Ovieto: city as text

I thought I might share with you some pictures/evidence from the project I completed last week. The following is my "story" about Orvieto. These words served as the base layer for my book. The pictures below are some snapshots of how it turned out, though it is a difficult thing to capture with a photo! Enjoy.

On the hilltop of Orvieto stands a castle, a testament to its heritage, its image an old postcard to show the city as it used to be. Flexible tufa and whispers of history mold the outskirts of La Rocca and the buildings within its boundaries. On the main road shops and restaurants open their doors, locals and visitors walk the streets that were once strictly divided into medieval quarters. Previously a haven from attack and a place for storing wine, La Roca is now a refuge for reflection. There is no tension between the prosperity of the present metropolis and the provincial grounds of the past; they exist together. Through what it has become, Orvieto can look back with nostalgia at what it was. The walls and streets, Orvieto’s true residents, invite the visitor to look at who she is and continue the journey to who she will become. The materials of the city, the voices of the past, the work of diligent hands, allow Orvieto to leave a mark on the postcard of its visitor.

last pages of my book (sorry, its upsideown!)

the first side, beginning at the bottom and traveling up...

this is what it looks like all folded up

this is what it looks like completely stretched out! (at the exhibition)

One of my favorite figures, Mr. Orvieto

Side 1 of my book, starting from the top
Side 2: bottom, up
Side 2: light shining through the outline of the "city" on the other side
A series of the books together
This is what our beautiful classroom looked like with everyone's work displayed.

The End of a season...

The first class of the semester has come to a close. Its hard to believe all that has happened to me in the last month; its hard to believe that I have lived in Italy for nearly a month already!

The third week of Design class our group split in two: half began to work on large drawings from a chosen site in Orvieto, and the other half (my half) began a project of “the city as text.” My first task for this project was to go around the town and find letters. Trees that make an “A”, a sign post that makes a “t” etc…We took pictures and then converted the pictures into linoleum cuts in order to print them. This seems like an easy task, but it took a few very long days of carving to create an entire alphabet! In order to design these “books” of Orvieto, we each wrote a 1001 character description of the Orvieto. The description was poetic and story-like in form, modeled after a selected chapter from Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities and incorporated our own experiences and observations of Orvieto thus far. These tasks of preparation took of most of our days for Monday through Thursday.

Last Friday we were blessed to visit the city of Assissi. After a busy week of class, this was a wonderful time for rest. We sat in the olive groves, toured the monastery, churches and woods where St. Francis dwelled and stood in awe in front of The Basilica of Saint Francis. The basilica contained St. Francis’ tomb in the lower level and a series of Giotto’s The Life of St. Francis on the upper level.

This past Monday through Friday, our fourth and final week (of Design class) has been a blur of busy activity! I began constructing my book by adding a layer of paint to all my drawings from the earlier weeks of the class and gluing all these drawings together to create a two-sided, 20 x 200 centimeter book, folded into 20 pages. I continued to add more layers of my old drawings and then commenced stamping each letter of my 1001 character description onto the book itself. Just the process of stamping took about 20 hours, spread over two days! After long days working in the studio, our work was finally complete on Thursday. We spent Thursday morning and afternoon critiquing all 20 of the completed projects and held an exhibition in the evening for the members of the town to come view our work. It was a fantastic day of celebration of all the hard work we did throughout the last month. Listening to my peers commemorate my work and find aspects of connection with it that I had not even anticipated was an amazing experience. I have learned so much and grown intellectually in ways I never expected, and I know that I will continue to find ways that this class and this country has impacted me in the years to come. As we wrapped up one class, I couldn’t help but think, “I believe I get to do this three more times during the semester!”

Today I spent the day shopping and walking around Rome. The rest of the weekend will be spent hanging out in Orvieto and relaxing J Monday morning, my Ekphrastic poetry class begins.

Monday was the celebration of San Guiseppe, Orvieto's patron saint. The town celebrates by mass, a procession of St. Joseph's statue and giving out donuts and wine!

The olive groves of Assissi...

More exciting news—my parents have a flight booked to come visit me in May! I am so excited to be able to share with them some of what I’m experiencing and for them to have the time to get away. So, THANK YOU to everyone who is helping make that happen—I am so greatful J

When in Rome...

