looking down into an old amphitheater, the wind just would not pick up enough for any nice billowing to occur but you get the point
Thursday, March 20, 2008
chinese food
ok first off we spent three hours running around polermo one night looking for Chinese food, so we where quite ecstatic when we finally came across this establishment, also I neglected to pack a razor for the week and it was becoming apparent
sicily
specifically the board walk in palermo, not that nice of a beach but fantastic weather and these fun rainbow coloured post things, but it was absolutely gorgeous, you may also not the presence of my running shoes... as that they are quite yellow... they do not make shoes in this country that fit my feet, my walking shoes suffice but are just a little to tight for a week trip around Sicilia
... ...
perhaps my favorite picture from the entire trip, narcissistic much? but sweet none the less this was taken outside of Rome on a hubber excursion at villa Farnese, which had beautiful gardens, and coincidentally a nice view and plenty of arch ways
+dome
ok so my camera cord is on loan right now so its just archived stuff for the time being... however as laura was kind enough to point out I'm certain at lest some one reading this cares to see that I am doing well, so the next series of photo's is just that, here I am at night out side the tomb of Caesar Augustus with a dome in the back ground, kata the photographer with my indestructible camera (which had just been dropped about 10feet) and works just fine with barely a scratch on the plastic parts of the case
Friday, March 14, 2008
popolo sunset
ok so this is just me waking back from the art store with a can of spray death (temporary spray adhesive) and some acetate, and it was nearing twilight so hope you all enjoy, and just so you know thats piazza del popolo up ahead (the obelisk is in the middle) and the church you see just pas the obelisk is the church of saint maria del popolo (whom the piazza is named for) and in this church are two Caravaggio alterpeices, the conversion of st paul http://www.albany.edu/scj/jcjpc/vol6is3/st-paul.html
and the crucification of st peter http://leejagers.files.wordpress.com/2007/03/caravaggio-peters-crucifiction.jpg
just in case you are not familiar, but yeah you can just pop in any time and check them out in their original alter
and the crucification of st peter http://leejagers.files.wordpress.com/2007/03/caravaggio-peters-crucifiction.jpg
just in case you are not familiar, but yeah you can just pop in any time and check them out in their original alter
a small slice of heaven
so we relay don't do much in sculpture studio. I mean there is always work to do but aside from having to be there and roberto making us coffee there really is nothing special about that particular time, however it seems convincing him to take us for walks is an invaluable experience, and we have decided thus will be the case for all future sculpture studios, on this particular excursion, we got to see a print studio that has been up and running for three generations, and a wall of litho stones worth at least 500,000euro, according to Roberto's estimations. however the best part as pictured here is the 16th century(think Leonardo, Michelangelo, renaissance) library, that is open to the public, contains the most beutifull old books and also may have wireless internet access... still working on that last one, my Italian isn't that good yet also, dante... I can only hope but definitely worth another trip
museum
and this is the building that I work on those things in... as seen from the villa borghese... and no it does not get old, ever
the wall
here you can get an actual sense of the drawing, all that is on the wall is acrylic ink, sachi said that india ink fades after a few years so they had to change from the original but still awesome, though it is really getting hectic now, the other assistants, for the other piece showed up and are starting to work however since we all have different schedules they went from originally wanting 3 or 4 students to more than 14, and while I do not think they got that many there are a lot of people working on it now, the wall drawing, quite literally this time instead of sol's preferred term for mural, is accomplished by doing very mall scribbles to build up tonality, no pictures yet as that I am still working with sachi who is staying a few extra days to finish this one
side one done
and here the tape is off and the faces, which will be the lightest side are complete.. now we have to tape off the other sides and seal them with acrylic medium and paint
less blury
and here we are relaxing for a moment while sachi distracts the museum staff with a sol lewitt book... and what I think is great is how much they loved his acrylic wall drawings because of the colors... yet bought two that are greyscale
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
ok ok ok... ok
first I know I have not been all that great about updating this thing... and I also have some 5oo images from the first half of the semester... that will not be posted here, at least not while I am abroad. but none the less I will try and update this more frequently to keep whom so ever reads this informed, as was its original purpose, so sorry for the lack of info I am in fact still alive and well in rome, so no worries.
