Golden Quiver, 12" by 9", 2011

Butterflies are highly affected by the sun.  On a cloudy day, they will sit in their cage with their wings closed and practically hibernate.  When the sun comes out, they fly around.  The warmth and light invigorate them. View more butterflies in my gallery.

Having been in Florence the week before, I was struck by the  instillation that Urs Fischer presented.  Here stood the destructrion of one of the sculptures in the Loggia dei Lanzi in Florence, Italy.  The sculpture that the instillation is based on, The Rape of the Sabine Women by Giambologna, contains a man holding a woman in the air with a crouching man at his feet. The scene is of the abduction of a Sabine woman with her husband at the bottom looking up.

Fischer’s instillation contained a wax representation of the original stone sculpture from Florence.  It started out whole and melted throughout the time frame of the exhibit.  I found an article on this exhibit that has images of this piece a few months before I experienced it. When I visited the Biennial, the upper two figures of Urs Fischer’s sculpture had melted leaving the lower figure looking in anguish not at his disappearing wife, but at the melting burning decaying destruction of the sculpture itself…or is it the destruction of what the sculpture respresents?

On the edges of the sculpture are office chairs that are also decaying.  The chairs are also wax and melted throughout the time frame of the instillation.

Below is a photograph of the sculpture, The Rape of the Sabine Women, by Giambologna.

Duccio Trassinelli a professor of Industrial Design, started Studio A.R.D.I.T.I, and began exploring furniture design.  He is particularly interested in lamps, light and the use of low-voltage.  According to The Artistic Time 2, a 2010 collection of the artists and shows at the La Macina di San Cresci, he would define his work as “method, pioneering, technology as poetic resource, no compromises, technical know-how, modern tradition, play, and freedom in space.”  A reflection of these ideas is in the works.  At times, he collaborated with other artists to create works that incorporate inlay-ed wood or art glass.  You can find Trassinelli’s designs at the Pieve di San Cresci, the MoMA in NY, and Center Pompidou Paris among others.

Here I enjoy how the reflectors are placed in a design of beautifully inlaid wood.

Shadow and shape of light break the space around these lamps. The lights in these designs can often be turned and used as directional strong lights as well as reflected soft lights.

One artist whose work caught my eye in the Arsenal at ILLUMInations, the Venice Biennale 2011, was German artist Annette Kelm.

Kelm showed several series of photographs.  The particular one that interested me was entitled Driftwood Lamp, a series of six images of a drift wood lamp on a white background.

If the photographs are read in a western manner from left to right, then we see the ‘lamp’ which becomes a piece of drift wood in our mind, move back, and forth, then down , and up.  These minute changes cause the wood to hover almost as if it was drifting, not falling.  It seems suspended in space as if it was floating.  The lack of shadows in the images take the subject out of our understanding of space and time.  The images become about rhythm and motion.  Although the lamp moves dramatically back and forth, there is a constant among the pictures: the electrical cord that barely shifts from image to image.  This cord gives one a point of reference and the stability heightens one’s awareness of the movement of the object.

About the show

ILLUMInations is the title of the 54th Venice Biennale.  The Biennale is a large conempoarary art exhibit composed of exhibits from artists from all over the world.  The title is poetic in itself expressing both concrete (illuminating poetry and exhibits, structure of exibit separated into nations) and figurative interpretations (wish to inspire different ways of thinking and looking at the world.) The exhibition runs from June 4 through November 27, 2011.  It is open 10am until 6pm on Tuesday through Sunday.  The admission fee was 20 euro (roughly $30).

On Sunday, I did a lot of thinking concerning the project I am undertaking in the next few weeks.  I came up with several ideas of paintings and became very excited about one of them.  However, none of the canvases available were big enough to do the idea justice.  I found several very large stretcher bars (and one smaller stretcher bar (yet still larger then my butterfly paintings).  I decided I probably would have a hard time stretching a canvas larger then this smaller stretcher bar, and chose it for my purpose.  Then I just needed a canvas.  This particular quest for a large piece of canvas, and was solved rather easily when my hostess, Demetria, was going to Firenze (Florence) last Monday evening,  gave me a lift and took me to the art store.

Here are the materials:

Here is the stretching of the canvas in action:

Here is the final 31″ x 48″ product ready to embrace the idea (I hope):

My husband keeps asking me what it looks like around the residency, so I thought I would post some images of my surroundings.  In the coming weeks I hope to post reflections, sketches, and works in progress.

The view from my studio: Castello di Montefioralle

A close up

The Studio:

La Macina Di San Cresci:

Door to the Artist House where I am living: