December 11, 2008

some sort of bitter sweet something

well, i'm broke as a joke, but apparently still manage to show my work in juried shows. how, i'm not sure. since i've graduated, i've been overwhelmed with the receipt of my work. now, even lucy lippard herself, mother of feminist art theory and criticism, has accepted me into the Analogous show in New Mexico. AND, i won honorable mention.

you can find these at runnels gallery, eastern new mexico university, january 30 through february 25, 2009:


December 1, 2008

la brutta ritorna

well, i'm "here", i'm "back". in columbus. splendid columbus. it's freezing out and raining. without sun. though, to be fair, we did have nasty days in italy too. it's not perfect 100% of the time, just most of the time. i've got about 40 rolls of film to process, 10 extra beautiful pounds, more friends, and an unwavering desire to move.

plan = work my ass off to save and then get the hell out of here. i don't care where, frankly. umbria and south. anywhere. as long as they speak italian, drink caffè all day long, and cook with olive oil. :)

napoli, michele, olimpia, luigi, leo, paolo, gabriele, barbara, said, alberto, gennaro, ciro, vanna, loredana, cecilia, alessandro, anna, marianna, sandrina, gianpaolo, rosa, e tutti gli altri: mi mancate.... assai!!!!!! non vedo l'ora quando posso ritornare.

September 11, 2008

5 weeks and counting

until i return to my "where-i-really-belong-homeland."

tentative plans include roma, napoli/capri, orvieto (e la campagna), e forse sicilia o puglia.

a presto.....!

September 3, 2008

A Sense of Place 2008

I have a piece in a show in Augusta, GA this fall. Since my printer is on the fritz, I also can't use the crappy scanner connected to it (?), so I don't have the real card to show. (Image below from the application).



Gertrude Herbert Institute of Art
Augusta, GA
September 19 - October 17, 2008
Opening Reception: Friday, September 19, 2008, 6-8 pm
Juror: Amanda Cooper

September 2, 2008

BRAVO: "Italy's dead man walking"

BBC story of napolitan author uncovering La Camorra: here

PLEASE read this!!! we must fight this imposed silence!

August 16, 2008

slowly but surely

i finally am breaking down and opening a youtube account. i've uploaded to blip as well. but today i was bored, and youtube is so damn ubiquitous, how could i not be a member??

so, here i am.

July 11, 2008

A BOOK!

By Rachel Maria Berna...


you, too, can support my obsession with your very own purchase!!

May 29, 2008

mi manca

sometimes i forget just how much i miss it. you know how it hits you hard? it comes out of nowhere and you're paralyzed. i randomly stumbled across this photograph online.

dear napoli,
i'm sorry... i got so distracted. i forgot that every inch, every crack and crevice, every second of you is truly beautiful. i let my goals get distracted. i'll come back as soon as i can. how could i have ever left you???

May 11, 2008

il mare tra noi/the sea between us

All this time, I thought I could make you believe I didn’t need the answers – that this search was something bigger than myself. But instead I only lied to myself because I don’t have the answers. And to be perfectly honest, I’m completely lost. The dictionary says that space is unlimited and that is where everything exists. It also says space is empty. I wanted space to collapse between us. And all I feel is a gaping gully of space pushing upon me.

I exist here and there and maybe also nowhere. If I could just see the sea again: how it lasts for infinity, how it never fails me. How something doesn’t leave me. How loss seems so natural and maybe not so bad. There is space and nothing between us. I am myself and the opposite, I am space and not space.




Stavo cercando ciò che volevi, ma invece ho perso me stessa (Toscana o Umbria, Luglio 2007)
I was looking for what you wanted, but instead I lost myself (Tuscany or Umbria, July 2007)




Non Sapevo: forse io non ho capito. forse io non sapevo dove sono stata. (Tavernanova, Casalnuovo di Napoli, Dicembre 2007)
I Didn’t Know: maybe I did not understand. maybe I did not know where I was. (Tavernanova, Casalnuovo di Napoli, December 2007)




Prevedere il dolore, acquisire consapevolezza della perdita. Cosa dovrei dire? (Il mar tirreno, Agosto 2007)
Anticipating grief, realizing loss. What should I say? (Tyrrhenian Sea, August 2007)




L’abisso: perdere ciò che vedo (e perdere di più) (Caserta, Dicembre 2007)
The abyss: losing what I see (losing more) (Caserta, December 2007)

April 22, 2008

eating

today for lunch
fusilli
sauteed sweet onions
feta cheese
walnuts
olive oil

grape juice mixed with sparkling water
(i'm too busy eating to take the foto)


last night for dinner
garlic
sauteed eggplant
red pepper
tomato (only at the end)
a lot of salt
olive oil
pasta corta

April 18, 2008

April 14, 2008

elections

could there be anything more depressing than knowing berlusconi is president again?