I suppose it is time for me to tell you all about my trip to Rome. This was one of the most amazing weekends I’ve ever experienced and I am still trying to process it all! Each of the four days began before 8 a.m. with a cappuccino and Italian pastry to ready us for the amazing history we were about to take in! We walked all over Rome, some days over 10 miles!Throughout the four days we dealt with the Renaissance and Baroque time periods, moving from museums to churches to plazas to see the architecture and paintings of some of Rome’s finest! The experience was made even more meaningful by my Professor, who has spent lots of time studying Rome, art and design and gave introductions, read poetry and pointed out little marvels within the city that I would have otherwise missed! We spent time sitting in some of the markets and piazzas throughout Rome, getting a feel for how the ancient architecture has a place in the modern culture. In between the 12 hours of sight seeing a day we consumed many espresso drinks, scoops of gelato, slices of pizza, delicious sandwiches, sips of wine and did I mention gelato?

Here are some of the highlights of what we saw:

The Boxer in Museo Nazionale

Il Tempietto Di Bramante, the place of St. Peter’s martyr

St. Peter’s Basilica, including Michaelangelo’s Pieta

Trevi Fountain

Pantheon

Church of Saint Ignacio

Carvagio’s paintings: Calling of St. Matthew, St. Matthew writing the gospel, Madonna di Loret, Conversion of Saul, Crucifixion of St. Peter, Assumption

Churches and Sculptures by Bernini (The Ecstasy of St. Teresea) & Boromini

The Colosseum and Arch of Constantine

The Vatican Museum [Raphael’s paintings & Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel]

What good is a work of art if there is no connection? This is a question we have asked in our class is this semester, and in Rome I was confronted with connection overload! It is hard to describe just how much the list of these sites has impacted me. I was challenged by how well and how much all of these artists incorporated stories from scripture into their work, I was confronted with Catholic traditions and iconography, my appreciation for the talents and creativity God has bestowed on the hands of man has deepened greatly. It was an absolutely wonderful weekend and I hope to find my way back to this magical city again.

the hallway to the Sistine chapel...
The scene i chose to draw:
Bernin fountain...
Trevi fountain..
St. Peter's...
La Pieta
Rome!
Il Tempieto de Bramante
The Boxer

Here is a snippet of my immediate reflections in St. Petere’s Basilica, if you care to read:

I have never felt so small as just now, standing enveloped by the masterpiece that is St. Peter’s Basilica. I am humbled and amazed. I feel insignificant, but at the same time part of a story so big it took 160 years to tell only part of its story. Inside the building, the paintings jump off the walls, the ceiling extends into the heavens, statues reach out and try to enter your mind, music plays and mass proceeds—a haven for all who’ve pilgrimed here.

And then there is the Pieta. So simple and beautiful. I’ve just realized I will never be closer to this revolutionary piece than I am now. I stand and let it deplete my breath. I zoom the camera lens to really capture Mary’s face—anguish, love masked by pain, sympathy. The only mother in the world who had to let a child go before he began growing inside of her, a sacrifice for mankind. Mary did you know you’d face this moment? Amidst the color and boldness—the overwhelming statues and gold—in the corner, humbly, honestly, Mary’s face shines most bright as she grieves her son, our Savior.

experiences...

So in the last week or so…

I experienced a home-cooked Italian meal on Friday night. We split up into small groups and headed to the houses of several families who live in Orvieto, support the community and were willing to invite some Americans into their lives for the evening! I went with two other girls and the program RA (thankfully she speaks Italian so it made conversation much easier!) to the director of the program’s parents’ house. Anna and Jaquamo were very sweet and excited to welcome us in! We were served a four-course meal—beginning with pasta, ending with dessert, with meat and vegetables in between! I experienced the art of trying different wines that best coordinate with the course being served. We stumbled (in translation) through small talk, sports talk, and politics, but the best part of the evening was looking through photo albums! I felt like I experienced a whole new aspect of the Italian culture hearing about how this couple (probably in their early 60s) met in their teens and seeing pictures from throughout their life.

I had my first weekend in Orvieto! I spent most of the time drawing, enjoying the outdoors and enjoying the company of everyone in the program! We played a game of futbol to get in the true Italian spirit—and my is it an interesting combination to play with a handful of Italians who are very good and take the game very seriously and a bunch of English and Art majors who haven’t played soccer since middle school! It was a good time though. On Sunday morning I, and a few others from the program, began rehearsing with the choir at the small catholic church I attended the last two Sundays. The choir director speaks enough English to help us during practice, and they gladly welcomed us in. The music is beautiful (though I’m still working on understanding it!) and it was great to participate in a choir again.

I handed in my first drawing assignment. Over the weekend we created seven small drawings of churches, walls, arches, trees, etc. around the town. We also restarted, worked on and perfected the cityscape of mock Orvieto, created from cardboard boxes in our studio. The studio project took up most of Monday but once it was done it felt good to have accomplished the task!

this is my drawing... this was the model of what i was attempting to draw...

