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The set above was designed by Jenna Ann Mac Gillis for the performance
‘The Desperate Characters of Mercer County’
which took place at San Diego Space for Art on November 10, 2012. Read all the lurid details of this Americana story here.

Like a Gillian Welch Song

I can feel poetry
rise out of silence
like an undeniable tide,
a Polaroid floats to the surface.

The words appear
Oh honey, just take out your lighter,
they are written in lemon juice

Loving you was like
carrying a cardboard suitcase
in the rain

In the absence of

I collect mugs by my bedside
Ride in empty buses
-straw bale leggings-
and always get to the theather
after the movie ended

I walk among the Saturday night revelers huddled around a screen
-the miniskirts march in lockstep

It’s date night in San Diego
a cold one too
knights in shirt sleeves have donated their coats
and presents are opened inside cars.

I steal glances and compose poems
that don’t help anyone tonight.
The lines start to sound
like a Gillian Welch song.
If you have a mind like a diamond,
expect it to cut.

I was in love with the dream of you
And now I am shackled to a ghost.

Some kinds of pain never die;
they can only ease a little,
and not every day
.



San Diego, November 2012

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The Spoiled

Ink on Paper. November 19, 2011.

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Ink on Miquelrius paper + Digital collage. October 2011



I want to share these two poems by Ilyas Abu Shabaku, which were given to me as a gift. Poetry is a candle in a dark room: our job in this life may just be to burn as bright as torches, as bright and as alive and loud as we can, for each glorious day we have left.

Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened,

Happiness never decreases by being shared.

Buddha



YOU OR I?

By Ilyas Abu Shabaku, Lebanese poet (1903-1947)

This beauty, is it yours or mine?

In you I see a person beautiful in love

Like me. And which of us has given me life?

Is it your shape or mine that i love so?

When in my dream I see love’s images

Is it your shadow in my soul or mine?

Love, all of love, dwells in all I see

Whence all this light? Your universal soul?

Did I create you in the world of fancy

Or are you my creator?

Am I the first whom inspiration blessed

Or was it you? Who writes this verse?

Did I write it for you or you for me?

And who in love can be dictated to

And who dictates? Our imaginations blend,

Your soul within my soul, your mind in mine

When things appear obscure to me I see

A doubting shadow dawning in your eyes

When we met first I found my beginning

As if you were a lost part of my being.

Translated by Adam Haydar and Michael Beard




I LOVE YOU


By Ilyas Abu Shabaku, Lebanese poet (1903-1947)

I love you more than human heart can bear

More than a poet dreams or lover feels

You are the perfumed cloud from heaven sent

To rain upon me your enchanted dew;

I feel your heart, your veins flow into mine,

No gap to let the impure world creep in;

My heart confronts your heart, finding its twin,

As two cups meet in one eternal vow;

In us when wine is made to mix with wine,

A blend of perfume, breeze, and dew combine;

My inspiration dwells within your eyes,

And swells when lip on lip instructs my art;

For us the fire rages, though unfed,

Though we are calm, a storm erupts within.

Translated by Adam Haydar and Michael Beard

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John Hejduk. Sketch from Lake Baikal, part of the Vladivostok oeuvre

John Hejduk. Sketch from Lake Baikal, part of the Vladivostok oeuvre

John Hejduk. Sketch from Lake Baikal, part of the Vladivostok oeuvre

John Hejduk has been called one of the most influential architects and educators of our time..
He was also a poet, an artist and the Dean of the Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture of the uber-prestigious Cooper Union in New York.

I am reviewing couple of his books, Vladivostok and The Mask of Medusa and thought I would share some of the ear-cornered pages.  Like Marco Polo, John Hedjuk’s travels start from Venice. Some of you may know my mother is from the Venice region, Treviso to be precise, and it was endearing to find the Serenissima in this book, a fascinating fusion of East and West, and even Milano, my birthplace. From the foreword:

 

The journey I have been on for the past ten years followed an eastern route starting at Venice, then moving north to Berlin through Prague, then northeast to Riga, from Riga Eastward to Lake Baikal and then on to Vladivostok. This has been, and is, a long journey.

