what the fig?!

Three figs, watercolor on paper, 2013

One summer, Zio Giovanni gave us a crate load of figs. I mean, a. crate. load. of. figs. Approximately 70 figs total. For two people. These figs were so ripe, that they were practically bursting their figgy sweet insides all over the place. The kitchen smelled like a sweaty orchard and within two hours of their arrival, fruit flies had arrived on the scene. Time was limited. We tried to eat as many figs as we could in two days, but when all was said and done - our bellies aching, shouting, "BASTA!" - there were still about 50 rotten figs stinking up the kitchen in Piazza Antonelli. What a sad day...don't tell Zio Giovanni.
Time has passed and I've learned how to make fig jam, fig preserves, fig pie, fig cookies, fig and walnut cake, figgy pudding (just kidding), you name it, so never again shall a fig go to waste under this roof. In fact, when the first figs of the season arrive at the market, I come running home with a bagful. They're like giant gemstones, varying in color from the most beautiful deep purple and maroon to a shocking, zesty green. Crack them open and their fragrant, fleshy insides are the pinkest pink. Too beautiful to eat, I take to painting them first...then I slice them up with a little prosciutto crudo, some fresh pane toscano and dinner is served.

macaron, mermaids and mint

I've been painting, sketching, photographing up a storm in the Blue Room! Taking inspiration from our balcony herb garden, favorite French sweets and American folk music, the themes are as varied as the mediums used to create them. Coming to www.etsy.com (ASAP!)

Macaron, watercolor on French book page mounted on paper, 2013

Trois, watercolor on paper, 2013

The Mermaid, mixed media with acrylic on canvas, 2013

"'Cause her hair was as green as seaweed
Her skin was blue and pale
I loved that girl with all my heart
I only liked the upper part
I did not like the tail."
- from a sea shanty, "The Mermaid"

The Green Willow Tree, acrylic on canvas board, 2013

From a ballad bought to America by the early colonists. The Green Willow Tree is supposedly about  the famous British sea captain Sir Walter Raleigh (1552-1618)

Herb series, watercolor on paper, 2013

mastering the art of...

After a particularly gloomy winter in Florence, void of light but full of rain, I'm back in the Blue Room - writing, painting, cooking, planting and blogging (finally). There's nothing like a little bit of sunshine and a bike ride in the park to set things straight and jumpstart the spring. There's a big jar of rosemary and laurel in my kitchen, ready to be used for new recipes. The cat is spending his days on our newly restored balcony, eating wheat grass and trying to catch pigeons. I'm sitting in the Blue Room, paging through my new book: Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking. For Alberto's birthday, I tried one of Julia's cake recipes -  gâteau à l'orange (orange spongecake) with orange cream filling. I think I'll spend today working on my watercolors and try to write another article for Florence Magazine.

Coming out of hibernation and throwing myself back into my writing and painting and all the other things that I wish paid the rent, makes me wonder: will it ever be possible to master the art of anything if your interests are so varied? And what about all these hobbies/passions/unpaid jobs that I  love doing in my free time - if they become my job, will they still be fun and relaxing? Julia Child wasn't always a famous cook/writer/foodie - she just started cooking because she loved food and wanted to know more about it. But what then? When it was a "real" job, was it still fun for her? How do you balance the fun with the work? 
And another question: at what point does a hobby actually become your profession? Can I call myself an artist, even though my paying gig is as an English teacher?  A week ago, I was listening to Terry Gross's interview with David Sedaris (my favorite contemporary satirist) on NPR. He was talking about how early on, he worked other jobs while he wrote (for himself) on the side: 

"I was never the person that thought that having a job during the daytime made you any less of a writer. I never thought, 'Well, when I can quit my job, that's when I'll be a real writer'." 

What a breath of fresh air! I often fret about labeling myself a "real artist" and I never know how to respond to the question, "What do you do?" And I must admit that one of my biggest fears is that I'll never be able to make the transition from "employee" to "self-employed" artist, and that I'll lose myself along the way or abandon my projects or never manage to find that happy balance between pleasure and work. But people like David Sedaris give me hope, and so does my husband - a working (!) actor - and my good friend Sharon, who works during the day and dances/choreographs/performs whenever she can and my college roommate (the yin to my yang) Julia, who loves teaching yoga but also loves writing and photography (two talents she puts to good use in other jobs here and there). 

