrong’ way. I shared my conundrum with her. She just walked up to it and said ‘What if you turn it this way?.
Now, “thing” was a fiery California sunset. She found the sea in the paint, and it took 12 years.
Something like this gives me faith that everything comes into its own in time.
That timing is always right.
That years are necessary.
That the right person comes in and points to you what has being staring you in the face, what you could not see.
Thank you, Bev.
….
Below, a flipped, filtered version I think
it really is what this painting wants to be, in its dreams.
We’re Always Under Stars
You took me star-gazing
the first night
I was looking for Orion.
(when i went home
I found him,
hung low over my window
at 5 am.
I could never sleep
after you.)
You shared the impossible poetry of Hikmet, which nobody in their right mind should reveal to someone they just met.
On the second day
you came with your convertible,
the passenger side devastated
by an accident.
I had to get in from your side,
for a month.
Climbing in, crossing over,
my body awkwardly tilted while trying to maintain grace in my version of
a courtship.
I did not mind, not one time – though I always forgot.
I should have, maybe, read the sign.
Instead, I thought it was endearing
it meant you had your wounds, too.
I did not feel so bad about my messy house, my scars.
We drove to the beach,
California style.
It was a semi-deserted nudist beach, and we had to hike a steep cliff
to get there.
There was always a sense of the
unexpected
with you.
We talked while girls with bouncing boobs
and men with various appendages
were too away for us to really see
–I was, at once, at ease with and acutely aware of the french strangeness of the situation–
another would have thought about
how progressive it all was.
Unaware until later that that was a choice, I kept my top on.
In hindsight, perhaps,
you were testing my boundaries.
When you touched me,
you touched me
the sun kissed me
another star, on our second date.
We dipped in Mediterranean warmth.
I looked at you
like Sicily looks at Calabria
over the Strait.
I thought this time things would be
different, because we shared the same language.
I forgot stars rise and set at night, too.
And we are always under them.
Last night, between November 10 and November 11, and all day today we celebrate Diwali, the Indian Festival of Lights. I had fun arranging light
‘sculptures’ and enjoyed the presence of so many candles and lit lamps in every room, till the wee hours of the night.
Magical, powerful fire and all manners of colored skins, screens and effects to spread, diffuse, and scatter light…I loved this night.
What is Diwali ? – you might ask.
Diwali is the Festival of Lights in India, a day to celebrate good triumphing over evil and light over darkness.
It is in, fact, the end of darkness.
Diwali is a day to honor your inner light and bless your home. It is a day for new beginnings, as it celebrates the start of the Indian New Year.
H A P P Y D I W A L I
Light up all the candles! Hang your lanterns and luminaires…string all the lights.
….
Diwali is called the Festival of Lights and is celebrated to honor Rama-chandra, the seventh avatar (incarnation of the god Vishnu). It is believed that on this day Rama returned to his people after 14 years of exile during which he fought and won a battle against the demons and the demon king, Ravana. People lit their houses to celebrate his victory over evil (light over darkness).
The goddess of happiness and good fortune, Lakshmi, also figures into the celebration. It is believed that she roams the earth on this day and enters the house that is pure, clean, and bright. Diwali celebrations may vary in different communities but its significance and spiritual meaning is generally “the awareness of the inner light”.
Source: http://www.timeanddate.com/holidays/us/diwali
San Diego Museum of Man in Balboa Park, San Diego, California. Graphite on paper. 24"X30". August 2015.
A commissioned work in progress.
One more plen air session and lineweight application and this baby is traveling to Costa Rica. [Gracias por la Pura Vida]
I was asked to draw something that, to me, was intrinsically San Diego.
I love this building, and Balboa Park.
This is my neighborhood, my California home.
The buildings in Balboa park were chimeras, they were not supposed to last. They were stuccoed renditions, built for the 1915-16 Panama-California Exposition.
It was San Diego dreaming of a past it did not possess, recreating its version of Spain, a classical city of porticoes, fountains and piazzas. Balboa Park represents both a stage and utopia.
My mind knows i am looking at façade architecture, in some cases as authentic as a movie set. It also knows none of the hundreds of plants and trees in the park are native. Yet, i am seduced. I indulge in a state ‘suspension of disbelief’, as Wordsworth asked of his reader.
This is my Romantic ruin.
Balboa Park today enchants as a beautiful urban park, the cultural heart of San Diego with more than twenty museums, gardens, landscaped vistas and hikes through the natural canyons (and, always, street artists).
No. This photo was not ‘shopped. The sky really looks like this all year-round here.
And you should see the sunsets.
Don’t hate. We pay for this in other ways.
We leave something of ourselves behind when we leave a place, we stay there, even though we go away. And there are things in us that we can find again only by going back there.
Another month of quickening days, of white skies, of scorching heat, of California monsoons has gone by.
The weather in San Diego has been positively schizophrenic. Life has been full (I dislike the word “busy”), heartbreaking and healing at turns, magic, adventurous, challenging and with an overall trend of daily progress towards balance, harmony and mindfullness. Things are good.
I have been blessed to have crossed paths with soulful fellow travelers.
Since the beginning of 2015, the posts here at Sketchbloom have been so sparse…it’s embarassing. I miss my days before my professorship where I had the luxury of being an artist full time. Yet there were, of course, different struggles at the time. I always heard that with privileges come responsibilities, and I felt those, so much, this past school year. Although the school year ended, culminating with Graduation at the end of June, I feel I am only (sort-of) beginning to breath now.
I completed my six-week five-credit Arabic course yesterday. I signed up for the class on what must have been an adrenaline rush from the tough Spring I had. The course started during Finals week at my University, which meant a seamless, yet intense/insane transition! I have some calligraphy to share from the course, and I am happy to say I can finally read and write in Arabic!
This month also saw me in Ciudad de Mexico DF for few days. I will post soon some photographs and recollections from that city of thousand faces. Alas, no drawings. (no time)
How to sum up a whole year? Only through recollection in tranquility. I am finally on break, and I plan to catch up with all the posts from my travels. I have notebooks full of thoughts and words, that might become verses, once distilled. Yet, this is also the time to make. I read that, a year from now, you will wish you had started today. SO I am starting, again, today. Every time I post here it feels like a new beginning. For those of you who have been following this blog (more than a thousand!), thank you for your patience and for the kind forgetfulness, and forgiveness, of promises not (yet) kept. I started running behind in 2013….no comment. My art and this blog can hardly catch up with my life and travels. I guess that is a good problem to have. Maybe you want to wander here, and see why time flies.
Annnyyyyhow…..Here are the rest of this spring’s nudes from Monday nights at the San Diego Arts Institute.
I noticed, going through the various drawings done there, that I tend to experiment with a different medium and paper each time. I guess I really miss my collages. I had the time to scan these drawings (i always feel quick and dirty when I post shots from my phone), and, well, what a difference.
One good piece of news is that I will get back my art studio in the Fall. I was part of the Brokers’ Building Artist Colony from 2003-2008 and I cannot wait to have a special place for my art again.
This summer – this year, really – feels like the long backward run, the gathering momentum
First experiment in Digital nude painting on my Android HTC ONE phone, using the Paint Commander App and the Sensu brush.
Two months to the day of my last post, I return.
Like a lover who walks into the door surreptitiously, I offer no explanations.
Just Kidding.
This quarter saw me teaching three courses with a total of 120 students, so, dear Single Reader, the reason for my hiatus is self-evident. It was a ten-week long journey into different periods of History of Architecture and Urban Design, Urban Issues and so. much. more.
Here are snapshots of my bimonthly art dates. I have quite a few drawings, but could not conjure up the time and mental space to scan and post them. Ideally, these will be scanned version soon..but here they are.
I embarked on an Arabic adventure as of Monday, and this will be a spectacular summer, I feel and know.
“If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant: if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome.”
This year has, so far, been excellent for art and traveling.
I have at this point more drawings than time to scan ( I know, hard to believe, ha!?) and properly compose posts…so photos from my trusty phone will have to suffice for now. I am posting this from Chicago, where I am attending a conference…of course this trip generated drawings and photography as well. So behind…it has become my new normal .
Entonces….have you heard of Urban Sketchers?
It is my current obsession.
At the end of March, during our Spring Break, I went to San Jose’, Costa Rica, to join Profe William Cordero and Urban Sketchers Costa Rica for The Market Adventure Workshop.
I had an amazing time in San Jose’, the chaotic, architecturally schizophrenic capital of Costa Rica.
The experience of Mercado Central cannot be easily described…only Borges could, I think.
A mazelike enclosed space,full of life, sabrosura and a wonderful cacophony of sounds and songs, the Central Market is a bustling node of San Jose’, a city of many faces, a city with no clear identity but moments of alegría total and vibrancy of urban activity ( borrowing the words of Jean Nouvel).
San Jose’ is ‘the city left behind’, as tourists flock to the natural beauty of Costa Rica, the beaches and incredible natural reserves.
More on this in a bit.
This was the first time I was in Central America, making my way down to the southern side of the Continent.
Pura Vida!
These were our exercises.
The line, the stain and the temperature of a space. Mercado Central, San Jose', Costa Rica, March 30, 2015
Exploring the entrances to the Mercado Central, posive and negative space, different lineweights and learning techniques from my fellow travelers and sketchers. San José, Costa Rica. March 31, 2015.
During the break..taking notes.
The small stories and moments of the Mercado Central. San José, Costa Rica. March 31, 2015. I must admit i fell in love with the place, and it aches to remember it now...the singing of the patrons, the batida de tamarindo, being in a public place doing art and meeting wonderful new people through art.
This was our last exercise, exploring the borders of the Mercado Central, its surrounding streets…its propagating energy.
I miss you, crazy place ❤.
What a wonderful adventure indeed, a great way to explore the world and meeting kindred spirits, artists and mystics.
Did you know I was a painter?
I know, hard to tell from this blog, where I have focused ,on the art-making side, on drawing and collages ( no art studio, less place for canvases). But I was a painter, an acrylic one, before I learned how to draw, architecture and other things, before sketching, collages, and before trying my hand with watercolor ( I still use watercolor as acrylic).
I was not a rigidly trained painter, as my teachers encouraged expression over technique. Painting is home.
On Saturday, I participated to Dr. Sketchy San Diego, a fun artistic encounter involving life drawing.
This month’s event was centered around ‘Animal Instinct’ :).
We had a very fun model.