ta dah
and just some more progress on the sol lewitt, the second coat is up finishing the back ground and the tape has been reversed to begin painting the inside of the shapes, since I still have classes I had very little do with everything different in this picture from the last few save the actual tape
and i have to asume this is why she has bangs
so she caught on to me and my camera, though deciding to hid behind her bangs rather than duck out of the shot, but she really is a lot of fun to work with, not the cruel task master I was expecting... though when you think small japanese woman cruel task master is not really the first thing that comes to mind, but needless to say she's making actually having to do work a lot of fun and I'm really lucky to be a part of this
real progress
so now you see the shapes quite clearly, along with the taped off areas, we are done for the day because everything the lights do not shine directly on is still wet, but the museum staff seems happy that we finaly put something on the wall and are pleased with the scale though I doubt many of them have a clear idea of what this will look like... because we are building up tone one a white base with india ink only the finished product will have a very cement like appearances, and further due to the scale and the skewed perspective for the size and position the shapes will appear much more like volumes that exist in or out of the wall than something painted on... very cool stuff
first ink coat
progress, you could not imagine how happy he staff was once we put some form of pigment on the wall, sachi said the mix was a little dark for a first coat but was feeling really pressured by the director, staff, and film crew looming over us all the time. but it actually looks really cool at this point but sachi told us we have to go back and wash it to homogenize the tone and take off the really cool swirl patterns that showed up as a result of our method of aplication
va bene
ok end of the first day of actual work, the paint is drying and we are getting out of there, there are of us working on the project originally there where supposed to be 6 but one of the girls never showed up. and my inclusion in all of this is still some what of a mystery to me, well not completely, Shara, my galleries and studio professor and apparently influential art purveyor in Rome, was made aware of the situation and the need for English speaking individuals to assist (and possibly to work long days) yet she did not mention this to the class at large and the girls are all painting, print, or photo majors, (flat works) who are more familiar with sol's work than I. I got involved when i was bugging shara for something else and she thought I had also asked about this and put my name on the assistant list some how... so it all works out quite well and I get to draw on the walls of a museum... and see the exhibits that normally charge non eu citizens 30 euros to see for free
7 hours later
ok so all of the shapes are drawn out papered in and we have just started painting the edges this is day two of the instillation and you get a nice sense of scale in this shot. the shapes are a pyramid, cube and trapezoidal pyramid, if you can see such, any way we are almost done with this fun part.
fun times
though its not all bad when we do not have cameras filming everything and a horde of museum staff watching us we can breath a little easier and have fun while working... or not working, either way, though it was rather entertaining, on the weekends we put in 8 hour days, the attention span of said camera crew and museum officials is about half of this, and on the first day they actually had to bring in chairs because the got tired of standing by the time 3 rolled around and just about threw us out by 5, especially after sachi told them we wanted to start at 9am on a Saturday... which they where none to thrilled about... but hey its Italy
lots of ladders
ok so you can kind of see the scale here, big wall and big shapes, this is how most of our time is spent, up on ladders working on things much bigger and taller than said ladders, here we have finished drawing out the shapes and are taping them off so we can work on the back ground without colouring the shapes themselves, which will be done latter, and will go much, much faster... the basic process was to tape the brown paper about 2" from the line on the inside, then a finer paper to almost the line, then tape the outside edge of the fine paper with drafting tape and then paint over the tape and fine paper to seal it off completely... and after just having drawn the line in question we revisited the same small areas time and time again... moving all of the ladders and scaffolding each and every time
measuring
so once we got the math done we had the fun task of measuring out the wall and drawing the shapes, which involved a lot of small marks, tape and string, here is sachi sol lewitt's (former?) assistant who is directing the instillation of this piece, shes a blast, and hates having her picture taken... but at this point had not realized just how easy it was to hide my camera in my hand so don't expect to many more of her
spectators
and here we see some of the more... benign of the museum's staff who enjoy watching us work, some of whom are photographers/ cinematographers documenting the process for posterity... most of which is English, so i guess the joke is one them... or they will dub over their own audio later on. right now we are working on the particular math problem that the museum gave us... the measured a section of the wall to the proportions of the original drawing, and made sure it fit between the various ducts and outlets, where as the whole point of a mural, especially for so lewitt is to use the whole wall with no exceptions. oh and our favorite individual, not pictured is a member of the staff who for was or is an architect (language barrier) was not happy with the proportions we worked out for the entire wall and drew all over the original drawing to show how ours did not match up, at which point it was discovered that the original drawing (not done by sol lewitt i might add) was actually erroneous to the specifications of this particular work, at which point we have not seen the architect since this discovery...
the wall
ok so here is the amazing opportunity I accidentally became involved with, the museo moderna in Rome recently bought two sol lewitt wall drawings, and since sol's assistants who generally over see the instillation of the works are Americans, and due to the scale of the works, we have been solicited to help out, SWEET. so here is the wall primed with 4 coats of acrylic paint to a nice orange peel texture so it holds ink... then we washed it... the whole thing... with rags and water...
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