Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Archive for the ‘Calabria Diaries’ Category

Back From {a very extended} Vacation

Posted in Calabria Diaries, Photography, Quotes, wanderlust, tagged , , , , , , on November 11, 2015| 4 Comments »

image

image


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.

Pascal Mercier
Night Train to Lisbon

Read Full Post »

La Baracca del Bucaniere…sort of finished. And Figs!

Posted in art, Calabria Diaries, Drawing, Poetry, sketching, Watercolor, Writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , on September 18, 2013| 2 Comments »

image

La Baracca del Bucaniere - Fisherman's Shack - The Kitchen. Graphite and watercolor. Calabria, Italia. September 18, 2013.

image

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.

Read Full Post »

La Baracca del Bucaniere (Fisherman’s Shack). – cont’d

Posted in Calabria Diaries, Drawing, sketchbook, sketching, Watercolor, tagged , , , , , , on September 17, 2013| 1 Comment »

image

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.

I always said it,
the year starts in September.

Read Full Post »

Night Fishing

Posted in art, Calabria Diaries, Photography, Writing, tagged , , , , on September 8, 2013| Leave a Comment »

image

image

image

Like being in a Van Gogh’s painting….

Read Full Post »

Happy Birthday, Mamma!

Posted in art, Calabria Diaries, Drawing, Painting, Poetry, Watercolor, Writing, tagged , , , , , , on September 7, 2013| Leave a Comment »

image

image

Today is my mom’s birthday, she didn’t want me to buy flowers, so I painted her some…

Read Full Post »

Baracca – The Fisherman’s Shack

Posted in Architectural Photography, Architecture, art, Calabria Diaries, Photography, tagged , , , , , , on September 5, 2013| 3 Comments »

image

Graphite on Grumbacher paper. Calabria, Italia. August 2013.



image

Read Full Post »

These are the stars over the Mediterranean…

Posted in Architecture, art, Calabria Diaries, Digital Collage, Digital Manipulation, Photography, Poetry, Writing, tagged , , on September 4, 2013| 2 Comments »

image

Photograph, digital manipulation. Calabria, Italia. August 2013.

Read Full Post »

Fragments {and a Cashmere Wrap}

Posted in art, Calabria Diaries, Drawing, F R A G M E N T S, Ink, Poetry, Quotes, sketching, Writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on December 15, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Dream before Nonno died. He was a fisherman. Ink on notebook paper, 2003.





Fragments {and a cashmere wrap}


The cashmere wrap finally arrived in the mail

so much weighs on this stole

‘opportunity a thief makes’

he said before giving me homework

— how we love.

“A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep”

Saul Bellow

A lot weighs on this stole:

conversation is rippled with diamonds

they tumble , heavy, they are words, quotes

…out of the mundane…

a pearl – grasp it and keep it.

Wisdom is the only jewelry I wear this season

and my greediness awaits

meaning.

He who grasps more than he can hold, would be better without any.

If a house is crammed with treasures of gold and jade,

it will be impossible to guard them all.

Lao Tzu

Did you hear the sound of wisdom, Heart?

The message you sought.

My only wealth is my memory.

Like a mendicant I gather precious words,

fragments of light that I bring back,

puzzles I spend days composing.

– You, collector of spirit, feeder of souls.

Everyone wants to go to Heaven, no-one wants to die.

The falcon, scarred wing, alighted the sill.


– the magpies, once they have caught the prey,

lose interest

and look around for the next creature to pursue-



Yogis come and go,

grasp their message

Catch leaves in the wind

take them home, make a nest.

Heaven is simple:

let go of anything that is not love or peace.


San Diego, December 15, 2011


Read Full Post »

Orsetto

Posted in art, Calabria Diaries, Drawing, Ink, tagged , , , on October 25, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Orsetto. Ink on Miquelrius paper. October 2011.

Read Full Post »