I realized I need these ‘art dates’ to keep me engaged with making art as I find my way back… back to my art studio.
Also, I may just, finally, have found my tribe.
In January I collided with two splendid creatures in Balboa Park, Lila’Angelique and Thoth, which together form Tribal Baroque.
I wanted to share some portraits I took of them, in order to share some of the magic of their presence and music.
Nothing prepares you for the beauty that is Tribal Baroque, but here is a taste of what’s in store if you can make it to one of their prayformances in the park.
This is the Facebook page of Tribal Baroque, so you can catch these fairies who are here in San Diego for a limited time.
{more to come…see below} …….
Four days ago, I spent two hours crafting the perfect posts on my muses, full of links and perfectly ( to me) worded prose.
When I went to publish the post, I LOST everything. It is the first time that this has happened on WordPress, which is usually excellent at saving drafts in progress.
I have been too heartbroken to come back and re-craft my post, but I have new art from Saturday and tonight – yes i started sketching and painting again (!) – and new photographs that I want to share, and life must go on.
Enjoy this images for now.. I will come back in the morning, refreshed, and tell you its stories…
…….
Thank you for bringing the *triple* rainbow and pink sky 😉 :
California Building Tower. Balboa Park, Uptown San Diego. January 2015.
In the past couple of months, we’ve had the most spectacular sunsets – the most magnificent skies, really.
In addition, balmy, magical nights.
I don’t know if it’s just me, but San Diego and Southern California are becoming more and more lovely and precious each day.
It is like falling in love, all over again.
Tonight I want to share some night and sunset shots, reserving the day skies for another post.
These photos have all been taken and corrected on my HTC One camera, hence the sometimes annoying light ‘spilling’, low res and graininess.
I will start carrying my Panasonic camera again, and correcting on Photoshop. I realize that my photos look better on a small screen…
One day I would like to invest in a proper Digital DSRL, but for now accept these artisanal shots.
I have taken to making nightly pilgrimages to our Balboa Park.
This is our cultural park, with more than twenty art museums and Spanish Colonial Revival architecture. The pairing of Spanish architecture and tropical greenery take me to Cuba, to Puerto Rico…to the Caribbeans. Balboa Park was built in 1915 for the Pan-American Exhibition, and is celebrating its Centenary this year!
The central plaza, Plaza de Panama, is now restored as the living room of the city.
To my eye, the park is more and more beautiful each month that goes by.
View from Cabrillo Bridge. Balboa Park, Uptown San Diego. January 2015.
Night view from Cabrillo Bridge. Balboa Park, Uptown San Diego. January 2015.
View of Plaza De Panama. Balboa Park, Uptown San Diego. March 2015.
Balboa Park, Uptown San Diego. March 2015.
Arboretum. Balboa Park, Uptown San Diego. March 2015.
Sculpture Garden. Balboa Park, Uptown San Diego. March 2015.
Museum of Man. Balboa Park, Uptown San Diego. March 2015.
And here are other end-of-day scenes from San Diego.
Normal Heights, San Diego. January 2015.
Bankers' Hill, San Diego. January 2015.
Hillcrest, San Diego. February 2015.
University Heights, San Diego. February 2015.
Hillcrest, San Diego. February 2015.
Downtown San Diego, Gaslamp Quarter, Horton Plaza. December 2014
Downtown San Diego, Gaslamp Quarter, Horton Plaza. December 2014.
Gaslamp Quarter, San Diego. Cafe' Sevilla. January 2015.
163 South Highway towards Downtown San Diego. View from Cabrillo Bridge, Balboa Park. March 2015.
And now, two poems to the Night.
The Night is Still
by Edith Matilda Thomas
The night is still, the moon looks kind,
The dew hangs jewels in the heath,
An ivy climbs across thy blind,
And throws a light and misty wreath.
The dew hangs jewels in the heath,
Buds bloom for which the bee has pined;
I haste along, I quicker breathe,
The night is still, the moon looks kind.
Buds bloom for which the bee has pined,
The primrose slips its jealous sheath,
As up the flower-watched path I wind
And come thy window-ledge beneath.
The primrose slips its jealous sheath,—
Then open wide that churlish blind,
And kiss me through the ivy wreath!
The night is still, the moon looks kind.
….
A Gift
by Leonora Speyer
I Woke: —
Night, lingering, poured upon the world
Of drowsy hill and wood and lake
Her moon-song,
And the breeze accompanied with hushed fingers
On the birches.
Gently the dawn held out to me
A golden handful of bird’s-notes.
Wearing nothing but snakeskin
boots, I blazed a footpath, the first
radical road out of that old kingdom
toward a new unknown.
When I came to those great flaming gates
of burning gold,
I stood alone in terror at the threshold
between Paradise and Earth.
There I heard a mysterious echo:
my own voice
singing to me from across the forbidden
side. I shook awake—
at once alive in a blaze of green fire.
Not knowing where to start, we can start from here, from tonight.
Of all the nights, why not tonight?
I picked up my electronic pen, my fingertips, so many times, only to put it/them back in the drawer.
Fragile, breakable souls…we get overwhelmed so easily…we take so much time to process.
Life is always a zero or thousand percent experience to an artist…we know no ‘efficiency’ or safety…and we crave intensity because, for some of us, that is what art and life is made of.
I tend to store moments, spaces, bodies, souls, words, in mental collages as white-hot and dangerous as rocket turbines.
Fuel for the winters of life, emotions that could only be collected in tranquility.
Yet, what if life moves so fast that there is no time to process it through artwork?
The real life of absorbing work, passionate friends, culture, travel, service, relationships, often happens faster than art, words, and poetry…and demands to be lived with our heart on ‘fingertips and tongues’, as Fernanda Pivano writes.
To be an artist, which is never a choice –or at least not a choice than any sane person would make– requires that not only we live life at its fullest, but that we show up to our craft, that we transform the energy of our life, entropically, into artwork.
As soon as things get a little off- balance, that is, too much time passes without creative outputs, the feeling of being overwhelmed begins. Because the storing of information and experiences that will translate into artwork never stops in an artist.
Sacrifices need to be made…time-outs need to take place for the alchemical crafting of life into art, yet that doesn’t/can’t always happen.
Where does one start, then?
Digging through more than a year’s worth of raw, brilliant life, stupendous falls and magnificent failures….when does collecting become hoarding?
When there is no sharing. Most of us are compelled ( condemned? ) to offer up our work. These words, these ideas, these posts, need to leave my mind so that I and them can be set free.
Then there is time, and guilt.
Time away from the craft that is transformed into guilt.
This is an evil cycle for artists, made worst with each passing day. It is a sort of paralysis, a mental block due not to lack of ideas, but due to too many — coupled with the most peculiar fear of success.
And muses, muses inspire, but also distract, and disrupt. It is in the nature of muses and we won’t fault them.
How many times have I promised myself the return of myself – in full glory? Is this it?
Then I read an introduction to an art exhibit in Rome, something about the concept of ‘taking time’ — the fact that art is also made of the fallow time it took to process life, that the in-between time of silence is an intrinsic part of evolutionary works….
Thank you to Carlotta Pisano for this photo and inspiration.
A work of art is not only what is visible to the eye, but the result of a complex journey, of going-away and re-compositions
The exhibit, which I will never see and exists as a sort of Borgesian riddle
( I have the instructions, yet no machine; this being the whole point of the instructions) aims to
“underline the value, priceless, of that golden moment which is the possibility of producing a kind of thought that looks at art , without the anxiety of having to furnish a product. These works ( we will never see them, therefore we can imagine them as we wish ) have a baggage full of the process that matured and realized them. It is the difference between looking and seeing.”
In these two years, I learned the importance of chaos, and that one must respect it and love it as an akward child.
I learned of nesting, and of working on a home as a temple.
Without order, at least for me, there can be no art, just escapism.
I learned I solve myself by working on external harmony.
(Or maybe I was just avoiding myself, and procrastinating.)
I learned patience, which is not burning anymore, but peaceful. I learned that forgiveness is part of the creative process. And so is letting go.
I learned I am not reading enough books.
I learned that, when I am too tired to do anything else, and sleep does not come, words are there, images are there…and I can go into my vaults and cellars and create something to share with you.
I can write.
It is not academic writing –that will come in time–but something that likes to combines poetic prose or poetry with images. This is the sound my soul would make, if it could sing.
This output brings me immeasurable joy. More importantly, it keeps me alive.
I was recently, and repeatedly, reminded of the quote :
Find what brings you alive,
and do it.
The truth is that without showing up here, my soul atrophies. Simply put, it has become a matter of survival.
A lady I know and love likes to say, in matters of home organization,
You are not behind! I don’t want you to try to catch up;
I just want you to jump in where we are. O.K.?
So I will start from where I am tonight, and work my way back, back through these past two years in images. As I said, I can offer more words and photographs than drawings and paintings at this point.
I decided to stop beating myself up for this.
I will jump in where we are too, with current (attempts at) drawn and painted work, back to using my hands everyday.
Consider this my artistic physical therapy after the most wonderful accidents.
Come when the nights are bright with stars
Or come when the moon is mellow;
Come when the sun his golden bars
Drops on the hay-field yellow.
Come in the twilight soft and gray,
Come in the night or come in the day,
Come, O love, whene’er you may,
And you are welcome, welcome.
You are sweet, O Love, dear Love,
You are soft as the nesting dove.
Come to my heart and bring it to rest
As the bird flies home to its welcome nest.
Come when my heart is full of grief
Or when my heart is merry;
Come with the falling of the leaf
Or with the redd’ning cherry.
Come when the year’s first blossom blows,
Come when the summer gleams and glows,
Come with the winter’s drifting snows,
And you are welcome, welcome.
Paul Laurence Dunbar was one of the first African American poets to gain national recognition.
This poem was published in 1896, when the poet was 24 years old.
He died ten years later.
La Mujer Que Lee ( Woman Who Reads ). Pastel, Paint, Newsprint Collage on Board. 2004
Picture the two of you lamp-shopping at IKEA, orchestrating a from-scratch dinner, and generally being capital-T Together.