But think Picasso posed the most serious quandary - "Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up." Adults are cynical, we've lost our innocence and sense of wonder, which makes it harder to create. Another big problem is that we've also gained a sense of responsibility, which makes it harder to put ourselves out there or take risks (creatively, emotionally, economically...). Plus we have this need to label ourselves as one profession or another, which in the end can be a real downer and over-simplifies our lives.
Can't we all be Renaissance men and women, and just leave it at that? Why do we insist on labeling ourselves as our profession, reducing ourselves to one single word? "Hello, I'm Lauren the teacher". That's too simple. "Hello, I'm Lauren and I like making things, trying new recipes and dancing to folk music."
Let's do it all and forget about distinguishing what is work and what is play. Maybe that way, can master the art of staying true to ourselves - the greatest job of all!

O body swayed to music...

Jeff Warner and Jeff Davis

When I was a kid and my parents would load three suitcases, a big cooler, some beach chairs and a mini travel grill into the Nissan, I knew that without a doubt - no matter where we were going - that it was time for folk music. I loved my cassette of "Old Time Songs for Kids" by Jeff Davis and Jeff Warner - a compilation of folk music (not really for children) accumulated and recorded by two first rate musicians. Sometimes we would all sing-a-long together, sometimes I would listen to it privately on my mini-walkman. Whichever the case, the music made the hours in the car fly by.

I hadn't listened to those songs for about fifteen years, until last summer when my dad made a CD of my now aged, beat-up cassette (shout-out to B. Whalen for the help). Listening to that folk music again for the first time in years brought back a flood of emotions, memories and now, understanding. The music moved me in a different way and it felt really comforting to have that old sound rocking my bones again. Now I take the music with me on my iPod when I ride my bike to work, sometimes I listen to it at home while I'm cooking or working on the computer; it's the same as a bowl of mashed potatoes - it's "comfort food" (but it nourishes the soul, rather than the belly). For me folk music communicates a pure and simple joy, connecting us to our ancestors and our community. It's a sort of "blood memory" as Martha Graham would say.

I've grown to enjoy Italian folk music just as much as American folk music, and even though Italian blood doesn't run through my veins, the music still moves me profoundly. When I was living in Florence in 2008, I made this video in Piazza Santissima Annunziata during one of the fierucole (autumn harvest festivals) when some improvised folk music (and dancing!) took place. The various vendors - cheesemongers, bakers, weavers, wood sculptors, etc. - kicked up their heels in the late afternoon, needing a break from the long hours passed standing behind their wooden tables. There was laurel and rosemary thrown on the ground of the piazza and the dancing created this fantastic aroma of herbs, wool and sweat. The way they danced and clapped and laughed with the music was so pure and natural. The blood inside them moved them automatically, effortlessly. This short video only captures the beginning of the dancing, because a few minutes later, these two dancers became about fifteen dancers (me included) and the bee keeper grabbed my arm and pulled me into their circle! It may have been the best performance that I've ever participated in and surely one of my favorite memories of my time in Italy.

                                          

"I feel that the essence of dance is the expression of man--the landscape of his soul. I hope that every dance I do reveals something of myself or some wonderful thing a human can be."

- Martha Graham, Blood Memory

milan and the living dead

After New Year's but before la Befana (Epiphany) my husband gifted me a trip to Milano. I've never set foot in Lombardia and I was anxious to see the differences between my golden, glowing Toscana and the foggy land of Gauls and Lombards. The real reason for the trip wasn't just site-seeing, but to check-out an exhibit called Dracula e il mito dei vampiri ("Dracula and the Myth of Vampires") at the Triennale di Milano. Alberto has always about my secret not-so-secret love of Bram Stoker's gothic horror novel "Dracula"(published in 1897), as well as my penchant for Eastern European folklore. Since 2006, I've started reading "Dracula" about once a year and any time I come across a copy in a bookstore I always have the urge to buy it (I only have three copies...not nearly enough).