Bodies of water mark the trek. Venice of the Adriatic, the lagoons, the Venetian canals, the river Vitava of Prague with its echoes of Rilke and Kafka, the waterways of Berlin, the Gulf of Riga, Lake Baikal, and the Sea of japan in Valdivostok. The elements giving off their particular atmospheres, and sounds, impregnate my soul with the spirit of place, place actual…place imagined.

The works from this journey are named and form trilogies.

In Venice;

The Cemetery of Ashes of Thought                                                                                                                                  

The Silent Wtnesses and

The 13 Watchtowers of Cannaregio

In Berlin;

Berlin Masque

Victims, and Berlin Night

In Russia;

Riga,

Lake Baikal, and

Vladivostok

[  ]

I state the above to indicate the nature of a practice.

[ ]

I have established a repertoire of objects/subjects, and this troupe accompanies me from city to city, from place to place, to cities I have been to and to cities I have not visited.  The cast presents itself to a city and its inhabitants. Some of the objects are buit and remain in the city; some are built for a time, then are dismantled and disappear;some are built, dismantled and move on to another city where they are reconstructed.

I believe that this method/practice is a new way of approaching the architecture of a city and of giving proper respect to a city’s inhabitants.

It confronts a pathology head-on

John Hejduk, 1989 

Hejduk’s work is provocative, political, polyedric. Read Errand, Detour, and the Wilderness Urbanism of John Hejduk, part of  Paroles d’Architects, an excellent collection of writings on architecture.

Also Sorkin on the Mask of Medusa, in Exquisite Corpse: Writing on Buildings.

Reading this book, at the nexus between literature and architecture reminds me of Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities. One of the future anterior projects: to illustrate Calvino’s cities. But it’s been done.

Cultural Minister

The Minister of Culture reads the works of Hawthorne, Flaubert and Hardy.What impresses him is the extraordinary love of women by these authors. Somehow the three writers are related through the strenght of Zanobia,Madame Bovary, and Batsheba. The Minister of Culture is aware of their seductions. He imagines, fabricates, and sews the dresses they had worn. He folds each garment and places it in an oblong box and waits for sundown. He precisely selects his victim, follows her, commits his crime, redresses herin the dress from the box, and places the body at the edge of the water. At Dawn he reads from the appropriate passages in a trembling voice.

 

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It is November, National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) and  National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo). The goal of the first is to write a novel of 50,000 words in the next 30 days, by sticking to a schedule of 1667 words per day. If you have been thinking about writing for a while, and completing that literary project of yours, this is the time to do it. NaBloPoMo is set up as its usual one post per day, but this time there are  prizes and more publicity.
I wanted to share some inspiring badges for this month. Let the writing begin.

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Ink on paper, trace, digital collage. August 27,2010.

Ink on trace. August 27, 2010.

The spoils of Archangel Michael (the Archangel of Justice). Ink on paper. August 27,2010


From

St Loup’s secrets & lies:

All you have to do is take these lies and make them true…

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Loose Rendering. Ink, watercolor, prismacolor pencils. August 2010.



Lately, I’ve favored the watercolor and pencil technique, but want to get back to working with markers.

I found these two great tutorials on marker renderings from my blog friend and Urban Sketcher extraordinaire Suzanne Cabrera at An [Open] Sketchbook: can’t wait to share them with my students!

{ Tutorial 1: Furniture/Fabric }

{ Tutorial 2: Interior Rendering }

As usual, the wonderful Color Drawing book by Doyle will provide a lifetime’s worth of lessons.


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Marker Test @ Queen Califia's Magical Garden

Initial Sketch. Felt tip on heavy bond (sketchbook) paper.

Felt Tip on Marker (Rag) Paper.

Applying Watercolor 1.

Applying Watercolor 2.

End of ession at site. 20 Minutes. Wanted to have a loose base of color.

Adding Pencils (Albrecht Durer- Made in Germany), texture, few days after.

Do you remember Niki St. Phalle’s ‘Queen Califia’s Magical Garden’?