Refinery29.com
…
No Te Enamores De Una Mujer Que Lee. [Do Not Fall in Love With A Woman Who Reads]
By Martha Rivera-Garrido
No te enamores de una mujer que lee, de una mujer que siente demasiado, de una mujer que escribe… No te enamores de una mujer culta, maga, delirante, loca. No te enamores de una mujer que piensa, que sabe lo que sabe y además sabe volar; una mujer segura de sí misma. No te enamores de una mujer que se ríe o llora haciendo el amor, que sabe convertir en espíritu su carne; y mucho menos de una que ame la poesía (esas son las más peligrosas), o que se quede media hora contemplando una pintura y no sepa vivir sin la música. No te enamores de una mujer a la que le interese la política y que sea rebelde y vertigue un inmenso horror por las injusticias. Una a la que le gusten los juegos de fútbol y de pelota y no le guste para nada ver televisión. Ni de una mujer que es bella sin importar las características de su cara y de su cuerpo. No te enamores de una mujer intensa, lúdica y lúcida e irreverente. No quieras enamorarte de una mujer así. Porque cuando te enamoras de una mujer como esa, se quede ella contigo o no, te ame ella o no, de ella, de una mujer así, JAMAS se regresa”.
Don´t fall in love with a woman who reads, with a woman who feels too much, with a woman who writes… Don’t fall in love with a cultivated, magician, delirious, crazy woman. Don’t fall in love with a woman who thinks, who knows what she knows and also knows how to fly; a woman sure of herself. Don’t fall in love with a woman who laughs or cries while making love, who is capable of turning her flesh into spirit. Don´t fall in love with a woman who loves poetry (those are the most dangerous) , who could spend half an hour staring at a painting and can’t live without music. Don’t fall in love with a woman who is interested in politics; one who is rebellious and suffers enormously because of inequality and injustices. A woman who enjoys football matches and ball games but doesn´t like to watch television at all. Don´t you dare to fall in love with a woman who is gorgeous no matter her face or her body – an intense, playful, lucid and irreverent woman. You don’t want to fall in love with a woman like that. Because if you do so, whether she stays with you or not, whether she loves you back or not, from her, from a woman like that, you´ll NEVER EVER return.
Plaza de Panama. Balboa Park, San Diego. December 2014.
I was trying to find a poem
To describe your skin, night
But the poets don’t know
the hours, or the look i just tried on you–
I cannot find you in their words.
I am always hiding in their verses,
moon behind clouds.
Distilling memories, crafting them into images, words:
what is the wine that we drink?
and who can write about the way you held me?
They do not have a name for this, for how perfect we were, the amber and coffee
of our hips.
Your kind chest,
your arms, taut as steel,
and the fact that i did not look at you, not once, afraid of learning too much
from the way you walked,
or the way your clothes fell.
Drowning so sweet,
tender fire.
Name the nights this year,
count them on the palm
of one hand.
Indifferent city, i stole moments of brilliance
from your stingy months.
I ride dark, subversive waters
and capsize
continuously.
‘Until the inconscious is made conscious, the subconscious will rule your life, and you will call it Destiny.’ Carl Jung
Do the poets write
of a lion lying with his lioness?
Of fleeting things?
You drove and i held your hand
You told me one must laugh, pray and cry,
everyday.
I argued the last point.
Anything Can Happen. Anything Can Be. Santa Monica, California. November 2014.
How to Love By January Gill O’Neil
After stepping into the world again,
there is that question of how to love,
how to bundle yourself against the frosted morning—
the crunch of icy grass underfoot, the scrape
of cold wipers along the windshield—
and convert time into distance.
What song to sing down an empty road
as you begin your morning commute?
And is there enough in you to see, really see,
the three wild turkeys crossing the street
with their featherless heads and stilt-like legs
in search of a morning meal? Nothing to do
but hunker down, wait for them to safely cross.
As they amble away, you wonder if they want
to be startled back into this world. Maybe you do, too,
waiting for all this to give way to love itself,
to look into the eyes of another and feel something—
the pleasure of a new lover in the unbroken night,
your wings folded around him, on the other side
of this ragged January, as if a long sleep has ended.
Our collective consciousness does not allow punishment where it cannot impose blame.
United States v. Lyon
Judge Alvin Benjamin Rubin, dissenting
There is of course the other idea: that the intricate latticework
Of our bodies loosed from us at last will leave us free
To become anything, pure light, perhaps, or wing-beats
In fresh powder beneath some maples locked up in their thin veneer
Of ice. But then as always a sudden gust and the limbs’ clacking,
And, as when some insurgent sound crosses over the porous border
Of a dream, the world recrystallizes around us: midday, snow-
Grayed, the wind-chill’s sub-zero like a ball-peen to the forehead.
It’s cold enough to quiet even the soul’s feathery throat-song,
And so it does. Nothing moves and I move through the woods
At the edge of its city with dog, hoping he’ll shit his daily shit
Before this reddening flesh numbs entirely. Nothing moves,
But beneath months-thick ice and powder, winter’s put up its dead:
Squirrels and sparrows, the wren and the fox, whole families
Of field mice posed as if in the pet store’s deep freeze, even,
Here and there, scattered and whole, occasional missing persons.
For now, for guilty, for guiltless, no matter, the world offers neither
Deliverance nor decay, and though we trust in that the thaw
Will come, that someday soon some pond water, water
Still and softly rippled as pre-War window-glass, will again reflect
Its image of the bloodless sky, cut, at intervals, by spring’s
First returning vultures, and though the police will then take
A little comfort, as they kick the MOBILE CRIME LAB’s tires
Before rolling it out for the season, that the birds help at least
To ease the legwork, we know no one’s, you know, going to be
Set free. The skull’s thin as eggshell so far as the beak’s thick curve
Is concerned. The raisin of the eye’s an easy delicacy.
And so to imagine the future is to imagine the present, but warmer,
But more forthrightly, more honestly violent. And so another day’s
Bones picked clean. There is of course the idea’s consolation:
For eternal patience, eternal reward, for the meek, the Earth’s
Corpse. Instead, a sort of waking sleep, a sort of waking slow;
We rub our eyes, warm the last of yesterday’s coffee, stare
As our email loads: surely something must have come, surely
Someone has spirited us that which would make all the difference.
We call to complain that nothing’s working because we like
The on-hold music, which is a sound other than our breathing.
We ask the music if we can speak to its supervisor but when we try
To explain it only laughs, Guiltless! Who do you think you are anyway?,
Laughs its little soprano sax laugh before it loops back to its loop’s
Beginning. The coffee pot runs on mediated coal and drips acids.
The car’s topped up with artillery and emits amputees. The idea was
Waking would make things clearer, would startle us as from any night’s
Nightmare: these sheets’ cold which is not bare concrete floor,
This patch of light the moon has cast not the interrogator’s light,
This knocking in our head not some still-indecipherable code
Tapped against an adjacent wall by who knows who, by someone
We can’t even begin to imagine, someone stuck here longer
Than even ourselves yet still committed to the idea that finding
A way to speak to each other would help matters, this knocking
None of that but rather something real, here, furnace clank or thief
In the night, something real and something present and not
The dream of what must be held that way until it stops thrashing,
Not the dream of being held that way, but what could be danger
Or else nothing once more, which means we prowl once more
The house, ridiculous in our underwear, ridiculous with a flashlight
Gripped like a truncheon, the floorboards cold somehow as bare
Concrete, the floorboards that croak somehow like vultures who are
Not here, who winter south, scan the Sonoran desert’s northern
Edge, its empty water bottles and tire ruts and those nameless
It dries to a sort of jerky, those nameless who labored in vain
To cross it, who had hoped that in crossing, they would be set free.
Nothing’s wrong, the house secure, bolts bolted, latches latched.
Somewhere in the distance beyond the kitchen window, downtown
And its bus bench bail bondsman, downtown and its graffiti
Covered wall’s Great Writ:Repent! The End Is Nigh! As always, as always,
Answers the darkness. But, pre-War? In what will soon enough be
Dawn-light, in this near-light, who can tell if it’s blood spread thin
On our hands or else just a healthy, living glow? Outside, the idea
Of night and the idea of day seem to have come to a standoff.
No one’s calling for negotiations. We know what happens next:
Whether the stars flicker or merely flinch, the sun, whose face
Is a badge, has always been a little trigger happy. And though
The firestorm will consume, soon enough, everything, it seems
For the moment this will go on. As if indefinitely. As if without cause.
perhaps one day soon
i will tell you about puerto rico, taíno heart, and driving into méxico at midnight
like two fugitive moths
the indio angels
perhaps i will share the secret tales
of a heart that keeps returning
to the south
and reading poetry as an act
of revolution.
i did not forget. i am not gone.
i never gave up.
artists cannot stop seeing and sharing beauty, no more than poets can stop feeling and bleeding ink.
it is not a choice for us.
understand that a pen lies dormant sometimes, oftentimes,
only to gather strength, and stories,
like our souls.
only to heal.
the vessel eventually spills over.
i will tell you about calabria, my tierra, my fisherman father, then new mexico, the beautiful natives of this country, their poignant song…and the lines i wrote
at ten thousand feet
they might make sense
once stitched together.
i will talk about
traveling as an act of infinite love
to heal, to forgive, to archive
yet never, never forget (i will never let you go, hold you into the light)
but i will never say a word.
there will be more photos than drawings, please forgive me.
there will be, more often than not, no explanations, and little context [as in life]
accept these scattered offerings.
what is the music that one hears
as we change skin?
i can only bring back
dispatches.
the giving of one’s self
receiving infinite blessings
and signs
i will find a way to share this
hiding my hands, covering my mouth.
breaking awful tiles on that grey vinyl floor ! and every instance that made me thankful
for a heart that was broke open
like a seed that could finally flower.
for a traveling soul
that will always eschew expediency
for narrative.
but not tonight.
tonight is not the night
for everything to be told.
it’s a start, a shy coming back
after months abroad.
the new world, the old world.
i return to the shuttered home,
look at these years
stacked in neat boxes,
wrapped with care, once.
a gift from ourselves, to ourselves.
it is time to return,
harvesttime is once upon us, and finds me stronger.
it is time to shake the dust covers, unpack
and finally, finally move in.
there is never enough time to do housework, single reader,
but i figured you know
it is not the thought of unfinished laundry
that keeps me up at night.
Villa Real de la Santa Fe de San Francisco de Asis, July 2014
Love after Love
The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply;
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
Thus in the winter stands a lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet know its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone;
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.
Saturn seems habitual,
The way it rages in the sky
When we’re not looking.
On this note, the trees still sing
To me, and I long for this
Mottled world. Patterns
Of the lamplight on this leather,
The sun, listening.
