Venizian Strangeness

I’ve been here since June 6th, rode in on the sleeper train from Paris. Words and finances are failing me at this point, but the experience continues to layer itself into my subconscious and perhaps when I am eighty years old I will remember some semblance of what has happened to me in the last three or four weeks. Since this is about the school part of the trip I will spare you the details of my solo exploration of Paris, where I blew all my cash and learned to make pizza from a real Italian (among other things).

Venizia is very strange. It is old. There is a lot of seawater flowing through the “streets” and the buildings have had a hard life. Italians who live here stick colorful pinwheels in their planter boxes, grow tomatoes and basil, drive boats around the city to get to and from their jobs, and only make up a very small percentage of the population. From one man (our landlord) we found out that ten years ago there were 150,000 Italians living in Venice and now there are only 50,000. Where did they go? Someplace cheaper evidently. Someplace they could find work.

There are more mask/glass shops than you can shake a stick at... no shaking sticks to be found, though. The resaurant owners stand in front asking you to come in and eat, there are artists sitting on the street all drawing the canals and buildings in a similar style, the style that tourists might like to buy and hang above their armoire or their living room sofa.

My job while I’m here is to draw. I have created two large drawings already consisting of images from my trip to Paris. A third that I have started includes works of art I wish I had been part of making. It is about the jealousy I feel towards artists who have community and create whimsical, complicated, difficult artwork that also functions as play. I hope to find more art like this and I hope not to. I don’t do so well with envy.
I will also be drawing portraits of my fellow students and of the population at large. I will ask for donations from strangers to supplement the rest of my trip and from the students I will ask only for their address to send the portraits to at a later date (for documentation and showing purposes).

Today there was a man in the square holding completely still in a walking stance. His tie had wire in it and was sculpted to look as if it were blowing in the wind and his hat was also attached to wire to look as if it were flying right off his head. He was wearing outrageous colors and had another hat on the ground in front of him for donations to his strange profession. Oh, one thing I love about Europe: men wear bright colored pants.