True Story

I just finished this piece tonight. I'm still not sure how I feel about this one, but I'm excited because I think that the next piece I do will be really nice- I'm figuring out lots of technical things about how to work with these new materials. I'm using magic markers in addition to my usual ballpoint pens, and I love them to death.

This one is called True Story.





The little text on the left says "All our nonsense aside, one never quite expects to feel this way." Then below that there's a cockroach saying, "Much less talk about it." Below that there's another bug saying "Much less make art about it."

Right above the dove heads there is a pair of ants: one is saying, "To preserve appearances" and the other is saying "We keep mum about feelings. (Dumb.)"

The rest you can read for yourself.





Or maybe not. The tiny text says, in pink, "Must we stick to" and then in black, "deep words about superficial things and superficial words about deep things."



One of my teachers in grad school was the incredibly charismatic poet and art critic Bill Berkson. I remember distinctly that he once said that there were two kinds of people- those who were interested in people and those who were interested in things. The latter was preferable- the distinction was framed in terms of being interested in art or being interested in gossip. I tried hard to give the impression that I was interested in things because I was totally fascinated by Bill Berkson. (As had been, it was rumored, Bianca Jagger, so I was in good company.) In any case, his offhand remark has not aged nearly as well as he had, and this piece is, among other things, my rebuttal, twenty years later. (Although I won't love him forever- that part is about the baby bird.)

You can see bigger images here.

Reading the birds

Thom has been trying to get me to go to the Quirinale hill near our house to see the birds swarming at sunset, but so far he's failed because I'm always working in the studio too late, trying to grab the last of the good light. But tonight he dragged me outside to the river, and just looking down the Tiber towards the hill was incredible. The starlings here are skywriters, and they give new meaning to the old stuff about reading the flights of birds. If birds write like this in the sky every night, what kind of moron would NOT think it meant something?



Tomorrow's mission is to get to the Quirinale hill at the right time. Thom says the birds are so dense there that they block the view to St. Peters as if they're weather.

I'm also going to some more incredible churches tomorrow. I've pretty given up on posting about all the churches I visit because a) taking pictures in churches is problematic: it's usually forbidden and when you are allowed it's often way too dark to get anything good and b) there is already plenty of information about the churches of Rome online. Also c) half the time I go to a church I think I need to go back again. Sometimes I go when there's a mass, or it's the wrong time of day or I need to get better pictures or see some part of it that's closed or something. I've tried 4 times to get in to San Franceso di Sapienza, and by gum, I will. Because this is the outside!



No big whoop, you might think. But I protest: whoop. Look closely at the tower.





This (below) is another one of the churches I need to go back to, St. Carlo alle Quatro Fontane, by Boromini. Boromini was supposed to be buried there, but he killed himself and so the plan was cancelled: in the bottom of the church there's a wonderful staircase that he designed leading down to a very sad empty crypt.



It's beeee-utiful inside, too: here's the view looking up at the dome.



I have to go back there for sure because I need more pictures: there are the apartments of a saint upstairs; you pay a euro to a woman who is clearly auditioning for the part of Dracula's housekeeper and she leads you up some stairs to one of the oddest little apartment complexes you have ever seen. Or will see, when I go back there with my camera.




This is Santa Prassede, a gorgeous church with an incredible byzantine mosaic chapel that is totally impossible to photograph, I discovered. Even the internet cannot provide me with a good enough picture of it. I did manage to take video inside the chapel, which is probably better than nothing: it was dedicated to Theodora, the mother of the pope who built the church.



Have I mentioned how much I love Rome in the last five minutes? No? Well, I love it. This graffiti was in the metro station on my way to work.

Rumor

I finished a piece I've been working on for ages yesterday. It's called Rumor, and it's on my website here if you want to see bigger pictures.



I'm working with magic markers and ballpoint pens, and there are many, many layers of both on this piece. This is my first large drawing in color, with these pens, and I'm still not sure about it. Sometimes I think it's really great, and other times I just keep repeating the same joke in my head: this piece puts the mental in experimental.



I love working with the magic markers, though. I've got another magic marker piece started already, and someday soon I'll finish the other black and white ballpoint piece that I worked on in August. It's another swan, and it's looking pretty good, but I've been seduced by these new pens- I just can't go back to black and white right now.









This piece took me about two months, working in the studio nearly every day. Someday I'll make a little video out of all the phases it went through- I changed all these colors about a million times before I settled on anything- the green area outside the word innocence was pink, then purplish, then blue, then green.



The large text says, "There was a rumor of innocence and guilt."




Speaking of feeling guilty, I know that I said that I was going to post about a fabulous church in Rome every day until I leave, and I didn't do that today, but I am actually not feeling the least bit guilty about it. Visiting a church a day I can do. I visited two churches today. Posting every day? No.

Do not Discuss Religion with Geese: Il Gesu Part 1

Goosey goosey gander, where do you wander?
Upstairs and downstairs and in my lady's chamber.
There I met an old man who would not say his prayers
So I took him by the left leg and threw him down the stairs.

I'm pretty sure that this nursery rhyme refers to the time when the queen of England was suspected of being a secret Catholic. The old man in question was, according to me, her priest, because at that time not saying your prayers was a punishable offense, although not by goose: for a while there one had to prove loyalty to the Church of England by saying the correct prayers. I'm hazy on the dates and names, but I'm pretty sure the goose was a Protestant. A mean Protestant.

If the goose had been a Jesuit, though, he might have liked today's church: Il Gesu. Il Gesu is the famous mothership of the Jesuits. I don't know a Jesuit from a hole in the ground, but I do know that this kind of iconography does NOT generally grace the front of your sweetness and light variety chapel.



There is a lot of that in Il Gesu. There are two priests stomping on people flanking the entranceway and at least two more groups of people being stompled inside the church. Even the cherubs don't look too friendly.



I'm going to have to go back there, though, because there was a gorgeous little chapel with a 15th century Madonna and the ceiling looked amazing, I made a big mistake by going in the early evening. I forgot that churches built in 1568 might not have the greatest light fixtures. So most of what I wanted to look at, particularly on the ceiling, was hidden in darkness. And although I was very tricky and figured out that I could lay my camera down flat on a chair to get a picture, I had technical problems.



Ooops. Part 2 soon.