My brother, my sister,
I was born to tell you certain
Things, even if no one
Really listens. Give it back
To me, as the bird takes up
The whole sky, ruined with
Nightfall. If I can remember
The words in the storm,
I will be well enough to sit
Here with you a little while.
A friend of mine, The Book Madam, shared this lyrical work – and I could not help passing it on.
Haunting, mesmerizing and beautiful, the Topography of Tears reminds us that there is an architecture to our memories, our grief, our love.
The stark landscapes depicted are aerial maps of emotions – tears may spring from the eyes, but they are crystallized by our minds.
Seen at a microscopic level, tears become tangible maps of our heart, site plans of our soul-states.
Our alchemy knows the difference between the landscapes of memory, cascading mirth, the drifting flotsam of grief, and the continents of hope.
From the author:
The Topography of Tears
‘The Topography of Tears is a study of 100 tears photographed through a standard light microscope.
The project began in a period of personal change, loss, and copious tears.
One day I wondered if my tears of grief would look any different from my tears of happiness – and I set out to explore them up close.
Years later, this series comprises a wide range of my own and others’ tears, from elation to onions, as well as sorrow, frustration, rejection, resolution, laughing, yawning, birth and rebirth, and many more, each a tiny history.
The random compositions I find in magnified tears often evoke a sense of place, like aerial views of emotional terrain.
Although the empirical nature of tears is a chemistry of water, proteins, minerals, hormones, antibodies and enzymes, the topography of tears is a momentary landscape, transient as the fingerprint of someone in a dream.
This series is like an ephemeral atlas.
Roaming microscopic vistas, I marvel at the visual similarities between micro and macro realms, how the patterning of nature seems so consistent, regardless of scale.
Patterns of erosion etched into earth over millions of years may look quite similar to the branched crystalline patterns of an evaporated tear that took less than a minute to occur.
Tears are the medium of our most primal language in moments as unrelenting as death, as basic as hunger, and as complex as a rite of passage.
They are the evidence of our inner life overflowing its boundaries, spilling over into consciousness.
Wordless and spontaneous, they release us to the possibility of realignment, reunion, catharsis: shedding tears, shedding old skin.
It’s as though each one of our tears carries a microcosm of the collective human experience, like one drop of an ocean.’
Thank you mamma for letting me draw on the walls with permanent markers, for drawing our profiles in the moonlight, for the watermelon eaten with spoons on a beach still asleep, for all the walks, for the picnics in lawns amongst the highways, where you would bring my net, so I could catch butterflies.
The sacrificial lamb- an old leather jacket already repaired twice.
With my pattern and leather in the Materials Lab, to trace images in Illustrator and experiment with the laser cutting process. “The object feels good if the process feels good.”
The laser etched leather swatches. Fire drawings…scars…tattoos and cattle branding.
Preparing for night surgical cutting, tailoring and riveting. And documenting. The whole project came about in three days (Friday to Sunday), but was months in the making (and in the thinking, and in the promising).
The prototypes are done!
Laying out this graphic board illustrating the process took longer than I would like to admit. In the end, it was a process of elimination…which is the secret to design, really.
Exhibit time. Board layout #2 with Illustrator patterns :).
Experiments with recycled leather, tattoo patterns and the laser cutter in our Materials Lab for the Action/Reaction Faculty show, where students react to faculty work.
I chose to explore these tribal tattoo patterns I drew long ago and finally turn them into ‘temporary’ leather tattoos – since an actual tribal armband tattoo is out of the question (#italianmother).
In the process, I learned how to make leather-on-leather tattoos, used the laser cutter for the first time, hand-cut till my hands were sore, learned how to put rivets, and was taught about vector lines and patterns in lllustrator by my wonderful, patient students.
Thanks to student feedback/critique (which was extremely positive about the artifacts :)) the board could use one more ‘pass’ as far as fonts and background, but I wanted to post this now, as the show is coming to a close.
While researching case studies, I was astonished by the amount of cool accessories, arm bands and earrings made with recycled bike tires and inner tubes.
Etsy, here I come.
Here are some photos from the Action|Reaction opening, by Donn Angel Perez, the curator of the show (and author of the beautiful paintings shown), along with student Chuck Wilson
For the opening- in keeping with the recycled/sustainable theme, and to save time 😉 – I projected my board.
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<<<and this, this little guy on my desktop just makes me happy.
Thom, one of my past students, showed me his project during our school’s Finals’ Exhibit –where the best projects from each year were showcased.
He had found a silhouette that happened to look like me and placed it in his final rendering. 🙂
Don Draper: As much as I would like to join all the ads making fun of the ubiquitous San Francisco hippie, let’s try to trade on the word ‘love’ as something substantial.
– I don’t think that it’s possible in this context.
Don Draper:
So why are we contributing to the trivialization of the word? It doesn’t belong in the kitchen.
” I love this.”
” I love my oven.”
” You know what I’d love ?
I’d love a hamburger.”
We are wearing it out.
Let’s leave it where we want it.
We want that electric jolt to the body.
We want Eros. It’s like a drug.
It’s not domestic.
What’s the difference between a husband knocking on a door and a sailor getting off a ship?
A lover knows only humility,
He has no choice.
He steals into your alley at night,
He has no choice.
He longs to kiss every lock of your hair,
Don’t fret,
He has no choice.
In his frenzied love for you,
He longs to break the chains of his imprisonment,
He has no choice.
A lover asked his beloved,
“Do you love yourself more than you love me?”
And the loved replied:
“I have died to myself and I live for you,
I’ve disappeared from myself and my attributes,
I am present only for you.
I have forgotten all my learnings,
But from knowing you I have become a scholar.
I have lost all my strength,
But from your power I am able.
I love myself,
I love you.
I love you,
I love myself.”
I am your lover,
Come to my side,
I will open the gate to your love.
Come settle with me,
Let us be neighbors in the stars.
You have been hiding so long,
Endlessly drifting in the sea of my love.
Even so, you have always been connected to me.
Concealed, revealed, in the norm, in the un-manifest.
I am life itself.
You have been a prisoner of a little pond,
I am the ocean and its turbulent flood.
Come merge with me.
Leave this world behind us.
Be with me,
I will open the gate to your love.
I desire you more than food or drink.
My body, my senses, my mind,
Hunger for your taste.
I can sense your presence in my heart.
Although you belong to all the world,
I wait in silent passion,
For one gesture, one glance.
Gianni Aiello. Self-Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. 1970’s. Italy.
Gianni Aiello (Papa’). Liguria, Italia. Possibly 1972.
Gianni Aiello (Papa’) with cousin Giuseppe, next to the fishing shack La Baracca. 1972 (to be verified;))
As promised months ago (ehm), finally, the series on my larger-than-life father, Gianni Aiello, begins.
My father is the son of a fisherman, and his life is the sea. He is a true Calabrese, wandering about as a young man but returning to settle in his native land, by his Ionian shore. After helping his father as a teenager, he became a policeman and an athlete. At 22 he was shot in the line of duty during a hostage siege on the island of Sardinia. A series of operations on the right side of his jaw left him scarred and looking like one of the bad guys. Later, in his thirties, he and his Swiss brother-in-law, zio Marco, started a motorboat shop and storage plus Suzuki reseller. Whenever i think of the officina each summer I smell fiberglass and see my dad, tan and shirtless in the sun, lifting concrete deadweights, putting outboards to water, and sometimes building boats from resin shells brought by the sea.
Always working with his hands, never far away from his sea, and returning to his passion off-season : fishing with traditional nets.
As a young policeman in Venice in the 60’s, my dad crashed art classes at the Accademia and hung out with artists and misfits. I collected here the paintings from his youth that are still in the house where he grew up. He lives there, beachfront, near the fishing shack his father built and that he turned into a work of art (more on this later).
Gianni Aiello. 1970’s. Venezia. Italy.
Gianni Aiello. 1970’s. Venezia. Italy.
Throughout it all, my dad is drawing boats, boats and fish, boats and fish and fishermen (my grandfather used to do the same on the edge of the newspaper). He is carving boats out of olive wood, making miniature fishing boats, and painting boats. He is constantly making or repairing stuff: cleaning and mending the nets, repairing the motor of his WWII Jeep ‘the Americans left’ , or adding to his living art installation, the fishing shack, or Baracca, of which I shared glimpses here (as it was) , here and here, and that stops tourists in their tracks. He is adding hand carved kitchen utensils for the house on the hill, or scavenging old farmhouses for vintage furniture, when he is not working on his fishing boat, Elena.
Gianni Aiello. 1977.
Gianni Aiello. 1978.
Gianni Aiello. 2000’s. Calabria. Italia.
He is a busy craftsman – I am sure by now you can gather Gianni is a character. He is a fisherman, a painter, a drawer, a sculptor, a designer and a coffee maker. Above all, he is a dreamer, even though his gruff side would balk at this. The whole library of my adolescence was made up of books that made my dad, and, in the frontispiece there would always be a page of his diary, part of his itinerant memoir.
Sometimes he would mention a woman, or life on the road. Sometimes he would copy a poem, or write to himself.
One time he wrote to me, when I was one year old – he was (only) 30.
They were revolutionary books and novels of magical realism. One Hundred Years of Solitude, Bernard Malamud, the Anarchist Black Book, Roots, Black Boy, Mao Tse Tung’s Red Manual, Hemingway, Garcia Lorca…so on and so forth.
Gianni Aiello. 1970’s.
Gianni Aiello. 1975.
My father doesn’t paint on canvas or draw on paper these days, but his whole world is art, full of sculpture and artifacts.
Whenever I visit home, I ‘make’ my dad draw me something for my collages or prompt him to start on some art project. Inevitably, we end up collaborating…here, here and here . For years, these times were the only way we could spend hours together without arguing. Even though my dad would tease me when he saw me with my sketchbook (do you make any money with that?) he was always happy do art with me.
Today, he is used to see me going to work cutting up magazines while we watch Italian drama… and he even offers suggestions.
In December 2011, my mom, dad and I were in Milano for the Holidays and one day my dad announces: “Let’s go buy some paints!”. It was a happy hunt through the half shuttered down city. This is the result:
These days, I am embracing and appreciating the time it takes me to complete tasks. By letting my many projects marinade, each is given the time needed to grow and mature. Ideas and execution, for some, are fast-tracked. To me, they mature into each other like fine wine. I have been productive, yet deliberately steeping. Pondering and moving slowly- yet inexorably – like a steamroller- not drowning in manic busywork as some do, in order to avoid their naked thoughts.