Well, I went back with my students for some loose watercolor and pencil renderings.

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A rare Renée Magritte. La Poitrine. 1961

Renée Magritte. Irene.

Renée Magritte. Le tombeur des lutteurs. 1960

Renee Magritte. Eulogy of the Dialectic.

Renée Magritte. Personal Values. 1952

In my search, I stumbled upon Myriam Mahiques, who shares some thoughts on Magritte, and Immateriality in Painting and Architecture.

Instances of Surrealist Architecture and Urban Design:

Click on the images for more details and to see source.

"39GeorgeV" is an urban surrealism manifesto. It sheltered the renovation of an Hausmannian building in Paris, during year 2007. It's a life-size photographic work based on the original building, printed on canvas, enhanced with bas-relief.

The Manifesto of the 39GeorgeV project.

Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels. Installation of the new Magritte Museum 2008/09

From the exhibition:Painting the Glass House: Artists Revisit Modern Architecture.The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum,Ridgefield, CT.

“]“]

Frankfurt's Bockenheimer Warte Subway Station. From '10 Of The World’s Most Impressive Subway Stations'

Iphone painting by Steve John.

Son Of Mac. Magritte-inspired Apple Macbook art vinyl decal.

Magritte-ispired art vinyl decal for Apple Macbook.

Book : Surrealism and Architecture edited by Thomas Mical



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So you already know I heart Japanese Stationery stores.

Here are more lovely pens and things from Jetpens.

Some of these, like rubber stamps – or writing letters sealed with rubber stamps- don’t exactly fit my life right now, but isn’t it fun to imagine such settings?

Thanks go to my (enabling)  friend Andy who shared Jetpens with me.

Click on the images for more details.

Brush Pens

Lamy Mechanical Pencil

Midori Animal Shape D-Clips

Woman-shaped clips by Sun-Star

Rubber Stamp by Kodomo no Kao Ouchi Mininature House : A Chair and Ciao!

The beautiful packages of Kodomo no Kao Ouchi Miniature House Rubber Stamps.

Round index tabs by Metaphis

Sun-Star 7-Blade Shredder Scissors

Acid-free, refillable adhesive tape from Tombow- for the gluing perfectionist (wow).

Kokuyo Systemic Special Cover Refillable Notebook

PlePle Choco Wrap Pencil Case

Lamy fountain pen, extra fine nib, aluminum body.

My favorite: Pen-Style Scissors.




Here are some photos of 
Jet Pens aficionados.


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We interrupt this broadcast due to a bout of homesickness and wanderlust.

The Pacific is, to paraphrase Coleridge, ‘ Water, water everywhere (and not a drop to swim in)’.

I miss my home.

Exhibit A: My home in Milano.

Exhibit B: Calabria, small harbor with 'historical' outdoor nightclub attached, Blu '70.

Exhibit B1: As if it weren't enough, there is an(other) outdoor club in front this rock (Pietragrande), considered one of the most scenic in Europe.

Exhibit B2, Calabria, the coastline near my house. Tomorrow morning, this is how it will look, and August is the hardest month to be away.

Sit down, let's have an iced, sweet espresso. Hear the music.

Let's take the train next week, go to Firenze, we can stop by Venezia, certainly. Do you remember that olive bread?

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Photograph, Lumix Panasonic Camera, July 2010.




From Rear Facing Window

Alfred Hitchcock


Lisa: I wish I were creative.
Jeff: You are. You’re great at creating difficult situations.


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A beginning of something. Acrylic and marker on canvas. July 2010


Here are some quotes that are inspiring me these days:

“And now here is my secret, a very simple secret; it is only with the heart that one can see rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eye.”

Antoine de Saint-Exupery, Le Petit Prince

From Becoming Minimalist { thankyou Andy}

“What we think or what we know or what we believe is, in the end, of little consequence.  The only consequence is what we do.”

