Italy 2006

Four weeks in Italy compiling research into ideas and four months back at the studio bringing those ideas to a realization in this exhibition.

“The Exhibition” opened on Friday, October 27th with a reception from 6 – 8 hosting a very large audience of museumgoers.

Thanks to: Mark Lawson, Director of Institutional Galleries, and his crew, they did a wonderful job of installing all of the students work. Natanya Blanck and Deb Brehmer, my colleagues in this venture seen in the photo above, did a fabulous job of putting the finishing touches on the exhibition presentation and reception details that only they new how to do.

And finally, thank you for your positive comments and encouragement as this blog unfolded throughout our time in Italy, and thank you in advance for taking the time to stop in at MIAD to view this wonderful exhibition through November 18th.

Today is Thursday, June 15.

The last week and a half has been a crescendo of activity starting since before the last blog.

Faculty and students have been working steadfastly and diligently on Florence: Then and Now. But it can’t be all work and no play, we also need a little time to relax, share stories and enjoy each others company and we have planned group dinners every week so we can do just that. Beyond that the students put together a fabulous dinner in the Lofts Common area last week with table cloths and the works. It was their way of thanking faculty and Kurt our coordinator. It was very much appreciated. They prepared all of the food and pitched in for the cleanup after.

We all went to the beach town, Viareggio, directly west of Pisa last week Thursday. Here we are just after we arrived. It was a beautiful day in the sun and only a 1 1/2 hr train ride away. Some soaked up the sun and swam all day and others enjoyed the Florida like atmosphere in the streets with shopping and exploring. Everyone had a great time.

We had our group dinner in Viareggio at a small patio restaurant that served hamburgers, hotdogs, pasta, etc.

It wouldn’t be a meal in Italy without a gilato dessert.

Tired from a full day we gathered at the train station for the return trip to Florence

We had a potluck this week to celebrate our 4 weeks together and the soon to be departure of all of us from Florence. The photo above is just a sample of some of the food that was prepared. We do not seem to lack nourishment in Italy.

Last night we gathered in Piazza Santo Spirito, a favorite evening gathering place for Florentines and visitors alike, to have conversation and say our goodbyes before leaving Florence.

The students and faculty have spent a lot of quality time in museums viewing/discussing art and sculptor while gaining critical insight into the Renaissance, but there is a lot going on outside the museums. Our trip is called “Discovering Florence: Then and Now”, an exploration of how the present is shaped by a past that remains alive in every corner of the city. We are exploring how the historic Florence connects, overlaps, and continues to influence contemporary Florence.

The visual signs of the past meet the present everywhere:

Morning comes early this time of year and it doesn’t look any more beautiful than rising over the Arno River and the famous Ponte Vecchio, once the home of meat butchers, tanners, and leather workers this bridge is now home to shops of gold merchants carrying on the tradition of commerce in Florence. If you look closely you can see swallows darting above the bridge calling out to each other with a chirping sound as they catch their fill of mosquitoes.

Here is an old city gate with massive 50 ft. doors more than a foot thick that remain open to an invading army of tourists and the daily traffic of the Florentine workforce.

The market place in Piazza San Lorenzo thrives today as it did centuries ago, The goods have changed but many of the products offered such as leather goods, wool, and silks are handcrafted as they were in the past. Many of the goods offered might be considered more typical tourist fair, but it’s a lot of fun to browse.

And of course the Italians are noted for their olives, wine, cheeses, and varieties of fine cured meats. Stores like this are everywhere in Florence. This store was my personal favorite for buying meats and cheeses.

Shopkeepers from centuries ago would rent a storefront space of only a few square feet, like the one above, from the owner of the Palazzo (private residence) who was wishing to recoup the expense of operating his household. The tourist standing in front gives you and idea of the small size of the shop. This is a beautiful example of a storefront that is over 600 years old.

Today, many of the shop keepers don’t seem to have much more space, but how they display their goods is very tastefully done. Their concept is to show quality not quantity.

There are no modern skyscrapers in this city of around 300,000 permanent residents and over 9,000,000 visitors per year. The sky is gently pierced only by the one of the domes, campanile (bell tower) or one of the pinnacles or scrolled tops of one of the 55 churches in the city , or the occasional tower rising from a palazzo that centuries ago served as a refuge for the owner and his family in times of unrest outside the walls of the city and battles between families in the city trying to assert their power position.

The narrow streets of Florence have not been modernized to meet the demands of vehicular traffic, but instead the method of conveyance, motorcycles, cars, and bicycles, have adapted to the needs of the street in the size of the vehicles and the method of parking.

Motorcycles and scooters are the preferred mode of travel because of the ease of getting around on narrow streets and maneuvering in tight spaces and of course for parking convenience. They outnumber cars by a large margin and are driven by young, old, male, and female.

Art continues to flourish in Florence in the form of an artist working on what appears to be a new painted bas-relief religious shrine set into the side of a palazzo. You can frequently see religious shrines placed into the sides and corners of buildings and in nooks and crannies and passageways throughout Florence.

There are also artists such as this visitor, (he has been in Florence 4 years to date) from England practicing his craft in oils on canvas.

The contemporary artist has not lost their identity while finding their niche in Florence.

Florence does not roll up their sidewalks when the sun sets. rather the Florentines find a spirit of living by walking about and enjoying each others company and conversation in their favorite trattoria.

The sun sets over the Arno as Florence takes a rest to get ready for another day.

Sorry for the delay in this latest posting. We’ve had a couple of technical difficulties that are hopefully resolved.