There is a saying: slowly but surely. I like that. I hope in that. I think coming to terms with one’s pace is part of accepting the way we process life, events, feelings. I think it is important to honor one’s response time in terms of well-being, and artistic and creative output. Of course this runs counter-intuitive to all the deadlines we (architecture) professors set for our students, and I do not know how to solve the riddle – or that of quality over quantity – when we need to have certain set standards for assignments and projects.
Not easy.
It used to be perfectionism and fear of success (yes, you heard right) that froze me – but now I have seen enough to know the seasons and the flows of activities- and that everything is cyclical. I do still procrastinate. I do wait for inspiration with major creative task, and for the right time (it usually comes at night). Miracles do happen to me right before something is due. But, somehow, everything comes together beautifully. When I produce, it is exactly what I envision, often better…the pieces, transformed by time, fit in more perfect ways. Serendipity comes into play. And in serendipity and promethean connection lies the magic.
I may be late, but I’m always on time.
My friend Bruce, in his Myth and Symbols class, in order to explain the ‘myth of time’ compared absolute time with miti time. All the students knew what he meant and smiled.
It made me giggle.
Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.
“What is love? There is nothing in the world, neither man nor Devil nor any thing, that I hold as suspect as love, for it penetrates the soul more than any other thing. Nothing exists that so fills and binds the heart as love does. Therefore, unless you have those weapons that subdue it, the soul plunges through love into an immense abyss.”
“Love is wiser than wisdom.”
“Yesterday’s rose endures in its name, we hold empty names.”
I went to my Sunday practice at the Self Realization Fellowship yesterday, and during the retreat we did some visualization exercises – which was perfect because one of my goals for this long weekend was to do art and post here…since…ehm… we are almost at the end of the month (yikes!).
Below, a project I (finally) completed yesterday…the manuscript for my second book of art and poetry.
Here is the first…planning to put both on blurb.com after some design decisions are made.
Off to a good start …happy, vibrant and loving 2014.
To ‘post’ something once referred to mailing a missive – it’s ironic we use the terminology of a technology that the internet has almost replaced to explain the workings of said internet. Sort of like how in the early 19th century the workings of the brains were referred to in terms of hydraulics.
Nonetheless, I am sending out these digital postcards for the passer-byes, the dear ones, the far away ones.
Above, my Christmas presents from my students.
The ‘one hundred small books’ were a project for the Advanced Presentation course I taught.
To start the conversation on small scale binding, I brought some of my mini books to show.
How did I end up with these? 😛
My students could choose their own narrative and learned how to bind books using different techniques and materials.
We covered layout through a discussion on portfolio graphics and blog and website design –and used some color palette tools–
so for the final project I wanted to do something different and strange, inspired by an artist in the 70’s who created one hundred little books.
Some of them are portfolios, some poetry, photography…a couple are on love and music 🙂
There is even Dostoevsky’s novella ‘White Night’ and a book entirely on coffee and quotes, both done by Anastasia, a fellow artist (someone knows me!).
I will post more pages from the little books once school resumes. I also (shocking, I know) have a little book on coffee quotes at home, bought in Italy few Christmases ago. I’ve been meaning to write a post about it, and now I will share it with you – and Anastasia 🙂
Also there were lots and lots of sketchbooks from my History of Architecture students (!).
I. love. them.
Before I go (get coffee), some coffee quotes from my little coffee book:
If asked: ‘How do you take your coffee’?
I reply : ‘Very Seriously’
Unknown
Coffee is a language in itself
Jackie Chan
Wake up!
Drink coffee…
Then think.
Unknown
Coffee is the favorite drink
of the civilized world.
Thomas Jefferson
Black as night,
Sweet as sin.
Neil Gaiman ‘Anansi Boys’
Deja Brew:
The feeling you’ve had
this coffee before.
Unknown Coffee
It is inhumane, in my opinion, to force people who have a genuine medical need for coffee to
wait in line behind people who apparently view it as some kind of recreational activity.
Making Bracelets [Nights at Bassam’s]. Digitally manipulated photographs. December 2013.
“We all need someone to look at us. We can be divided into four categories according to the kind of look we wish to live under.
The first category longs for the look of an infinite number of anonymous eyes, in other words, for the look of the public. The second category is made up of people who have a vital need to be looked at by many known eyes. They are the tireless hosts of cocktail parties and dinners. They are happier than the people in the first category, who, when they lose their public, have the feeling that the lights have gone out in the room of their lives. This happens to nearly all of them sooner or later. People in the second category, on the other hand, can always come up with the eyes they need. Then there is the third category, the category of people who need to be constantly before the eyes of the person they love. Their situation is as dangerous as the situation of people in the first category. One day the eyes of their beloved will close, and the room will go dark. And finally there is the fourth category, the rarest, the category of people who live in the imaginary eyes of those who are not present. They are the dreamers.”
Milan Kundera
-the definition of unconditional-
daydreamer
stargazer
we make an unlikely couple
– we sure do –
i’ve been in my head
dangerously close to the sun
i don’t have icarus’ wax wings –
mine are made of foil
they will not melt, but burn.
turn your journals into songs,
irresponsible happinesses,
stringing beads and giddy smiles…
i always, still, get lost in the immense, dark pools of your eyes
drawn to, swim in, drown.
undeniable whirlpools, deep waters: as far as i am concerned, the whole building tilts towards them. i can’t escape the pull.
their whites, though, is like the white of clouds
i could stare at them, and calm myself,
like one does with cumuli and strata, cirri.
i’ve been making a mixtape –
each song was bought and paid for in heart pieces.
i have traveled
through winters in fargo,
my freshman years,
nights in Florence,
i have opened lost love letters in california.
for you, it’s always for you.
and if i’m wasting my love
if you are stealing it
I’m a more than willing victim
fake-fainting in the arms of the gentleman thief.
your handling always extracts poetry from me,
you are an expert player – and I am pliant.
we don’t live in paris or rome, i know, but i swear on our stolen nights i was walking by the river and looking at the stars —
we are not on park boulevard: we are in heaven.
perhaps it was just need that brought us together
we wanted fire
and it was provided.
I am convinced we are each others’ figments of the imagination.
because nothing is ever real when we are together: it’s vivid, surreal pura vida, and exists in air chambers.
or, perhaps what i have with you is reality, only feeling, only present, only now –
the rest is a filler.
time is relative under the bell, we are forever kissing – every action continues in perpetuity.
months go by, but i just held you.
the silence is absolute, and you can’t hear my screams. I know better now.
i wake up with sentences fully formed,
i have not left your eyes or your chest where I slept.
where you let me sleep for the first time.
i am still there.
i am letting the days go by
as one gazes, mesmerized, at colorful and bland socks
tumbling in the dryer.
this is what i really want to do,
tell you that i replay your words in my mind,
that i am happy you feel my eyes on your
[caressing] eyes.
that you kissed me with lips of pillows and petals
and that i slept in them.
that your skin is made of the most exquisite silk
and that each kiss i gave you was my blessing.
i wanted to use our bodies as instruments
make love, no, a symphony.
the words that part us will never come from my lips
or my fingers.
we both know that i am unable.
there is an overlap between
freedom and loneliness.
i’m perhaps utterly lost,
but finally at peace.
i want you to know,
i would never take a single touch or word
for granted. or your soulheartbody.
the night dissolved in your arms
faded
devotion made touch, flesh, verb, breath-
you are the definition of unconditional.
more paper trails for me to burn on,
Love is not warm milk.
i want to
adorn you in precious metals and words
last night’s embers are still glowing.
Steel. Digital manipulation, text brush. December 2013.
Movement Song
By Audre Lorde
I have studied the tight curls on the back of your neck
moving away from me
beyond anger or failure
your face in the evening schools of longing
through mornings of wish and ripen
we were always saying goodbye
in the blood in the bone over coffee
before dashing for elevators going
in opposite directions
without goodbyes.
Do not remember me as a bridge nor a roof
as the maker of legends
nor as a trap
door to that world
where black and white clericals
hang on the edge of beauty in five oclock elevators
twitching their shoulders to avoid other flesh
and now
there is someone to speak for them
moving away from me into tomorrows
morning of wish and ripen
your goodbye is a promise of lightning
in the last angels hand
unwelcome and warning
the sands have run out against us
we were rewarded by journeys
away from each other
into desire
into mornings alone
where excuse and endurance mingle
conceiving decision.
Do not remember me
as disaster
nor as the keeper of secrets
I am a fellow rider in the cattle cars
watching
you move slowly out of my bed
saying we cannot waste time
only ourselves.
I found and lost myself inside of that night. Collage. Graphite, fountain ink, found objects. San Diego. December 9, 2013.
These collages are starting to need a change of byline for SketchBloom: Art Therapy. Oh well;)
Above, a work in progress (and, darling aren’t we all?)..not sure which way it will go.
In the midst of nude painting to be done from memory (and I have started sketching, too bad the final product won’t be posted here), there’s been art and feelings on fire.
…
In the quest for ASCII hearts ( yes, lots of hearts are needed ) I found these lovely images.
This is a program called ASCIIART – which goes beyond recreating images in characters to delving into typography…and…this had me at hello.
I cannot wait to experiment with some black and white art.
…
Also, a return to poetry, literature and tender music. Maybe a new poem will blossom soon…the ingredients are there once again.
Some quotes from a book I am finally finishing (quotes that became a poem): The Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter. Freedom and loneliness overlap, look in the mirror, my face, these words reversed.
Hearing his name caused him to turn back again
looking into her eyes was like standing by a door slightly ajar
how could you not push open the door
see what lay inside?
…
And that door seemed to open a little.
and the glimpse he had beyond the door tortured him
he wanted to say more, to say everything on his mind, but he couldn’t.
It wasn’t a question of language.
He doubted the words existed in any language.
…
He forced himself to look away from her then.
It was like prying a magnet off steel.
…
It was as though, outside of that room, there could be such a thing as ‘right’ and ‘wrong’.
Alhambra: Hall of the Ambassadors. 1370. Granada, Spain
I have not been doing much art, obviously.
What I have been doing is lots of community outreach, poster design and design thinking, and an inordinate amount of history of architecture presentations :).
In my research, I found these beautiful, strange images.
I organized them in a narrative.
Ca’D’ Oro, Venezia.