This whole morbid love affair with vampires started when I was 11 or 12 years old and I wandered into a dark corner of the local library. There I came across a strange book about Slavic myth and folk stories; to my horror I discovered that Stoker's Count Dracula was based on a real person! Vlad Ţepeş was guilty of some pretty shocking crimes (mass impaling, torture, nailing turbans to the heads of Turkish ambassadors...) and apparently, "real" cases of vampirism have been recorded as far back as the 17th century. At age 12, the lines between history, fiction and reality were far too blurry for me to understand, so I spent a few months taking precautions: a rosary hidden under my T-shirt, a bulb of garlic under the bed. Since then, my child-like fascination with the "un-dead" has subsided a great deal. But my love of libraries, research and the mysterious blending of fact and fiction has only grown.

The exhibit at the Triennale was really excellent: an entire section on the man who inspired the novel (Vlad Ţepeş), along with first source materials like maps of Walachia and Transylvania, 17th and 18th century manuscripts and pamphlets on Vlad, outbreaks of vampirsm in the Balkans and advice on "how to defend yourself from the un-dead." Then there was an entire section dedicated to Bram Stoker, which included one of his diaries and the first printed edition of "Dracula." The rest of the show was covered Dracula in film, fashion and pop culture, which was all equally well presented and interesting. This section also featured clips from varying vampire films and costumes from Francis Ford Coppola's "Bram Stoker's Dracula" (1992). My favorite part of the exhibit? The two unsettling portraits of Vlad (see the catalogue above) - one of which had his eyes scratched out by an unknown owner.

So in Milan, with vampires, torture and death on the mind, I discovered that the gloomy metropolis is really a city of the living dead, filled with relics of the past that are venerated in its churches and museums, kept eternally for the next generations of historians (and vampire hunters) to discover. You just need the time, and the stomach, to look for them.

17th century automaton, Castello Sforzesco

St. Ambrogio, Sts. Gervasio and Protasio, Basilica di Sant'Ambrogio

St. Bartolomeo holds onto his flayed skin by Marco d'Agrate 1562, Duomo di Milano

year in review

After a whirlwind year of new jobs, new dances, a new cat, a new tattoo, traveling in Italy, traveling in Pennsylvania, painting, cooking, writing, photographing...a girl needs a break, and time to process the end of the past year and start making plans for the new one. I'm a sentimental sap and have never been a fan of New Year's Eve - save the spumante. And I especially despise the inevitable ritual of "New Year's resolutions": lose weight, eat healthier, save more money, be more positive...everyone makes the same promises to themselves and then breaks them by the time Valentine's Day rolls around. I didn't make a single resolution last year and I don't intend to do so this year. But I can rejoice in a beautiful year well spent full of positive energy, learning experiences, new experiences, love, joy, nurturing old friendships and cultivating new ones. To all of you the five of you who read my blog, I wish you a 2013 full of good stuff, peace and happiness.

Buon anno a tutti!

January, La Veneria Reale, Torino

February, Massimo makes necci at La Panca

April, Occupazione Farsesche, Teatro Puccini, Firenze

April, i bring warmth with Sharon Estacio, Firenze

May, Mr. Winston takes a nap, Firenze

Summer, "English Through Art", Mugello

July, Roberto Benigni Tutto Dante, Santa Croce, Firenze

September, laurel tree courtesy of Joshua Ross at Mind's Eye Tattoo, Emmaus, PA

September, Decameron at University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

October, chestnut season, Palazzuolo sul Senio, Tuscany

December, Christmas with Mom and Dad, Firenze

bite of autumn

Winnie guards this season's harvest

In honor of autumn, a favorite apple recipe.

Apple Spice Cake

Ingredients:
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted
2 cups flour
2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. baking powder
2 tsp. cinnamon (or more...I'm heavy handed on the cinnamon)
1/2 tsp. ginger (dried is good, fresh is better)
3/4 tsp. salt
1 cup sugar
1 Tbsp. honey (I used chestnut honey, it's kick ass)
2 eggs
4 apples, diced (Granny Smith are good, but anything locally grown is even better!)

Preheat oven to 170 C (350 F). Butter and flour an 8 in. round cake pan.
In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda and powder, spices and salt; set aside.
In a large bowl, whisk together butter, sugar and eggs; fold in apples.
Add flour mixture slowly until just combined (don't over mix - it makes baked goods tough).
Pour into pan and bake for approx. 45 minutes. Cool and dust with powdered sugar.
Buon appetito! Enjoy this little bite of autumn.