As the headline to this blog suggests, we have been “seeing it all” here in Florence and the surrounding area. Natanya Blanck and Deb Brehmer are dynamos on art history. Our students ask questions and make observations on everything they see. We’ve been to most of the historical sites and have seen many of the major works of art that our students have seen and studied in the classrooms at MIAD such as the masterpieces of the Renaissance by Leonardo, Giotto, Titian, Botticelli, Michelangelo and Piero della Francesca and historic sites such as the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore and the Salvatore Ferragamo Shoe Store and Museum where we saw high Italian design. Remember the theme for our trip is “Discovering Florence: Then and Now”. And . . . we went to the Ruccelai Palace where the 23rd generation of the family still lives. Discovering Florence: Then and Now makes connections everywhere.

The weather here has been very good overall with only one really rainy day. Fortunately we were on a 2 1/2 hour bus trip that day to Padua near Venice to see where Giotto painted his groundbreaking frescoes in the small Arena Chapel. Any study of the Renaissance must begin here where Giotto’s revolutionary innovation of “blue sky” replacing the medieval gold leaf backgrounds signaled the new concerns of Humanism. Our tour bus got us there and back safely and comfortably.

Natanya and Deb are busy with our students in the mornings and I meet each one of them in the afternoon at the Common room in the student Lofts to talk one-on-one with them on their thoughts and ideas about there projects that will culminate in an exhibition in the fall at MIAD. The Photo above shows the students in the Common room for a “Precious Waste” mini exhibition they as part of an Art History assignment.

I’s fun to see a familiar face in Florence. My colleagues and friends Larry Chatman and Jan Feldhausen from MIAD visited Florence. Larry, a few days previous, was at the opening and presented a lecture of an exhibition of his work at the Bauhaus in Germany. MIAD faculty stay busy in and out of the classroom. Some of our students have also made connections with friends while in Florence or have traveled to other cities to meet someone from home who is traveling in Europe.

Our weekly group dinner brings everyone together in an informal atmosphere to talk about the week and to plan the weekend, which means travel for most of us to other locations in and around Florence and to other parts of Italy, and for some adventurers that may also mean another country.

It must not go unsaid that everything we are doing in and around Florence would not be possible without the quiet and tireless effort of our International Program Coordinator, Kurt Meinke. Kurt sees to it that we do not stand in line at museums and special site visits by purchasing our tickets ahead of time and meeting us there to see that we get in without any difficulty. He sees that everyone gets to where they need to be, on time and all accounted for. In addition to that he plans the group dinners, which is not an easy task with almost 30 people to make reservations for, in Trattorias that generally are not very large to begin with, but somehow he gets it all done. There are many other thoughtful details that Kurt brings into play that make the student and faculty experience very fulfilling and enjoyable. The photo above shows Kurt (red shirt) explaining protocol when eating in local trattorias.

Very Tired on arrival Thursday the 11th at 10:15 AM, but I stuck it out until 10:00 PM. After a good nights rest I spent the whole of Friday reacquainting myself with Florence. I am spending my time today, Saturday, preparing a walk-around tour of Renaissance Florence for the students the day after their arrival on May 17.

The city is alive with activity, even at 8:00 AM on a Saturday morning. Starting with the famous Ponte Vecchio bridge home to the goldsmiths since the end of the 16th century, and before that a home for butche’s and grocery shops and even tanneries from the time of the bridges construction in the 13th century. And so the discovery goes for the next three hours. One site of interest and antiquity almost as old, or older than the next and everywhere and every turn of the corner is a feast for the eyes.

The walk to Piazzale Michelangelo this afternoon was a steep but rewarding climb with some interesting stops along the way. Up the narrow winding road past the home of Galileo. Next was San Miniato al Monte, a beautiful Romanesque church just 12 years short of being 1000 years old. That’s not a typo folks . . . built in 1018. Of course builders were still adding elements to the structure for another 500 years. Finally the view from Piazzale Michelangelo, magnificent, in fact, that’s the view you see from the first blog entry.

This is a first MIAD scrapbook BLOG to share what instructors Steve Horvath, Natanya Blanck, and Deb Brehmer and students will be experiencing in Florence, Italy this summer with the International Program. Our plan is to write to you at least once/wk to talk about what we are doing, seeing, experiencing, yes, even eating.

We have had a fabulous time developing the course for this summer in Florence.

“Discovering Florence: Then and Now” will be an exploration of how the present is shaped by a past that remains alive and tangible.

The core of this course will explore how the historic Florence connects, overlaps, and continues to influence contemporary Florence. Students will seek out “passages” between past and present. Does the Humanist geometry of Renaissance architecture relate to contemporary architecture? How do our present needs of space and buildings coexist with styles of the past? Do the faces of the Italian aristocracy seen in so many Uffizi portraits show up in the sidewalk cafes of today? Do the sculptural ideals of proportion and unity and the inter-relatedness of beauty and divinity reveal themselves in some aspect of contemporary design — a doorway, a store window, an Armani suit?

Providing a conceptual framework for the trip will be the idea of the transmutability of history. Decisions that were made hundreds of years ago inextricably shape and alter the present. Wars, urban-planning, religious beliefs don’t disappear with time, but hover over every action and contribute to the core of our identity.

“Discovering Florence: Then and Now” has been intentionally developed to emphasize the interdisciplinary. It will not only appeal to students across the curriculum, whether designers, photographers or fine artists, but will foster a sense of “relatedness” between different disciplines.

We hope you will enjoying sharing our trip with us and we encourage you to comment. If there is something you would like to see in Florence that you do not see on this BLOG just let us know and we will try to accommodate.

There will be an exhibition of the students work from this trip in the fall semester in October. We will have an announcement to follow on the particulars of that exhibition to be held at MIAD.