Library of Celus. Roman building in Anatolia (Turkey).
El Deir. Petra, Jordan. 1st Century CE.
Taos Pueblo.
Hassan Fathy. New Gourna Village, Egypt. 1945-1948.
Hindu Mandala
Sigirya Lion Rock. Sri Lanka. It should be called Turtle Rock.
William Morris. Textile Design.
…this one is dedicated to Thom.
Sultan Hassan Mosque, Cairo.
View eastward into the Roman Forum.
Darbar Sahib. Sikh Temple. India, 1764.
All images from Global History of Architecture, by Ching et Al.
Timing Is Everything Exhibit Poster- digitally modified.
An apropos message from the Universe tonight- in form of a collage.
This is a promising exhibit at the UCSD University Art Gallery-
up until December 6.
In my non-teaching/working hours (very few since October) I have turned from an artist to a professional architecture/art/urban design event goer, organizer, supporter, disseminator and even instigator.
I was even called a ‘charming mistress of ceremony’ yesterday {blush}.
I miss my art, poetry languishes, yet I am galvanized by the many opportunities for interconnectedness between the non-profit sector,art,architecture and public space. The potential for a seachange in the urban landscape of San Diego is finally palpable.
It is so exciting to be contributing from the Academic angle, and involving my wonderful, patient students.
Yesterday Milenko Matanovic of the Pomegranate Center spoke about the difference between cleverness and creativity, and of being an artist, and an artist who is a community organizer.
Being clever involves prioritizing one goal above others, often the furthering one’s artistic vision. It is a solo flight.
True creativity contains a collaborative element, and is welcoming and sensitive to the goals of others. It is Mindful of the collective good, of timing, and rhythms.
Why is life worth living? It’s a very good question. Um… Well, There are certain things I guess that make it worthwhile. uh… Like what… okay… um… For me, uh… ooh… I would say… what, Groucho Marx, to name one thing… uh… um… and Wilie Mays… and um… the 2nd movement of the Jupiter Symphony… and um… Louis Armstrong, recording of Potato Head Blues… um… Swedish movies, naturally… Sentimental Education by Flaubert… uh… Marlon Brando, Frank Sinatra… um… those incredible Apples and Pears by Cezanne… uh… the crabs at Sam Wo’s… uh… Tracy’s face.
Builtculture logo. Digital Manipulation. October 2013.
Happy November!
If you have been wondering what I have been up to, I have been here.
Builtculture is a project I have started last year with a graduate student, Samar Sepehri. It is finally taking off.
(If you are so inclined, and feel like Liking our page, please do so!).
I designed our logo, starting from an image of bukhoor, and overlaying over an image of San Diego.
The creative juice have been applied to community outreach, still I was happy to be making something art-like.
Related to this, I have been working on bringing speakers and workshops in the field of community and activist design, such as this:
Also related to this, I went over the border, to Tjiuana to work on an international project, make connections and do a bit of wine tasting and cultural sightseeing.
I also went to Deer Park Monastery for a Day of Mindfulness.
As I leaf through the MIT Art/ Architecture/Visual Arts Catalogue on a street cafe…wanting everything in there -time above all- and everything in general, by default.
La Baracca del Bucaniere - Fisherman's Shack - The Kitchen. Graphite and watercolor. Calabria, Italia. September 18, 2013.
Black and White Figs. Graphite and watercolor. Calabria, Italia. September 18, 2013.
The fastest drawings, right before leaving.
So many watercolor sheets to fill, and beautiful travel magazines to cut up for my collages.
I had to leave them behind and go…
Until another summer.
La Baracca del Bucaniere, Cucina. Graphite. Calabria, Italia, 2013
Few days ago I started this drawing, which I am hoping to finish in the morning. It’s time to pack and head back to my California.
I take with me many images, sounds, voices, messages…my metaphysical bag is always full after such extended trips to Italy, my home.
As a promise of things to come, I have been working the past few days on many posts that will feature the work of my father, my father the fisherman, painter, drawer, sculptor and designer.
My rugged, difficult, wonderful, talented father.
Then I have few posts on Calabria, my beloved and challenged Southern Italian region- sorting through three years of photos has been both grueling and rewarding.
Lastly, dispatches from my travels to Buffalo, New York City and Santa Fe.
The whole organizing effort has been quite the task.
This is the price for not posting enough this summer ;/
I always like to alternate drawings and artifacts to photography, so I offer today this humble work in progress which will become a watercolor.
Yesterday I was talking about sketchbloom to my friend Annamaria, who is a an apothecary with a lovely herbal store (erboristeria) in my little Southern Italian town.
Her store is called Radice Nuova or
New Root.
I was telling her that the days I do not share and make my art I feel I am neglecting a fundamental part of me…
‘as though you are not watering the plant’, she finished my sentence.
In fact, behind the stage, in darkness and silence, seeds are growing and blooming…thoughts and ideas are taking roots. Philosophy lessons, Japanese pillow books. Russian classics, Italian troubadours of the anarchic 60’s…this is the water I have been drinking this summer.
And time, alone and together, time for many coffees with my father, time for night yoga by the sea, full moon, with my mother, time to pick figs and grapes, time to work and to rest, time to spend with beautiful friends of youth and the soul, family time with my people, time to fish, time to swim and soak, meditate, in the sun, time to write, think and renew, time to listen to Italian music and reconnect to my roots, time to love hard, time to read.
Time to finally have time.
Always time that processes, metabolizes and purifies..time that brings strength and clarity.
Above all, I am thankful for the time this summer to be, think, live like an artist, to make and organize art, storing things for the winter of the soul.
Leaving California is exciting, especially when I get to use my passport, but returning, having filled my eyes, mind and spirit elsewhere, always means new beginnings.
I travel to remember (Southern California is light, has neither memory nor regret…nothing like the weight of the past felt in Italy), and return to forget
— and live in the Now.
Ink on Hand Book paper and digital manipulation. Berkeley, California, 2010.
Sometimes it takes finding a portrait you do not remember drawing….a sketch you do not immediately recognize as your own- yet find intriguing and technically correct, to remind you you are an artist, you can do these things.
You, in fact, do these things- it is your work, a beloved toil- your ink on paper is like rubber on the road for others.
Days with no art are never complete, nor true – or honest, as Papa Hemingway would say.
I can’t help but thinking one should not need such reminders….
Muji paper bag, found material. Milano, Italia, January 2012.
As Stephen King used to address his imaginary interlocutor…
Dear Reader,
Conscious of my erratic posting frequency lately and sudden absences and reappearances, I feel it is right to append few words to this latest image and not once more slink out without, if not an explanation, at least a taste for things to come.
To the handful of Sketchbloom aficionados, a reassurance that this digital sketchbook has many pages yet to be filled.
This hiatus was a leavening and not the intermittent sputtering of an engine about to give out.
I have been traveling and working within and without, intensely, compiling new travel material and unearthing little gems to share from the past four years.
Call it a spring cleaning of many, many drives that was long overdue and undertaken in the mind first and, secondarily, going through storage media in different geographies.
It’s going to be a long, luscious end-of-summer, of images like frames of a wanderer’s life-movie , of odes to my father that will live next to art made by hands, of necessary, daily making, of teaching…and thoughts, words and warmth that become memories and poetry.
I finally (finally!) feel caught up and organized, ready to knock out creative projects I have flirted with for years. Along with the biggies, a lot of posts ready to be shared.
My cardboard suitcase is always packed, and I’m taking you with me.
Miami: A thought transcends the hedonism and whisphers of zen and of an aesthetic bleached by the sun: what’s beautiful isn’t what’s there, but what gets left out.
All that is left is floating volumes, weightless white, and fields of muted colors.
Red and white everywhere…..
When starting a new collage, I find I always need a catalyst, an incipit.
In order to tell the visual narratives of my collage I always like to continue an imaginary dialogue started by another artist, graphic designer etc.
The base of this latest collage is the very sparse cover of current San Diego Museum of Art Magazine. I knew the wooden carving was of a monk of sorts and I was immediately drawn to the work’s piety and devotion. I only found out the identity and the story behind the sculpture once I was ready to post the collage…it held unexpected surprises and even reinforced in my mind some of the creative choices I made while composing the collage ( the heart held in the sculpture’s hands).
Excerpts from the San Diego Museum of Art Membership magazine:
The sculpture depicts San Diego de Alcala’, otherwise known as Saint Didacus, who was born around 1400 near Seville.
He became a lay brother in the Franciscan order and worked at monasteries in the Canary Islands, Spain, and Rome, before finally.settling at the Convento de Santa Maria de Jesus in Alcala’, where he lived until 1463. He worked in the infirmaries of these monasteries and is said to have brought about miraculous cures to those in his care. Accordingly, the earliest depictions of San Diego following his canonization in 1588 show his healing miracles.
The San Diego Museum of Art has acquired this remarkable sculpture by Pedro De Mena (1628-1688). Mena worked in his native Granada and in Malaga, and from there produced works that were sent to.patrons around Spain, including the Royal family in Madrid.
Although relatively little known today outside of spain, Mena was the most prominent sculptor of his day. It has been said that he is unsurpassed both in the beauty of his woodcarving and in his ability to capture the expressions of religious emotions.
Mena’ sculpture depicts a miracle that came to be the standard form of the saint’s iconography. Diego was devoted to the poor and often took them bread from the monastery table. During a shortage of food at the monastery, Diego was forbidden to do so, but continued to take bread to the poor, hiding it in the folds of his monastic habit.
On one occasion, the superior of the monastery caught Diego in the act of taking bread and challenged him to show what he was carrying in the bundled robes. When Diego looked down, the bread was transformed into roses, a miraculous confirmation of his charitable works. As was often the case for sculptures depicting this miracle, the roses are not carved, for the faithful would place real or silk flowers in the lap of the sculpture.
No te amo como si fueras rosa de sal, topacio
o flecha de claveles que propagan eñ fuego:
te amo como se aman ciertas cosas oscuras,
secretamente, entre la sombra y el alma.
Te amo como la planta que no florece y lleva
dentro de sí, escondida, la luz de aquellas flores,
y gracias a tu amor vive oscuro en mi cuerpo
el apretado aroma que ascendió de la tierra.
Te amo sin saber cómo, ni cuándo, ni de dónde,
te amo directamente sin problemas ni orgullo:
así te amo porque no sé amar de otra manera,
Sino así de este modo en que no soy ni eres,
tan cerca que tu mano sobre mi pecho es mía,
tan cerca que se cierran tus ojos con mi sueño.