John Ruskin

So Powerful. I believe in ‘As a (w)oman thinketh so is (s)he’, and in the power of intention, but sometimes us thinking types need a call to be spurred into action. This is it.  { thankyou  Student}


“Your treasure house is within; it contains all you’ll ever need”

Hui Hai, Ancient Chinese Sage

From Zen Seing, Zen Drawing { thankyou Frederick Franck}



Ps. I added something new to my previous Chairs post.

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Something eye-opening occurred at my school yesterday.

I attended the exhibit for SoCal -Ex : Exploratory Design Workshop, completed by Professor Hector Perez and his students.

Here are the specific of the Workshop:

6 Explorers

Andrea Benavides/Alfredo Melly/Henry Palomino/Charles Santamaria/Nancy Tariga

25 Days

July 12-August 5

10 Field Trips

San Diego/La Jolla/Del Mar/San Juan Capistrano/Los Angeles/Santa Monica/Culver City/Venice/Pasadena/Palm Springs

9 Progressive Practices

Daly Genik Architects/Eric Owen Moss/Estudio Teddy Cruz/Gehry Technologies/Luce Et Studio/Michael Maltzan Architecture/Morphosis/Sebastian Mariscal Studio/Smith and Others

15 Extraordinary Residences

Charles and Ray Eames/Craig Ellwood/Christine & Russell Forester/Albert Frey/Frank Gehry/Greene and Greene/Coop Himmelblau/Alberto Kalach/Ed Killingsworth/Sebastian Mariscal/Kathy McCormick & Ted Smith/Richard NeutraRudolph Schindler/Don Wexler

I spoke with Professor Perez and he told me that the analysis of the case study residences and projects were concentrated on the ‘crown’, ‘body’ and ‘feet’ of the aedifices.

Through collages, reminiscent of Superstudio and Archigram, the field trips become a venue for envisioning alternative architectural and urban scenarios (Design Workshops). I hope you’ll enjoy these images just as much as I did; each collage read like a miniature work of art, and the juxtaposition of architectural drawings and bold hand-drawn colors created fantastic, detailed, abstract constructs.  What a wonderful way to illustrate architectural drawings, and bring to life photographs.  The collages, done by hand, using cutouts, colored pencils and paint had a physical presence, a texture that a purely digital (photoshopped) images invariably lack.

I am inspired to create some more collages of my own and…can’t wait for the book 😉

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Freehand Drawing- In Class exercise. After rendering with Espresso, we use the leftover coffee to draw chair combinations, or rather, the void around the chairs, in a figure-ground setting.

Another exercise with  ‘Drawing on the Righ Side of the Brain’.  By drawing the space, not the chair, the proportions were incredibly accurate in all drawings.  The drawings can be read as Nolli Maps of imaginary cities, we can see piazzas, palazzi…we can see perspective, spatial configurations/plans, abstract paintings… I love the ambivalent water medium, the subtle, duplicitous, always multilayered  sepia tone.

From 'Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain' by Betty Edwards

From Page 54:

Look at the drawings on the right-hand side of Figure 4-11. Studens 1 and 2 copied Picasso’s drawing right side up. As you can see, their drawings did not improve, and they use the same stereotypic, symbolic forms in their copies of the Picasso Stravinsky as they used in their Draw-a-Person drawings. In the drawings done by Student 2, you can see the confusion caused by the foreshortened chair and Stravinsky crossed legs.

In contrast, the second two students, starting out at about the same level of skill, copied the Picasso upside down, just as you did. The Student 3 and the Student 4 drawings show the results. Surprisingly, the drawings done upside down reflect much greater accuracy of perception and appear to be much more skillfully drawn.

How can we explain this?

The results run counter to common sense. You simply would not expect that a figure observed and drawn upside down could possibly be easier to draw, with superior results, than one viewed and drawn in the normal right-side-up way. The lines, after all, are the same lines. Turning the Picasso drawing upside down doesn’t in any way rearrange the lines or make them easier to draw.  And the students did not suddenly acquire “talent”.


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Il Sole (The Sun). Clay, Markers and pen. Milano, April 12, 1981, 5 yrs. old

Il Sole (back). God bless my mom for putting dates on *everything*.



