Two-Thousand-and-Heaven

But first, a 2010 Year-in-Review:

Where I Went: Bastia, Corsica; Bronxville, NY; Brooklyn, NY; Florence, IT; Greve in Chianti, IT; Naples, FL; New York, NY; Paris, FR; & my beloved Pittsburgh, PA. Not too shabby.

What I Did: changed my art-world trajectory from academic to artistic; spent fantastic weekends researching in MoMA Library; met a bunch of cool kids & forced their friendships upon me; joined an art collective; helped publish a stellar art review; graduated from Sarah Lawrence College with a B.A.; interned with Gagosian Galleries for a hot minute; spent the summer drawing bugs with babies @ the Carnegie Museum; moved back to Italy; fell in love with the same boy all over again; unwittingly enrolled in a bizarre art cult & have now successfully escaped; became trapped in freak-blizzards in both U.S. & abroad; & all that jazz.

What I Read: Oz series (for the umpteenth time); The Book of Human Skin by Michelle Lovric; Art School (Propositions for the 21st Century); Why Art Cannot Be Taught by James Elkins; Exquisite Books; Bluebeard's Egg & Other Stories by Margaret Atwood; Writing on Drawing: Essays on Drawing Practice & Research; Experimental Drawing Techniques by Robert Kaupelis; Drawing Now: Eight Propositions by Laura Hoptman; Seeing the Unspeakable: The Art of Kara Walker by Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw; The Help by Kathryn Stockett; Painting People: The State of the Art by Charlotte Mullins; The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp; Sea Faries by Frank L. Baum; & a slew of awesome catalogs & magazines. Also, this list only is inclusive of highlights from August-December 2010, as I can't remember that far back when it comes to my literature consumption.



L to R, Top to Bottom: Central Park trekking; Self-Portrait made for Paradox Collective; Rockefeller Center & flag tribute to my internationglobalisimaztion (sike); Alanna, Beth, & myself @ a graduation event; Reading Contemporary Art Class family photo; Filippo (in Maremma, 2009 which is sort of cheating but he's such a babe that I couldn't resist); Marina Abramović (who I live-sketched) with former collaborator/lover Ulay) @ MoMA; Halloween Party @ the Piccola Love Festa in Florence; Ashley Leone birthday hugs at my BocceBallBrooklynBirthdayBonanza; Smooching Filippo during his visit to Pittsburgh; Providing moral support to Editor-in-Chief of the Visual Art Review; Bacchanalia war paint; Jack & myself overwhelmed by Editor Alanna; demonstrating Inuit Mask Craft to littles @ CMP.

I am a happy camper. Not all the time, but definitely right now.

For 2011, I would like to: take better care of my mind & body; maintain long-distance friendships with my favorite Americans; apply to Skowhegan; speak more Italian; love my boy; draw my heart out; interrogate my artistic practice; visit Australia, Berlin, Cagliari, Sardegna (Sardinia), Egypt, Luxembourg, Napoli (Naples), New Zealand, Philadelphia, Torino (Turin), Washington, DC, & of course Pittsburgh/N.Y.C.; show my work in EX3 & Casa della Creativita; blog consistently; create a website; start a zine; weasel my way into the U.S. Pavilion Party @ the next Biennale; read & research semiotics; write a sociological/art historical paper on Florentine madonnari; learn a new language; curate a killer show; & knit knit knit.

Resolutions seem pretty weak, I prefer yearly goals. These are mine. What about you? Please, share with the class & leave a comment!

Ruby Rose

by
Rachel Egan
Spring 1994 (Age 6)

When I was at the circus I saw
this beautiful horse. It had a
beautiful rug with dots and
swirls on it. It had a big blue
mask and a sparkley tail of
blue. His hooves were
decorated with crystal colors
At the end of the show the
ringmaster said "You can talk
to any of the actors you like
unless they are getting
dressed."

I went with the ringmaster to
see the owner of the beautiful
horse. The owners name was
Crystal. Crystal said, "My
horse is a plain brown horse.
We always dress for the
parade. Why is his tail
sparkely you ask? I will tell
you. We had a light bulb. It
made little blue sparks you
can see in the snow. We put
them on the horse."
"Now you must tell me this"
said the ringmaster to me,
"Why did you want to ask
Crystal about the blue
sparkely horse tail?"

"Because it was so beautiful I
could not keep my eyes off it
for the whole parade." I said.
I went back to the stage and I
saw Crystal laughing. "It
really is a magic horse," she
said. "A witch put a spell on it
many years ago. Whatever
baby is born to this horse will
be turned to crystal stone.
The crystals on her tail are all
babies. They have been on
her tail for 100 years. I was
very upset, so I ran to the
beautiful horse, I collected all
the crystals and put them like
they should be for grown up
horses. The witch's spell was
broken.

I went home, went to bed and
dreamed about the crystal
horse.

* Author's note (Winter 2010) - searching for the laminated illustration that accompanies this original story. Will scan it A.S.A.P. I am fully convinced that my art & writing has been heading steeply downhill since Kindergarten. Picasso was onto something ("It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child" or "All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up" or all those qt ancedotes). Y/N?

Il Postino

Dear Italian Postal Service,

You are ruining my life. Please stop being a hot mess so I can actually receive bills, letters, magazine subscriptions, & super important documents. You are actually preventing me from being a responsible adult.

I didn't really want to bring this up, but since you are threatening my academic & economic future, along with my mental health, I might as well mention the Permesso di Soggiorno. What is it's purpose? I already spent too much time & $$ @ the Italian Consulate in Pittsburgh getting my Visa & proving I am legit. Since I had to submit the Permesso through you, Postal Service, I feel like this is also your fault. You drive me so insane that I am very much tempted to become an illegal resident, solely so I don't have to sit for another 6+ hours @ the Ufficio Immigrazione so someone can make sure I am not a gypsy/professional panhandler/undocumented textile worker.

Not cool.

Don't get me wrong though--I do think you could do a lot of great things if you went somewhere where they can help teach you about methods engineering, but until you seek treatment for your issues with line & queue management, I can't continue like this. Look deep inside yourself & you will discover ways to effectively use a mail box that you never thought possible.

Bottom line though: It's not me, it's you.

Love,
Rachel E.

P.S. It also might be nice to sell stamps at the Post Office. Apparently you can only get them @ your local Tabaccheria. Just sayin'.
P.P.S. Maybe things are different in Rome or Milan. I suspect not.

IST (Italian Standard Time)

If you were to ask me for the greatest cultural difference between Italians & Americans, I'd answer time without skipping a beat. Tempo is Italian for time, as well as tense & weather. The English language has musically appropriated tempo (along with a host of other Italian musical terms) as the pace of a piece. American time vs. Italian time is really more about comparing tempos, like Gershwin to Vivaldi, agitato to adagio.

Concerto in F (Gershwin), III. Allegro agitato


Le quattro stagioni (Vivaldi), Concerto No. 2 in G Minor, Op. 8, RV 315, "L'Estate", II. Adagio e piano


I realize that this a very generalized statement. It would probably be smarter to just use myself vs. Florentine friends instead of Americans vs. Italians in general.

I am American. My pace is cheerful & agitated (cheerful agitation? agitated cheerfulness?) 24-7. So are a lot of Gershwin pieces. I'm happy but I stress a lot. I march from Point A to Point B. If I want something, I'm like a tank with automatic targeting & tracking, barreling down whatever road is necessary. I'll make it a point to be on time. I'm always three steps ahead. I go insane when idle. I hate weekends as they're always the least scheduled time for me. Vacations lasting longer than 4 days give me panic attacks. I do meander, keep weird hours, & tend to be all over the place, but I suspect even those times are subconsciously planned, like the grand piano in Concerto in F. Fast & loud & lots of banging on keys to get my point across.

The Florentines I know are always in a perpetual state of chill, unless there's a calcio game on the TV. Maybe in the privacy of their homes they freak out & have underwear dance parties & make big plans for the next five years. I have yet to witness this.

In addition, everyone lives with their families until they marry, & even then couples might stay in a parent's house. No one is itching to move on or out. The future happens when it happens & it's not something to hyper-plan over.

All stores are closed from 12:30-3:30 so that people can have epic lunches. Sometimes they don't go back to work after said lunches. All stores are also closed during the month of August, as the entire Italian population escapes on vacation.

Nothing is open on weekends. Nothing is open after 5:00 unless it's H&M or a restaurant.

It's normal to be fifteen minutes late to everything. Schedules are irrelevant.

Italian Standard Time (IST), as I call it, works though, as Italians seem to be much more graceful, gracious, & relaxed than their American counterparts (a.k.a. me). Their BPM never hits above 70. As for me, I never drop below 120, thus IST tends to add to my agitation. I cannot count the number of unannounced scioperi, meetings where Italian parties showed up 30+ minutes late, & closed supermarkets that have left me disgruntled.

The only thing is I've been showing up to things 15+ minutes late & am no longer phased when it takes an hour for the waitress to take my order. I guess my internal tempo is changing. Italians, like rational people, say "Tempo al tempo" (idiomatically translates as "All in good time). I personally prefer "A correre e cagare ci si immerda i garretti." (literally translates as "By running and defecating at the same time, you'll get crap on your heels"), which has less to do with tempo, but yet oddly applicable in my head.

Benvenuti!

Ciao, lovers.

It's been a while. 9 years actually, since I started my first blog. It also was my longest active blog, spanning with posts from 8th grade until my first semester in college. Thankfully the server has been shut down, keeping my adolescent ravings shut up in a deep, dark cyber-closet.

Then came the blog about my slew of summer internships in NYC. Then an art blog. & now I'm here, with "Basta con la pasta!" I envision it as a somewhat-helpful, pretty-personal blog of a young American in Italy. By helpful, I mean writing about the sorts of things that I wanted to know about living abroad but could never find in a book or on the *blogosphere.

*Nota bene: The only blogs I've found about Americans in Italy are written by middle aged couples who come every summer & go on tourist excursions with ridiculous names like "La Dolce Vita" with other middle aged couples OR ladies that have an Italian-fetish OR Italian-Americans with insane cultural pride. If you happen to come across something radically different than the aforementioned categories, please send the link my way!

"Basta con la pasta" means "Enough with the pasta." The phrase was coined by my friend Dani two years ago, in response to the endless carb-pushing of her Italian host-mother (Italians love to feed you, & will give you seconds & thirds unless you are very very explicit. Oddly enough I've begun to do this with my friends, always asking if they want more to eat. Chi va con lo zoppo impara a zoppicare "He who walks with the limper learns to limp." Italian behavior is infectious).

So enough with the pasta, "Under the Tuscan Sun," three month Anglo-study-abroad-programs, & preconceived notions of Italy. These are the true confessions of an American in Florence.