Pablo Neruda
I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.
I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.
I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
I love you so because I know no other way
than this: where I do not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.
Graham Downes, my larger-than-life friend, architect and urban designer extraordinaire, rugby champion, pilot, lover of life, beauty, and friendship, was taken suddenly from us 12 days ago.
San Diego is still reeling.
This is a sketch work of art he made for me last summer, when I ran into him at Bassam Cafe’. Graham saw me painting and I invited him to try out my new watercolor pen and other tools. Less than five seconds, and I witnessed a building parti take form. What a treat to see genius at work. He immediately declared he wanted us to plan Sunday sketch dates (and later informed me that, following our chance encounter, he visited the art store and went a little crazy there).
That was my friend G, enthusiastic, full of life and passion and always wanting to do everything, his schedule and reality notwithstanding.
Here is a beautiful piece of writing he sent me. I love it because it shows a contemplative side that not a lot of people got to see, and yet was always there behind the infectious energy, the million-watt smile, the glint in those blue, blue eyes.
‘… Just flew back from Bako a couple of hours ago – so meditative and surreal cruising over LA at 9k feet – pitch-black sky and all those lights representing so much life and goings-on below…puts everything in perspective every time – and i do that trip every week- mostly not at night.
Tonight we had 14 ghost-busters come over to the hotel with all their fancy machines to record/bust the reported ghosts there! Weird.
From years of studying the physical structure of things, the built environment, I am now also preoccupied by behavior of people, their aspirations, real intent, how they think, etc. This is an excellent avenue to initiate a better approach to design of structures and spaces as a leap back into new projects…especially commercially-driven ones.
Have a great time in my very fave city!
Ciao,
GD ‘
But… I would be remiss if I didn’t also share a more typical Graham message:
You have to keep breaking your heart until it opens.
Rumi
Without the use of a camera Portland-based artist Jim Kazanjian sifts through a library of some 25,000 images from which he carefully selects the perfect elements to digitally assemble mysterious buildings born from the mind of an architect gone mad. While the architectural and organic pieces seem wildly random and out of place, Kazanjian brings just enough cohesion to each structure to suggest a fictional purpose or story that begs to be told.
Reblogged from here.
since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;
wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world
my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don’t cry
—the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids’ flutter which says
we are for each other: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life’s not a paragraph
This is something that has been marinating for weeks in my mind.
Poetry and art exorcise life’s sorrows…they bring closure when/where there is none to be had.
Surrender is accepting that you will not know all the answers…it is making peace with not understanding- something that is incredibly arduous for someone who seeks clarity and communication in all things.
And yet, words deliver, they free and heal us. For poets, a sealed, completed poem makes sense of the arcane.
Poetry allows us to move unencumbered by the baggage of emotions (as these are now, at the same time, crystallized and released) , unrequited feelings, unanswered pleas.
Poetry is the answer, it is the peace we seek. The poet finds words, and like breadcrumbs, they guide through the forest. Poems are maps through the dark regions of the heart.
…
Poetry Came Instead {Closures}
Tonight the sky is cold and clear
– trace filigree of stars.
The moon, mother-of-pearl,
the constellations are aligned.
It is a night for leavening.
I was precipitating towards him
I could not resist him,
more than one resists gravity
(he had me at ‘epitome of inevitability’).
We first made love
on sheets of paper
I wrapped myself in his words
I sent him distress calls –
we were two ships in the night.
He told me I didn’t have to
explain myself when I unraveled,
he quoted my poems
-the only one who ever
kissed the tips of my fingers,
or my forehead every time i saw him.
How does one forget ?
A gaze that caresses,
the perfect first kiss.
How does one erase? The only cure for love is more love.
I told him better later than never
he said never late
is better.
I called for him so many nights –
the days of forgetting were so long.
When I am upset I wash walls.
I said
we’ve been dancing around the fire for so long
he answered
it’s time to get burnt.
I was ready to,
Poetry came instead.
Nothing extinguishes the flame
of fickle lovers
as a yes.
My heart bled wasted ink,
a dumb moth continuosly scarred.
I will never know the hieroglyphs of his skin, or the sound of his singing-
the light of his eyes was not for me.
A beautiful vessel,
the essence deserted him
and eluded me.
As for the girl,
pepper and spice,
I can finally look back at her eyes
-those wells, the light that pulls everything towards her as an
undeniable whirlpool-and not sink.
The angles of her face
don’t bruise any more .
There is just love.
The careful letting go
of a butterfly.
Maybe next time, Luna
.
These days,
I am surrounded by Beauty. The spring i pursued
was but a mirage,
my thirst was quenched
by the sweetest sand.
There is drought,
but I am hearing thunder
a strong, kind rumble that displaces air–
has the rainy season finally come
or is it another summer shower?
He kissed me a suspended, light kiss
held my face
like one holds a vase
i was not sure if he was drawing me closer, or letting me go.
You were not a dream,
you were more like
a moment of clarity after
months of drowsiness.
I know precariousness
And things that don’t last.
I sleep with pen and books.
Do you know what it means to
spend the night writing?
Everything you do
can be a prayer.
I was lying next to you
like a big yes.
Unrealized dreams
are the only ones that last
forever.
1.Time and Vessels:
“She had a way of moving that moved him as much as music, which was what moved him most of all.
Surely the spirit animating that peerless body must be unusual too?
Why would nature make a vessel like that, if not to contain something still more valuable?” ― J.K. Rowling
Love is always the same
-it is only the vessel that changes-
that’s what the poet meant,
it took me a year to understand.
Love moves from one heart to another, selfsame.
You can never lose Love.
2. Skins:
Listen to songs from around the beautiful Earth.
Angel, you can always find the seven notes therein, sleeping.
The same Love is asleep in the Other.
Until it is awake.
You can find the same warmth on skins
milk to dark chocolate,
sand dunes to ashes.
The same kind fire lights all eyes.
The same Sun and Moon no matter
where we are…or how far we are from each other.
All is Good.
3. Love:
I am full of Love for you.
The flower can’t keep from opening.
God is the Love in the lover.
The lotus-heart is hidden beneath layers.
4. Fire:
a. The main function of fires is to warm,
not to burn. My heart is singed, but tempered.
b. The unattended fire dies.
5. Words:
Your words kept me warm
on the long walk home.
Thoughts you had for me,
caresses on a winter day.
Now, try to imagine
a flooding river
forced through
an eyedropper.
6. Let Go:
There is nothing to go back to
there are no mistakes
nothing to miss, fix
or understand.
There is only driving.
I leave my cities of salt behind,
the Nothing,
I see the lonely Friday afternoons,
the hardest,
on the rearview mirror.
Live as though
you are soon moving to a new city.
7. The coldness of stars:
“But who could bear to know which stars were already dead, she thought, blinking up at the night sky; could anybody stand to know that they all were?” ― J.K. Rowling.
The further you look in space,
the further you look in the past.
8. Constellations
The sun is a benign star
made of fire
It burns as I burned for you
It is a star that colors my skin
– my body responds to it the way it responds to the moon.
Gypsy: You are both stars, don’t forget. And the stars exploded billions of years ago, to form everything that is this world. Everything we know, is stardust. So don’t forget, you are stardust.
A handful of stars in your hand. A candle is meant to become just flame.
Do not render a perfect heart when you go.
9. Silence:
The silence of the Sphinx
protects me-
Ice in my veins, it slayed me.
He taught me
one does not learn
by speaking
and to do so only if what i had to say
was more beautiful than silence.
10. Poetry and Poets
Empty this bucket heart,
My poems are puzzle pieces
put together in the heart of the night.
Milk the night ravings – distill them as grapes with wine.
Stolen words feed our ravenous souls.
11. Life:
There are problems that can’t be solved
they can only be lived
-some say there are no problems.
Do not chain eagles or falcons.
If you don’ t believe in God
believe in Love, or another.
Peace is a religion, too.
‘You can never really tell what’s good until later anyway, until you look back and think about things and they have time to grow in your mind. But sometimes you make a choice, and in that moment you know in your heart it’s going to change everything.
People will tell you nothing matters, the whole world will end soon anyway, but those people look at life in the wrong way. I mean, things don’t need to last forever to be perfect.’
Narciso, parole di burro
Si sciolgono sotto l’alito della passione
Narciso trasparenza e mistero
Cospargimi di olio alle mandorle e vanità
Modellami…
Raccontami le storie che ami inventare
Spaventami
Raccontami le nuove esaltanti vittorie
Conquistami,inventami, dammi un’altra identità
Stordiscimi,disarmami e infine colpisci
Abbracciami ed ubriacami di ironia e sensualità
Narciso, parole di burro
Nascondono proverbiale egoismo nelle intenzioni
Narciso, sublime apparenza
Ricoprimi di eleganti premure e sontuosità
Ispirami
Raccontami le storie che ami inventare
Spaventami
Raccontami le nuove esaltanti vittorie
Conquistami inventami, dammi un’altra identità
Stordiscimi, disarmami e infine colpisci
Abbracciami ed ubriacami di ironia e sensualità
Abbracciami ed ubriacami di ironia e sensualità
Conquistami
Conquistami
Conquistami
…
Narcissus, buttered words
Melt under the breath of passion
Narcissus, transparency and mystery
Cover me with almond oil and vanity
Mold me
Tell me the stories you love to make up
Scare me
Tell me about your new exciting victories
Conquer me, invent me, give me another identity
Numb me, disarm me, and finally hit
Embrace me and intoxicate me with irony and sensuality
Narcissus, buttered words
Hide the proverbial egoism in your intentions
Narcissus, sublime pretense
Cover me with elegant cares and sumptuousness
Inspire me
Tell me the stories you love to make up
Scare me
Tell me about your new exciting victories
Conquer me, invent me, give me another identity
Numb me, disarm me, and finally, hit
Embrace me and intoxicate me with irony and sensuality
Conquer me
Conquer me
Conquer me
Experiments with digital India ink/ Constellations. November 2012
Songs of Redemption
“I don’t want forever. I want now, now and now.” From ‘Aimee and Jaguar’
Father forgive me
for I have
sinned.
He sang to me
– the thought of him,
chorus to my days
as a coffee shop poet.
How much water can a hand hold?
Words fill my eyes,
yet do not find him.
My eyes look for his eyes.