The Sun

By Mary Oliver


and into the clouds or the hills,
or the rumpled sea,
and is gone–
and how it slides again

out of the blackness,
every morning,
on the other side of the world,
like a red flower

streaming upward on its heavenly oils,
say, on a morning in early summer,
at its perfect imperial distance–
and have you ever felt for anything
such wild love–
do you think there is anywhere, in any language,
a word billowing enough
for the pleasure

that fills you,
as the sun
reaches out,
as it warms you

as you stand there,
empty-handed–
or have you too
turned from this world–

or have you too
gone crazy
for power,
for things?




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Pilot Pen V5 (aka Pilot Precise Extra Fine) on office pad. August 3, 2010.

Drawn with Pilot Pen V5 (aka Pilot Precise Extra Fine) on office pad. August 3, 2010.


The Man with Many Pens

by Jonathan Wells



With one he wrote a number so beautiful

it lasted forever in the legends of numbers. With another


he described the martyrs’ feet as they marched

past the weeping stones and cypresses, watched


by their fathers. He used one as a silver wand to lift

a trout from its spawning bed to more fruitful waters


and set it back down, its mouth facing upstream.

He wrote Time has no other river but this one in us,


no other use but this turn in us from mountain lakes

of late desires to confusions passed through


with every gate open. Let’s not say he didn’t take us

with him in the long current of his letters, his calligraphy


and craft, moving from port to port, his hand stopping

near his heart, the hand that smudged and graced the page,


asking, asking, his fingers a beggar’s lucent black,

for the word that gave each of us away.



More poetry from the New Yorker


I confess: I am weak for love pens and other writing instruments.

I have had a fascination with pens (and office supplies) since I was 4, when I would help organize my mother’s supply center at work.  I was very scrupolous 🙂  In college, buying pens at the Varsity Store on Campus, or better yet, at Mathison’s,  was therapy.  Above you see my sine qua non pen.

And, one more thing  for today: my blogsister Ghadah at PrettyGreenBullet gets an A.

Ghadah Alkandari. Isograph and Marker. Hand Exercise from 'Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain' (Aug.2,2010)

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I hope everyone’s having a fabulous beginning of August.
I am really trying.

How are you doing, fabulous?

I plan to go to some movie under the stars, or at the park, or on a roof, like Cinema Paradiso. A good black and white movie, preferably a noir Hitchcock, would be the cat’s meow.

I am officially suffering from wanderlust.  If I could be in five places at once I would be home in Calabria (Southern Italy), in Cuba, Ibiza and Greece and of course right where I am, having a Summer of Art with my students. They really need to get this teleportation thing going, so I could just zip away for the weekend, or we could just do three days of plein air sketching in Florence!

Le Corbusier said that we need to see with new eyes. How true; in Architecture, drawing, and, most of all, in life.  Looking is not seeing. SO part of the renewal  is to give your eyes something different to contemplate (i.e. do something new!).  I pledge to pick up my local weekly and get out of my comfort zone (even my beloved neighborhood! I know, hard to believe). Yesterday, to start the month right, I trekked couple of hours to the beach (with my sketchbook, of course!)

Pacific Beach. August1,2010. Ink on paper.

To develop new eyes, and to stretch different parts of the brain, we have been working in class from “Drawing on The Right Side of the Brain.” One of its famous exercises  is to draw an object without looking at the paper, preferably without lifting your pen or pencil. I tried it out with my hand.

The fingerprint/pattern was inspired by a) this fascinating article on The NewYorker on fingerprints, art and forensic science and b) paying attention to things we don’t even see anymore, or take for granted. Here is our uniqueness. We are all snowflakes, and just as fragile.

Felt Tip on paper. August 2, 2010.

Draw your hand without looking at the paper, take a photo and send it to me (sketchbloom at gmail dot com) or linkback.

I am curious.

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Happy August!

Ever the optimist, here is the first post of the month. I’m giving a shot at posting daily (again), we’ll see how it goes.