8 years of bush and i have to deal with 5 more of berlusconi?

there is nothing less romantic than realizing that italy is full of conservative idiots just like the united states. i wanted to flee america's ignorance!!!!

horray for fascism! hooray for privatizing everything (including schooling)! hooray for corruption and greed! hooray for berlusconi!

CHE MERDE!!!! CHE STRONZO! VAFFANCULO A BERLUSCONI!!!!

(let's not even think about how many of his votes were mafiosa)

April 6, 2008

March 15, 2008

la pasta part 2







la pasta part 1

i am noticing a frequency with which i am preparing and consuming pasta. nearly every day. which is actually quite a significant milestone. somehow this signifies becoming italian to me now. when i go into the kitchen and wonder what to fix, and it becomes second nature to look for tomatoes, pull out the olive oil, and decide between spaghetti or rigatoni (which is my current favorite shape).

i want to tell you everything in italiano.

March 9, 2008

Plagued with memories I’d rather forget (like when I listen to The Smiths’ Louder than Bombs)

And you said to me:
“For this reason I say there is nosense in world and for this reason we are able to create what we want for us it is the story of infinity space there is no center so everyplace is in the same moment the center and the opposite of it so the only thing to do is to give our sense”

And now I know:
All that time I was anticipating grief and I watched you experience loss. And now, months later, I realize my own loss, a quasi experience, because I can’t really admit what happened. Maybe I will understand with time. I am myself and the opposite, I am space and not space. And there is space and nothing between us. I exist here and there and maybe also nowhere.

I am lost.

I wonder for how long I could float at sea, bobbing about, caressed by water licking my skin. How I become enveloped, encased. Every inch of me is covered in that liquidy ambiguity. How the waves will hold me, rock me, lullaby me into a peaceful space that has left my soul (I fear for how long). To be lost and to be comforted at the same time: this must be what I had needed, what I still need. When Fabio and I laid in bed, we would spoon and rock ourselves, swaying back and forth. It was innate, intuitive; our bodies moved involuntary into our rhythms. It wasn’t sexual.

In his loss and my own isolation, we existed insieme. Adesso, sono io da sola con nessuno per consolazione. I’ve left myself vulnerable without a way reclaim my potere. If I could just see the sea again, how it lasts for infinity, how it never fails me. How something doesn’t leave me. You said che mi vuoi bene, ma perchè?? Invece, sono confusa, sono smarrita. Non vivo in realtà. Rimango nell’abisso. Senza l’abbraccio del mare o di te.

March 1, 2008

non sapevo

forse io non ho capito; forse non sapevo dove sono stata

February 29, 2008

che bella!!!

le poesie di peppino impastato
(a perspective of the sea, of space, of time)


Lunga è la notte
e senza tempo.
Il cielo gonfio di pioggia
non consente agli occhi
di vedere le stelle.
Non sarà il gelido vento
a riportare la luce,
nè il canto del gallo,
nè il pianto di un bimbo.
Troppo lunga è la notte,
senza tempo,
infinita.
_________________

I miei occhi giacciono
in fondo al mare
nel cuore delle alghe
e dei coralli.

_______________________

Seduto se ne stava
e silenzioso
stretto a tenaglia
tra il cielo e la terra
e gli occhi
fissi nell'abisso

________________________

tra il cielo e la terra e gli occhi fissi nell'abisso!!!!

February 18, 2008

language isolation

it's too cliche, too easy, to say i fear the unknown


(herb says the sky is blue because the sea is)

sinking or maybe floating

can someone please tell me how i am lost and why am i lost? can someone please tell me where am i going and why i am going there?

February 11, 2008

more than an ocean

and so suddenly the stories can stop











February 9, 2008

how far can i swim?

when i was younger, i never feared the sea.

i was oblivious to the man-of-war warnings; i swam and ran about with sand in my suit. the sea was my source of giggling, a time of exploration.

now the sea is just my preoccupation. it fills the gaps between us. it elongates my worry, my desires. and i can't stop thinking about time.

February 7, 2008

working thesis title

the sea between us

il titolo per mia tesi (probabilmente) è
il mare tra noi

February 3, 2008

on reading a wave

(a professor so conveniently read this chapter aloud in class a couple weeks ago. it just so happens that an italian wrote it. and it just so happens that its about the sea (and etc). how quaint. so i've added it here for your own contemplation as well.)

Reading a Wave di Italo Calvino, Mr. Palomar

The sea is barely wrinkled, and little waves strike the sandy shore. Mr. Palomar is standing on the shore, looking at a wave. Not that he is lost in contemplation of the waves. He is not lost, because he is quite aware of what he is doing: he wants to look at a wave and he is looking at it. He is not contemplating, because for contemplation you need the right temperament, the right mood, and the right combination of exterior circumstances; and though Mr. Palomar has nothing against contemplation in principle, none of these three conditions applies to him. Finally, it is not "the waves" that he means to look at, but just one individual wave: in his desire to avoid vague sensations, he establishes for his every action a limited and precise object.

Mr. Palomar sees a wave rise in the distance, grow, approach, change form and color, fold over itself, break, vanish, and flow again. At this point he could convince himself that he has concluded the operation he had set out to achieve, and he could go away. But isolating one wave is not easy, separating it from the wave immediately following, which seems to push it and at times overtakes it and sweeps it away; and it is no easier to separate that one wave from the preceding wave, which seems to drag it toward the shore, unless it turns against the following wave, as if to arrest it, Then, if you consider the breadth of the wave, parallel to the shore, it is hard to decide where the advancing front extends regularly and where it is separated and segmented into independent waves, distinguished by their speed, shape, force, direction.

In other words, you cannot observe a wave without bearing in mind the complex features that concur in shaping it and the other, equally complex ones that the wave itself originates.

to read the rest go here.

watching waves


il mar tirreno, porto di napoli, castel dell'ovo

only sea


il mar tirreno, porto di napoli

January 27, 2008

musica

i simply cannot resist attempting to tell the world about vinicio caposella. when i first began pen-palling with fabio, i asked him about music, and vinicio was his first suggestion. this was probably about the third sign i knew i would love fabio. (the first and second of course being that he had long hair, and spoke italian- HA!; he was a wonderful story-teller and incredibly intelligent - is this more than two?)

anyhow, vinicio capossela is an amazingly talented musician that really can play about anything -- he's constantly experimenting in his music. a wonderful storyteller. and he has finally been recognized in america on NPR!! so here is an interview; it's short, only 12 minutes. he plays a new song about america, and there is a translator for those that need it.

enjoy this interview!

January 25, 2008

duet



remember, i'm still posting new work on flickr.

some polaroids









January 21, 2008

mancare

It’s an ache that is impossible to satiate. It’s a longing that embodies me, that I cannot escape. It seeps into each pore of my skin, it gloves me. I slide into your world without an escape. How do I amend this gaping hole of salty water, these countless kilometers, the visions I have in your kitchen? I cannot be healed here.

I surround myself with pictures, maps, I look at you all the time. And I think of you constantly. Not just you, the entirety. I wake, disoriented. There is no aroma of tomatoes boiling, swimming in a bath of the purest extra virgin olive oil. There is no sun, and you are not next to me in bed. My body aches.

Dici: Non piangere. Che c'è?
Dico: Non lo so. Ti posso vedere. Vedo tutta la casa e tutte le cose dentro. How we share the colperta on our bed -- our sofa bed. How I like to wrap it around me, like a mummy, my feet tucked in all warm. But this isn't how you do this, which causes a problem. We're close in this little bed and if I tuck my feet in, yours fall out. How if you don't place your arm just right, I get a crick in my neck. And all of this matters now because why?
Because I see all the house, I see me there, and I am here eating a bowl of berries. And you are there eating primo: spaghetti con pomodori. Secondo: forse carne, forse pesce. Poi, formaggio. E poi: una sigaretta.

E cosí: abitudine.

in my view

you're never not there


sta preparando la sigaretta, caserta dicembre 2007