Tomorrow we head to Roma! We’ll spend Thursday through Sunday in apartments right smack in the middle of Rome and have a verrry packed schedule! I am anticipating a weekend where I am smacked in the face with history, blown away by beauty and can encounter the art and architecture of this ancient city in ways I would have never expected! I am SO excited. J

Thanks for your prayers!

The evening is when I find the Duomo most powerful and breathtaking--when the busy buzz of crowds of pedestrians and tourists has faded away and there's no one else around. The building pops out of the sky, with the moon shining down and I stand before it humbled and amazed.

One week of classes: complete!

What a thrilling and exhausting week it has been, and the weekend has not even yet begun! As the week of classes comes to a close, here is a recap of some of what I’ve experienced this week.

Drawing class: We began Monday morning talking about the syllabus, expectations for the course, etc and were sent out Monday afternoon with the assignment: make a drawing. It was a little open-ended for my taste and very perplexing given my (lack of) history with drawing or any art classes for that matter. I gave it my best shot, taking on a landscape with the guidance of Holly, a dear friend and also an art major! (By the way, thanks for the great selection of art supplies, Mom! It seems you thought of everything J). The critique of this first drawing brought laughter and amusement to both my professor and my peers—all in a loving way of course! In class we drew figures of a display of the city, made entirely out of cardboard shapes replicating some of the main buildings in Orvieto as well as other pieces thrown into the mix, just to keep things challenging! We worked on perspective, angles, markings and finally, contrast of light and dark. This process was extremely difficult for me and was my first experience drawing for any length of time (I may be wrong, but I think it made my arms sore!). I really had to work to draw exactly what I saw instead of what I thought should be in front of me, given my knowledge of the way geometric figures work! Outside of the classroom, our homework assignments focused on getting out into the city—learning its textures, locations and how the light plays off the buildings. I am getting to know this city in ways I never expected! I’ve had a lot of frustrating moments with the art of drawing, but I think I am improving as fast as I can and learning to really work hard at it. My appreciation for good art has also grown exponentially! I don’t know how all you art majors do it…

Church service: Wednesday night we attended a local Catholic praise and worship service. I was surprised to find out that it is a fairly charismatic congregation—a description I’m not used to hearing about the Catholic churches back in the US. Worship was lead by the director of our program, an Orvietani, Alessandro. There were a few instrumentalists, a few singers and a priest who changed into and out of his robe throughout the service, at one point wearing his jeans, sweater and a single lapel (looked like a scarf!) from his uniform (Dad, I paid attention to this for you!). About 15 from Gordon attended the service, so we probably made up a little less than half of the group at the beginning but more people joined towards the end of the service. I tried to follow along with the Italian words through a songbook, but mostly listened to the voices around me and was just as blessed by that. Throughout the services there were times for silence, for leading the group in prayer, for individual prayer and some people were even singing in tongues—I didn’t realize this at first because it didn’t sound that different from Italian, but the voices were angelic. The priest brought around a symbol of the Eukarist (a gold sun with the crucifix in the middle) and blessed each group gathered in the room. The service was beautiful and though I didn’t always realize what was going on around me it was a much-needed time to sit, absorb, reflect and encounter God. I am really looking forward to learning more about the Catholic church and liturgy in Italy.

Everyday Life: We’ve had such beautiful weather this week and I am praying that it continues to become warmer and brighter! No matter what’s going on outside, it is freezing inside all of the buildings so I find myself putting on and taking off my layers all day long. Walking between class, the restaurant where we eat, Internet cafes, locations for drawing, etc we must walk a few miles a day and so far I’m really enjoying that time. Everything truly shuts down in the middle of the day after lunch and its amazing to watch as the townspeople (and tourists) of Orvieto pour out into the streets again around five o’clock. I’m really enjoying getting to know everyone in the program; we’re from all over the country in both our hometowns and colleges, and about half of us are from Gordon. We’ve had one Italian class so far, just to learn major phrases. I’m trying to work up the confidence to speak with people in town and even use the language among my friends in the program, but I keep speaking Spanish by accident! The language issue will be a process and a struggle to overcome—but no worries, I can successfully order a cappuccino and a gelato! Each meal we eat in the restaurant is a magnificent surprise. Typically we start with a pasta dish for lunch, followed by a second course of meat and vegetables. Dinner is usually a lighter meal, sometimes with a pastry or fruit for dessert. Everything we eat is fresh, pure and I’m pretty sure we hit each of the major food groups throughout the day. Meals are filled with good conversation and much laughter and I’m learning to eat slowly and enjoy every bite. I really could get used to this lifestyle…

Well, I guess that’s all for now friends! Thanks for all your prayers and support. Ciao! J