Here is the happy Nablopomo August Badge. The theme of this month is ‘Green’.  For me, it will mean renewal more than sustainability (a sort of spa for the mind), but I might find some interesting green homes to feature. Of course green is the color of envy, but we shan’t talk about that 😉 Here are couple of badges for good measure.

So as promised, here is my surprising discovery in the environs of Newport Beach (Costa Mesa): The LAB Anti-Mall.

I loved it! Local public art, local businesses and public spaces.

The Gipsy Den, which I covered in a previous post (it’s updated with photos now, yay), lies therein.

Enjoy, and I hope you get the chance to visit.
By the way thank you for all the views (dear readers :)), I am striving to post more often and it’s great to know this thing I do is being followed and shared.

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Yosemite. Charcoal on paper. July 2010 (date is in Italian)

Hello Hello!

Two weeks zipped by since my last  from San Francisco and I have been reveling in summer outdoor activities, traveling,  and getting ready for the new summer quarter.  California blooms in this season, and the living is easy.

Days with art-dates, writing, and regularly producing and  posting new work, though, always make me feel on purpose and less as if I am swimming in that Great-Gasbyesque ennui and stasis that permeates Southern California. Manana Syndrome.

In that famous ‘graduation speech’, not Kurt Vonnegut, but Mary Schmich wrote:

” Live in California once, but leave before it makes you soft”

The more I live here, the more I find myself contemplating the gravity of this advice, its sweet cruelty. It is easy to lose oneself in perfection. We must continue to fight those windmills, rage against the dying of the light…

I have kept my eyes and mind open and have been compiling my findings and urban adventures…in other words…I am back.  But I don’t think I will be up for trying the one-post-a-day Nablopomo contest just yet, it is the sea-beach-sun-plenair-art  season after all…

This summer is all about Drawing, as I am teaching Freehand Drawing and Rendering and Delineation, along with the Summer Architecture Studio, which this year is dedicated to Visual Communication. Let the shading begin.

During the break I was fortunate enough to steal few days in Yosemite, and I wanted to share what I saw. I sneaked in a charcoal sketch [above] and few shots -but next time I intend to bring easel and watercolor and devote more time to drawing and painting. The novelty of being in a tent, hiking and roughing it (I tend to enjoy the great indoors) was delightful but left little energy and time for art. That said, the hike to May Lake and the sights I saw (a field filled with butterflies, tall grass dancing gently in the wind ) will forever sing of a time and of innocence  not lost as long as Yosemite is there.

Here is the first batch of photos I processed. Check back soon.

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Not to make excuses, but I have also been held captive by a delicious seventies’ paperback,  which involved an architect and a cursed house ( I know, architecture seems to follow everywhere I go).  This was a perfect summer read, extremely well written, and an un-put-downable book. I highly recommend it. It goes well with another mystery novel featuring an architect, Death By Design.

A Real Chill! The House Next Door, 1974

For all the architecture aficionados and aspiring literati, though, the sublime Fountainhead is a prerequisite, as the Architect’s story par excellence and the foundation of all literary and social myth about what an architect is, does, and thinks.  Is it still mandatory reading for all architecture students? I hope so.

Curling up with ‘The House Next Door’ brought back the pure joy of reading, and had a calming effect. I vowed to read more this summer and spend less time on the computer. Unfortunately, during  the three days it took me to finish ‘The House Next Door’, the deadline for  an (online) contest I meant to participate eluded me by few hours. [More of that later]. But isn’t what a good book is supposed to do, steal you away from the world? No regrets, then.

There is always next summer.

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Child's Pose | Thank you

Yoga is moving meditation. Feel your body melt on the ground. Feel your muscles, your bones dissolving into the ground. Be thankful for this time. The gratitude you feel spreads from your heart to your entire being, and radiates towards everyone around you.

Mercedes, Yoga instructor and, apparently, Rockstar in a band- I attended her class for the first time today.

