Montepulciano in the snow

It was a beautiful ride to Carol's house, which is in the mountains above Lake Trasimeno, just south of Castiglion Fiorentino. We arrived at Carol's house which was blanketed in snow. After unloading the car and hauling my now very heavy luggage in, I wandered around and took a few pics of her garden in the snow. People are very concerned about privacy in Italy, so out of respect I'm not posting anything to reveal the location of her home.











We had a wonderful lunch at Carol & John's house. We noticed that the sky was clearing and that there were blue patches. Carol suggested that we try to run over to Montepulciano for the afternoon, and I quickly took her up on this wonderful offer!


View of the lake from up on the mountain

When we got over to Montepulciano, it was very cold and foggy. Below is a picture I stole off of the web showing what the town looks like. The church we visited previously just outside of town, Chiesa di San Bagio (which I painted and wrote a poem about), is on the right-hand side, bottom. We parked at the right-hand side, top of town and wandered downhill to the main piazza and saw the curch. We continued strolling through this quaint town and saw another beautiful church. Carol pointed out some lovely painted ceilings inside some public office buildings. We went inside of a nice little shop which was also the opening to an Eutruscan tomb system. In the wall of the shop you could see an ancient well, complete with deep gouges on the side where people through the ages hoisted up loads of water attached to ropes. Although gated off, you could see into the different rooms and down flights of ancient stairs leading into the catacombs. We got a little holdiay shopping in and continued on.


Montepulciano

Being fellow winelovers, Carol had the intellegent foresight to take me to the town wine cellar. The Montepulciano Nobile is my favorite wine in Italy (that I've tried so far - of course that's always open to change!). The ancient winery is located under the town in a network of caves. The first barrel room has oak barrels which are 10-12 feet tall! Carol explained some of the winemaking process to me while we were there.


Big barrels of wine!


The light fixtures were amazing!






The scent in the caves was magnificent. I never thought wine and damp, musty cave would blend to create a pleasurable olfactory experience!


We just had to recover from our excursion and warm up in a little cafe. We had wonderful pastries and coffee while enjoying the snowy view. It began to get much colder and snow again, so we decided to head back to the house and the woodstove.

On Tuesday, Nov. 22nd we received a light dusting of snow. A large portion of the students left on that day, and those of us who remained wished them farewell under drifting snowflakes. On Wednesday morning, alone in the house except for Dave and Laurie, I awoke to snow covered tile roofs! It was very exciting for a coastal California girl to have snow! I quickly dressed and scouted out the town.


The first snow on Tuesday dusted the hilltops. Light flakes fell in town, but nothing stuck.


This was the view of the piazza out of the livingroom window on Wednesday morning.


The roof of Santa Chiara


View out to the valley from Santa Chiara


After checking out school, I headed up to the coffee shop.


View from 'the arches' at the coffeeshop.


View back to the piazza over the market


I had to get a pic of our favorite evening wateringhole in the snow!

Later on I called Carol Smith, my friend who is president of the Italian chapter of the Mediterranean Garden Society, and she informed me that she was snowed in! The remaining group of friends who came to see me off eventually disapated, so I finished knitting a scarf, which I figured I'd be needing in a big way! Carol and I made plans to check in around noon and see how the roads were. When I called at noon, John said that the mountain roads by their house were clear, and she should get me now or never. An hour later, Carol arrived and we had goodbye session #2. I excitedly hopped in the car and was off for the next phase in my Italian adventure.

Kim's Artwork

One of my big personal goals for this trip was to learn how to quickly, loosely sketch, and how to paint with watercolors. I sketched and painted as much as possible, whenever possible. Toward the end of the quarter, my scholastic emphasis really switched to writing papers; I found myself on the computer constantly. The drawing and painting provided an excellent balance and relief. Now I just have to keep with it for the rest of my life!


This is the original building at what is now Villa Gambaraia outside of Florence. The building on the left is the lemonaia. I painted this for Carol Smith, my friend who I stayed with during the last week in Italy (you'll hear more about her soon!). Carol took me to visit this wonderful garden.


Part of our painting class assignment was to write poetry. For me, each poem was sparked by an image. I started creating these watercolors with my poetry. This is the Chiesa San Bagio in Montepulciano. The poem was inspired by a lecture given by Paolo inside the church when he was describing the cultural context for the architecture of the church. Paolo is the director of the Santa Chiara study center, and is a fabulous source of knowledge. His interest and understanding of the culture which produced Italy's art and architecture comes through in all of his talks. We followed him around and hung on his every word whenever possible. He is faculty for Texas, so we only got to hear him during our joint field trips.


Another of the poem/watercolors. This was is from San Gimgnano, the medieval city of the towers.


This is the cypress painting I did in San Gimignano at La Roca.


Chiesa Santa Catrina in Sienna from across the canyon. This was literally a 20 minute watercolor. We had to run back to the meeting place with the group with our wet paintings in hand!


This is one I did in evening class. It's Jill Van Sickle's mom, who bravely (and motionlessly!) modeled for us. Figure painting is very tough. I decided to cheat and skip the face all together! The next figure I did was in oil, and I went for the face. It came out OK, surprisingly enough!



This was a value study of Chiesa San Bagio I did on site. This sketch was the inspiration for the watercolor which I did later.


This is the street in front of Casa Vescovo, where we lived. This was done in Ken Nakaba's afternoon sketch/walk class.


This was done in Pienza on one of Phil's death march sketch adventures. He marched us around the city, chose a place, then we had five minutes to sketch it. This exercise was painfull, but it did serve to loosen me up!

Final Show, Monday Nov. 21

ON Monday the 21st, we had our final show. A middle school group was invited to come at 5, then everyone else came at 6. It was fantastic to see all of the work out at once. People really seemed to enjoy it. The only bummer was that it was hard to see the posters in the dark evening light on the floor. I came back early Tuesday morning and photographed the work before it was dismanteld.

The first few shots are of the oil paintings from evening painting class. Phil chose his favorite few to be exhibited. We all produced 5 or 6 oils.











WE each had to turn in two watercolors, two sketches, and two poems for the show. These were posted on the front of the studio.





The rest of the work was produced by the undergraduates, except for the original inventory posters that the grads helped with in beginning of the quarter. After the grads stepped away from the project, the undergrads did a series of watercolors. These were supposed to be abstract and capture phenomenon. This represented another phase of the data collection process. Then the various phenomenon were mapped on the site. The students then had to create an abstract model representing a phenomenon. The project then entered the design phase. Each group was charged with designing a trail system in within the study site linking various phenomenon. The idea was for the phenomenon to be observed or captured and replicated (or both) at each resting point along the trail. Although I thoroughly enjoyed our graduate project, this one was so fascinating to me. I wish I could have done it! I visited the studio frequently during the process to see what they were up to. I was really impressed with the final products, especially considering the limited materials and technology at thier disposal.


Hallway #1






This board was particularly interesting. Each concept plan is done with collage from magazines. I thought they did a partiuclarly nice job at presentation. They even had cards posted describing the models.


























Hallway #2



The rest of the boards are from the first phase of data collection. I had potographed these in progress and posted them in September. Here are a few of the completed projects.












This was the one I worked on. Luckily we'll be showing this again in Pomona.