I'm writing from the Janiculum Hill overlooking most of Rome. I can see the Pantheon to my left and the Baths of Caracalla to my right. Imagine sun shining after many days of rain and a nice cappuccino taste in my mouth. Some have asked why I haven't written in a while and the reason is that exciting things are happening way faster and more frequently than I can absorb and articulate, so I find myself most often like a wide-eyed sponge just taking it all in.
But unfortunately the end is in sight and it's time to start thinking about returning to reality. Truthfully, the best explanation I can give of the past (too) few months is that I feel like I have been living in some fantasy world where I wake up happy (almost) every morning and go to sleep with the days adventures on my mind. I have been traveling around Italy as well as Spain and Morocco, learning new languages, drawing, eating new foods, talking, laughing...
Regardless of the fast pace, one of the most exciting things for me lately has been studio assisting Polly Apfelbaum at the American Academy. Polly came to lecture at RISD and the more I get to know her, the more inspired and amazed I am. She has exhibited at the Met, the MoMA and the Whitney, with Jackson Pollack and Andy Warhol, and also in a cabin high in the mountains that visitors had to hike to. She likes giving things away and usually doesn't listen to curators' opinions. She speaks of Raphael Moneo as a good friend, wears only black while all her work deals with color, and I just listen and ask questions while relishing my time with her. We work in her studio and then I have to brace myself for lunch where I may be sitting next to a NY Times editor or a Pulitzer Prize winner, a performance artist or an art historian. I keep reminding myself to smile and intelligently engage in conversation because often I am mostly in awe.
Excuse the cheese, but I really feel changed. My core remains the same, but I have a better grasp on who I am and how I view the world. I have more to smile about, more to think about, more to remember, more to pull from in my design life. I began this blog thinking about home and what makes a home. The thought has followed me throughout the semester as I decide what from this experience is mine and what I am taking with me.
I've visited a number of exhibits recently with artist quotes on the walls. In one, Chagall said, "Every painter has his homeland, his home town, and even if later on he is influenced by different milieus, certain essential traits persist in him; the aroma of the motherland lives on in his works."
I feel like I have a home here and leaving will be like leaving home. But I will leave and I'll put this place into my pocket with all of my other homes and smile when I think of Rome. I can't tell you exactly what I'll be smiling about because, selfishly I admit, I want some memories to be only mine. I can tell you generally where I've been and what I've done, but I can't fully explain a sound or a smell or a feeling. So those memories will stay unexplained only with me.
Thanks for reading and I'll leave you with a final quote that I really loved by Gustav Klimt. Seeing his paintings in Vienna with these words seem a perfect balance between extraordinary and the every day, because my every day has really been extraordinary.
"You want to know a kind of schedule, a daily routine-and this really is quite simple and rather regular. I get up early, usually around 6 o'clock, maybe a little earlier, a little later- if the weather is fine I go into the woods nearby- I'm painting a small forest of beech trees (when the sun shines) intermingled with coniferous trees, this lasts until 8 o'clock, then breakfast, afterwards a dip in the lake, taking all precautions, then I paint a little again, a lake picture if the sun in shining, and a landscape from the window of my room if it's cloudy- sometimes I skip these morning painting sessions and study my Japanese books instead- outside in the fresh air...And so on to lunchtime; after a short nap or I read something until the afternoon snack- before or after the snack a second swim, not regularly but usually. After the snack I paint again- a large poplar in the twilight while a storm is brewing- now and then, instead of the evening painting session, a game of bowls in a small town nearby-though rarely- then dusk falls and it's suppertime- then early to bed and up again in the morning bright and early. Sometimes I fit a little rowing into this daily routine to shake up the muscles a bit." Gustav Klimt, 1902.