I went to yoga today to plug out: I have been spending too many hours tethered to my computer and needed a retreat. The gym worked for that today, but I am hoping to spend some times, soon, away from technology in places like Yosemite, Sequoia National Park and, perhaps, Napa Valley. It is apparent that I failed at the NaBloPoMo self-challenge, missed too many days -like this weekend- and yet realize that blogging everyday is not my style, and have come to accept the fact that pauses result in epiphanies which can push inspiration forward. Nevertheless I do like to post aoften to show up to my day, art, intellect, just as I would like to make a habit of yoga to practice the mindfulness of the body.  The solitude after yoga practice  makes me realize many things, for example how infinitely precious moments with loved ones are, moments we take for granted. As I walked home tonight, looking at the night sky  I thought about Pablo Neruda, and his lines :

And I, infinitesimal being,
drunk with the great starry void,
likeness, image of mystery,
I felt myself a pure part of the abyss.
I wheeled with the stars;
my heart broke loose on the open sky.

From ‘Poetry’

How the sky would be with no stars, because that is how life is without the love of the people we care about….

So i frightened myself, and I can hear my friend Lamees that ‘frightening’ ourselves is good, for it wakes us up.  Awake means aware.  I resolve every day, like most of us, I’m sure,  to be a better person, yet fail and sometimes lose myself in petty feelings. A friend of mine told me that he heard from a wise, humble man to ‘just do one thing better today than you did yesterday’. So today I went to Yoga,  my way to tune in, because I am not there yet as far as daily meditation. Tuning in means more sun, but, sometimes, more rain.

I chanced upon a quote I like very much (I am kind of ashamed to say where I got it)

“And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.”

I hear the music, do you?

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Explaining (imperfectly) the joy of sketching/vignette and perspective making to a student. Graphite on paper June 11, 2010

Drawing is thinking. Hand-eye coordination is essential not only to accurately render what you see, but to bring forth and execute what you see in your mind’s eye, i.e designing. I read once that we should use the word ‘draw’ as in ‘drawing information’, as from a well. To draw a building  or space is to understand it, to make it our own –to impress it on our brain’s matrix.  Photography, while wonderful and an art form in itself, leaves the lessons of buildings on the camera’s hard drive, not on ours.

Not to mention the warmth and ‘tactability’ , as my friend Luisa says, of a sketch or a vignette, the volumes it adds to a presentation, the process it unveils. Revit has the capability to render photorealistic imagery, with incredible texture and lighting. But it is in the process that a project is appreciated in all its nuances, that poetry can happen, that the design and the architect eye, mind and hand can be sipped, like fine, expensive wine. Without process architecture becomes a shot of cheap wiskey, vulgar.  Design, like diamonds, has no mercy… “They will show up the wearer if they can,” says one character in The Sandcastle, an early novel by the famous British author, Iris Murdoch. (I borrowed this bit on diamonds here).

Drawing is analysis. It is a deliberate act of  interpretation, and abstraction (as in capturing the essential).  In the book ‘Compositions in Architecture’, Dan Hanlon says:

‘I have found that since the act of drawing requires a high degree of graphic editing, each drawing emphasizes a particular quality of composition. Therefore, the information in each drawing is highly selective. This is what I mean by a work of interpretation.’

A drawing can be tuned to reveal and emphasize certain characteristics, and not others. It is a process of selection, of sharpening the way our brain takes notes of details. It is never alienating, never mindless, never automatic (unless as automatic art/ flow of consciousness), never repetitive, never listless as drawing on a computer can be.

In the introduction of book Non-places: Introduction to an anthropology of supermodernity, Marc Augé mentions the many devices that, by keeping us ‘connected’ at all times, alienate and separate us from the place we physically occupy. Drawing keeps us grounded (in the here and now?), and is an exercise in fully experiencing our surroundings, of mindfulness.

And after the alarming The Shallows: This is Your Brain Online , on the ability to train our brain (and affect its physical make-up) by our daily habits, anything that can help with the collective scattered focus we are ‘learning’ from too much technology should be a worthwhile endeavor.

So yes, the Zen of Drawing, or drawing as meditation (architectural therapy not just art?). Like yoga, unplugging and plugging in at the same time. By drawing we fully inhabit this place, this body, as architect and artists.

My blogfriend Suzanne Cabrera at [An] Open Sketchbook turned me onto Michael Nobbs, a Blogger/Artist into time management,who advocates drawing everyday. Here is his free, fun and inspiring e-book.
I already started drawing loved objects before I ‘release’ them.

Here are the books mentioned:

And here, the first part on the importance of drawing.

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Mango. Watercolor. June 6, 2010.

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Apart. Photograph, Lumix Panasonic Camera. June 4, 2010

Soundtrack of  ‘Apart’

The center cannot hold. Photograph, Panasonic Lumix camera. June 4, 2010.

Soundtrack of  ‘The Center cannot hold’

Spooning (one. is broken). Photograph, Panasonic Lumix camera. June 4, 2010

Soundtrack of ‘Spooning (one. is broken)’

Gordon Matta Clark (son of an artist, trained as an architect in Cornell) Splitting 32, 1975 Five gelatin silver prints, cut and collaged 40 3/4 x 30 3/4 (103.5 x 78.1) framed Collection of Jane Crawford and Bob Fiore Courtesy the Estate of Gordon Matta-Clark and David Zwirner, New York

Gordon Matta-Clark Conical Intersect (detail) 1975 27-29, rue Beaubourg, Paris courtesy of David Zwirner, NY and the Estate of Gordon Matta-Clark

More on Gordon Matta-Clark

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My beloved 120GB ipod and a new present, Aerial TANK headphones from Urban Outfitters. Ink on stolen notebook paper. June 2, 2010


NaBloPoMo writing prompt of today:

What is your favorite poem?

#1

By the Ionian sea

You pick fresh fruit and seeds

From orchard and underwood nearby

I fetch seashells

Starshaped

For you

I build a nest of leaves–

We spend warm nights with street artists

Flame-eaters and sages

Fall asleep with fire

Yours and mine

Gipsy ballads



I wrote this in 1999.

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Happy June!

I hope the long weekend was restful and re-newing for all. I was fortunate enough to enjoy the beautiful weather in San Diego, and explore the Torrey Pines coast and beaches, and hike a cliff (!) For someone like me , a city creature, who believes in the great indoors, this is no small feat. I love seeing the water, just wish I had a Vespa to do this more often.

Torrey Piney Cliff. La Jolla. Photograph, digital manipulation. June 31, 2020

Today I got some good, official news from my University, NewSchool of Architecture and Design: I have been appointed full-time lecturer. I am incredibly excited to continue teaching on a more permanent basis, and to progress in my academic career, to continue sharing and learning with my students. This summer I am slated to teach First Year Studio, a combination of advanced architectural drawing and visual communication techniques, along with Rendering and Delineation and [roll of drums] Freehand Drawing. Needless to say, incredible opportunities to continue drawing, rendering, watercolor and coffee paintings…all of which I will share here.  As some of you may know, there is still some paperwork to go through in regards to my visa, the support of everyone at my school has been incredible, but , like every good movie, there is suspense at the end. Keep sending good energy.

I want to start June with NaBloPoMo, which is short for ‘National Blog Posting Month’. This is a fabolous site for bloggers, with lots of resources and networking opportunities; it is also associated with BlogHer.  The official National Blog Posting Month  is November (and prizes are given!), but every month members can be part of mini-nablopomo…which means I will do my best to post art and writings every day this month.

This month’s theme is ‘NOW’…a great reminder to ‘take life in one day packages’ as I recently read in a quote.

NaBloPoMo also offers interesting writing prompts for this month, Monday to Friday. Today’s prompt is:

When you were little, what did you want to be when you grew up?

Well, it may not surprise you that I used to gather my friends in the cortile of my house in Milano, a small band of four and five year-olds and set up storytelling classes…I was the ‘teacher’ of course:). I remember planning for each class and thinking of what story I would create for my ‘students’. We only met like four times (it is hard to keep a schedule when you are five and there are so many games and toys to play with).  I distinctly remember looking at books in elementary school and wanting to be a ‘researcher of legends’.

PS: This is my 100th post, a year and three months after I first started SketchBloom, and exactly seven months after its official launch. Here’s to many more!

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