I write his name on disparate surfaces.
The prelude of a shadow across my frosted window…
these are my ravings.
The india ink valleys of his shoulders,
the untenable rolling hills of his back –
the ache of swimming in that night sea.
Dream, where do you come from?
Youth, mortal god of Beauty,
we are snatching strands of happiness
we are grasping at icicles.
In a parallel universe
we are together
-craft parallel poems to impossible loves-
In a next life,
perhaps,
he says.
Take it lightly, he says
‘Take it in.’ when he holds me,
expanded heart,
but my shoulders have carried
the weight of the world.
We are separated by a layer of ice,
it melts when you look at me.
Dark, glacial waters lurk underneath
where your arms couldn’t keep me warm,
or reach me,
a shipwreck on the Artic.
That night I dreamt of kind, dirty angels
of kissing you, and I just kissed you.
It is bitter poison
to separate
Soul
from
Soul.
You told me about moon and tides,
our gravitational pull.
I cannot escape the moon or the sea:
they find each other.
Water bearer, I dip my toe in the warm water.
Engage or not engage,
it all plays out with the inevitability
of a slow-motion accident.
Lightbearer, I take this December Sun
as I take you in.
Summer will come,
the contingency of
your scent of roasted coffee beans
– you taste like clouds.
I am not sleeping tonight-
Honey, I slept for five years-
there are verses on this bedroom walls I must write down,
your forbidden cities
These are no walls, baby,
But canvases.
The job of bomb defusers
Is not an easy one.
I am a terrible accountant-
All I want is your eyes.
When the inner house is in order
There is nothing that can’t be accomplished.
Yet I am empty as the house is
after the guests have left:
this, you must know, is the condition of woman.
You said all that I dreamed of
will happen,
the beauty of rugged, imperfect things
the definition of uncertainty.
We are exercises in waiting
Meanwhile, I open doors I can neither enter
nor close.
Stalemate:
If we are
why do I not see you,
will the forgetting fog
swallow you too?
Dance inside of me-
If words are all we have
let us use them.
Photo from lifeinitaly.com – The Lovely Italian Doors and their Designs
There Is a Room in My Heart
{or Housecleaning}
Hubris:
I am not
like other girls
walking in malls
wearing mirrors out ,
newscaster hair
brought to you by the color pink.
I am comfortable in grayscale layers,
scarlet inside.
My mind is an unfinished cathedral
made of wire
difficult to climb and tame,
crystal heart
vast, fragile and peopled.
There is a room in it
with your name.
There is a door.
There are no jails
made for our guilty eyes. The Bull is the Goddess’ constant companion.
There is no airtight chamber
for feelings.
In our time
Planes crossed the skies
white threads crocheting
our narrative, thin like icy air.
Woven strands of vapor and steam
our strength
blown, blown by northern winds.
Namaste, All that is best and highest in me greets and salutes all that is best and highest in you.
I remain, ever, your trusted friend.
Forgive these broken letters.
Time is the measure of poetry.
I can only speak to you in allegories
for my mouth and hands
are bound.
This is my answer.
Shoot the artists and poets
for they play with fire.
Hide their dangerous words.
I am imperfect
I still leave
lipstick stains on pillowcases
-the eyes of a fawn in the forest-
I set my house in order
as one reorganizes
thoughts and feelings,
heart and mind.
Patience.
The fields need to be readied
before the seeds can be sown.
The names of the rooms are continuously changing,
the landscape threatening to
shatter into a million tiny pieces.
A myriad teacandles on the Ganges at Diwali-
Walls dissolving into pearls
falling in unison.
Our house was built on quicksand
thick with secrets.
I clean the city
off the window blinds.
The composition was irresistible.
I had to steal a photo…it was not easy.
The two twins, one seated, one perched on the armchair, reminded me of prettygreenbullet’s girls. It is her sense of aloof aesthetics that I recognized.
I received my green card today : on it my likeness and the words ‘permanent resident’..still it does not seem real.
A small piece of plastic that changes my life forever.
The price: a human heart.
Quiet celebrations (for now), a new muse, and new ways to do art, to keep showing up to the work, the words…to do it all or just one layer…but to keep trying again tomorrow.
Recommended reading:
Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth Century French Thought by Martin Jay
The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses by Juhani Pallasmaa
Diwali is a five day Hindu festival which occurs on the fifteenth day of Kartika. Diwali means “rows of lighted lamps” and the celebration is often referred to as the Festival of Lights. During this time, homes are thoroughly cleaned and windows are opened to welcome Laksmi, goddess of wealth. Candles and lamps are lit as a greeting to Laksmi. Gifts are exchanged and festive meals are prepared during Diwali. The celebration means as much to Hindus as Christmas does to Christians.
Because there are many regions in India, there are many manifestations of the Diwali festival. In at least one area, the festival begins with Dhanteras, a day set aside to worship Laksmi. In the Indian culture, wealth is not viewed as a corruptive power. Instead, a wealthy person is considered to have been rewarded for good deeds of a past life.
On the second day Kali, the goddess of Strength, is worshipped. This day also focuses on abolishing laziness and evil.
On the third day (the last day of the year in the lunar calendar), lamps are lighted and shine brightly in every home. The lamp symbolizes knowledge and encourages reflection upon the purpose of each day in the festival. The goal is to remember the purpose throughout the year.
The fourth day of Diwali falls on the first day of the lunar New Year. At this time, old business accounts are settled and new books are opened. The books are worshipped in a special ceremony and participants are encouraged to remove anger, hate, and jealousy from their lives.
On the final day (Balipratipada) of the festival, Bali, an ancient Indian king, is recalled. Bali destroyed the centuries old philosophies of the society. However, in addition to this, he is remembered for being a generous person. Thus, the focus of this day is to see the good in others, including enemies.
From the University of Kansas Medical Center
Diwali this year starts on November 13. Blessings and light to those near and far.
…
You can go into a pitch black room full of
evil, full of darkness, and light the smallest candle : instantly that darkness flees.
But you can’t do the opposite.
You can’t go into a room full of light, truth, wisdom, joy, health and harmony with the universal power, with amount of darkness, and have any effect whatsoever.
Paraphrased from a Len Horowitz quote.
A candle loses nothing of its light by lighting another candle.
James Keller
Sleeping under the American Flag. San Diego, November 2012.
1. There are an estimated 10.000 homeless people in San Diego county.
2. This estimate does not comprise of people sleeping and living in their car.
3. The winter shelter that is about to open after much waiting has 400 beds.
4. There has been a 20% increase in homelessness in the past two years, and many are homeless as a result of continued recession, job loss and home repossession by banks.
5. 32% of the homeless in San Diego have a four-year college degree.
6. There are approximately 30,000 vacant houses, condos and apartments in San Diego County. See below for more info.
In North San Diego County alone, as of August 2011, there were 15,168 vacant homes (3.5% vacancy ). In Southwest San Diego County (Metro) houses, condos and apartments went from 88,090 to 191,513 due to the early 2000’s building frenzy. By 2010 Southwest County had 7.9 % (vacancy). This means that in the metro area, where most homeless people are found, there are 15,129 vacant houses, condo and apartments. Data is extrapolated from info found here.
The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. Within the black-and-white striped canvas tents is an utterly unique experience full of breathtaking amazements. It is called Le Cirque des Rêves, and it is only open at night.
Favorite drawings, paintings, collages and handwork on SketchBloom
Pencil and Watercolor on canvas
Watercolor on paper. June 3, 2010
Baggalini Red.
Pilot Pen on Paper. November 2009
Felt tip on paper. March 22, 2011.
Graphite on paper and magazine cutouts. December 27, 2010. Miti and Gianni Aiello.
Earth and Water. Beads and yarn. June 24, 2011
Watercolor and Graphite. November 12, 2009
Mare Mosso Act II. Graphite drawing by Gianni Aiello. Collage. March 18,2011
Ink and watercolor on paper and tracing paper. A bit of digital manipulation. Feb. 09,2011.
The funambulist. Ink drawing + digital collage. August 2011.
Ink on Paper. Calabria, Italia. September 29, 2011.
Ink on Paper. September 2009
Coffee Carrier (delle). Graphite on paper. Kuwait. January 2010
Platonic Solid Exercise. Graphite on Paper. 2007
Concept for jewelry piece ‘twomoons’
Pilot pen on paper. January 2011
Collage, Pilot Pen on Paper
Waiting for Godot | Static Head. Digital Collage. May 5th, 2010
Queen Califia’s Garden, Totem/Sculpture. Ink, color pencils and markers. 2009
Ink on hand.book paper. Paris, 2011.
Ink on tracing paper. Kuwait, January 2010. The scene at the bottom is what I saw-or decided to see- at The Avenues, the most popular malla in Kuwait City. There is nothing like seeing photography and drawings from a trip abroad to make you realize all reality is subjective, and we choose to see what we want to. We just don’t realize it in our own backyard.
Casa Del Fascio, contrast corrected thru Photoshop, Como, 2007
our very own coffee cart @ NewSchool: Cafe’ A la Carte
The Sun, the Moon, and on there being no abstracts in life. Pencil, ink, watercolor on 4″X5″ canvas.2009
Twomoons Wax Proof-modeled after concept sketch
Final Twomoons Piece, Summer 2008
Miniature Pomegranate. Watercolor on chocolate wrap. Kuwait. January 2010
Earth Henna, Eucalyptus Oil. May 2, 2010.
Mare Mosso Act III. Graphite and pen drawing by Gianni Aiello. Collag and pastel. March 19, 2011.
Ink on Paper. December 2010.
Ink on Paper. December 2010.
Dr. Gregory House. Watercolor on Paper. June 3, 2010
The Fortress of Lost Time. Graphite on paper and magazine cutouts. December 27, 2010. Miti and Gianni Aiello.
Barcelona Chairs by Mies Van De Rohe, 1929 @ the CED Library in Berkeley
July 27, San Diego Museum Of Art. The Age of Enlightenment – Gabrielle Emilie Le Tonnelier de Breuteuil, Marquise du Chatelet by Yinka Shonibare- Ink on hand.book paper
Persimmon- very quick pastel rendering. November 12, 2009.
The Surface and the Deep. Watercolor. July 2020.
Today was a beautiful day of art and comraderie!
![Making Bracelets [Nights at Bassam's]. Digitally manipulated photographs. December 2013.](https://sketchbloom.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/bassamweb1.jpg)
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