NEW PICTURES FROM ROME!!!

What are you looking at? .... Who is it that you are looking at? …Why are they on the ground? … Could it be a drunk?...... Or a beggar?.... Do you care? … If you say yes, then why? … What is your first reaction when you see someone on the street? … Do you think negative thoughts immediately such as, “oh they are probably just going to spend it on drugs or alcohol…or they might actually just be faking it and really live in a house, but just dress up as a beggar for an occupation…”? … This woman has a cane…you think she just bought that to help get more sympathy donations? … Often we are told not to give people money on the street… why? …Because we know that often times the money is misused. …Is it always misused? What is your role?

This one gives you a little clearer picture of this woman, but you couldn’t pick her out in a crowd if you had to… Does it matter that you can’t see her face? Do you care that you don’t know her or her story? I wonder what her life is like or how she got to this point…

…I passed this man on the way to the market where I bought myself a slice of pizza for lunch. I don’t like taking pictures of beggars, but I always do…I am always discreet and keep the camera at my hip and try not to make a scene…. Why do I take the pictures? Is it because I care about the person? Is it a spectacle? Are pictures of beggars……interesting? Do they…make for a good picture?...

For one of the days we ate lunch on the Spanish steps and then I walked around for about an hour just taking pictures of people. This is a high fashion district with Dior, Gucci, Zara, Giorgio Armani, Cavalli, Prada, Valentino, Versace, Luis Vuitton and many other stores on the cutting edge of fashion. This man was carrying his Dolce & Gabbana bag and the woman with him was carrying her recent purchase. What do they do when they walk by a beggar? What does the beggar think when he sees them walking by?

What about him? He paid a good chunk of Euros for what is in that little white bag he got from Chanel. What is his life like? Do you care?

Right as we were coming out of the church of San Augostino I saw this guy standing on the steps of the church. We had just seen Caravaggio’s Madonna di Loreto inside the lavishly decorated church. One of the things that struck me about this painting was that Caravaggio painted a man with dirty feet kneeling in front of Mary holding baby Jesus. It was a controversial painting to have the dirty feet in the same frame as Jesus and Mary mixing the Sacred with the Secular. Caravaggio frequently used whores and beggars in the streets for his models even when painting very Holy and Sacred scenes for churches. The people from the street that saw his paintings connected with them and deeply moved the community of the day and judging by my one comment in the previous blog about Rome….It continues to move people today like it almost brought me to tears when I saw a Caravaggio……

So how does that relate to this guy I saw on the way out of church? This man was clearly drunk…holding a cigarette and a bottle of Carona… He wasn’t begging… I walked right by him and snapped a few pics on my way. Did he need me to say something to him? Give him some money? Or would he just get drunk with the money I might have given to him? I know the arguments for buying food or clothing items to actually give these “unlovables” … “untouchables” … “disgraces to society” … What is your role? Should we be saying…. “Oh, it is the churches role to provide for the poor.... Welfare is wrong. It is the churches job….Is the church fulfilling it’s role? ? ……..OR WHAT AM I DOING????? WHAT ARE YOU DOING???? Do you read this and think…. “Oh, that’s sad.” “Wow, he’s totally right………you know what honey, I’m feeling a Starbucks….”

In drawing class we learned about looking at something. Not just simply looking at it and moving on, but truly asking ourselves how long can you “look” at the subject. How long do we truly “look” at something? ….Why do we avoid eye contact with the outcasts of society? Why do we look away? …

Purple is in in Italy. The men love it. Young and old will get decked out in purple, pink, red, or any combination of the above and it is perfectly “ok” here.

So, since I roped you into looking at this post by saying I had pictures of Rome I thought I would give you the usual Rome pictures as well…

The Coliseum at night. Had fun taking some long exposure shots.

Leaving St. Peter’s Basilica as the sun was setting.

The Pantheon.

A sweet sky space in front of the church of St. Ignazius.

Right as the sun was setting I took this long exposure shot at Trevi fountain and you can see the little sliver of moon in the upper left.

Yeah, take a second look at this picture… Yep, your eyes are not playing tricks on you…that is definitely a priest with a baseball cap on carrying a pair of rollerblades up the Spanish steps. :) I was sitting eating lunch at the bottom of the Spanish steps when this dude walked by and I threw my sandwich down, grabbed my camera, and literally ran up the Spanish steps to get in front of this priest and snap a few pictures of this dichotomy.

Another beggar on the street. Or is it?

Does he look familiar? I didn’t think so when I took the picture.

I simply walked by an had the camera hanging by my side and snapped this as I was walking away from the man. Only later after I was going through the pictures did I see that the man was looking at my face when I took the picture without him knowing. It was only today after going through my pictures for probably the third time from Rome that I realized that this man was the same man I had taken pictures of two days prior in a different location in Rome. I didn’t realized it was the same guy in person or even after flipping through my pictures a few times.

What does that mean to me? I didn’t even care enough to remember his face… Do you? So did you remember him from above? It doesn’t matter whether or not you remembered…but it does matter whether you thought about the poor and downtrodden when you read this post. What will YOU do? …click out of this page and check your facebook? Maybe update your twitter? …. OR?

Lake Bolsena

April 17th – 22nd

Yesterday was the last day of my drawing class and so that was a little happy and a little sad. I was happy that I will now have more free time and that I will not be consumed any longer by drawing like I have been this past month, but also sad because I feel like I learned a lot not only about drawing, but also about myself.

Today was really relaxing. A group of us went to Bolsena and in particular the lake, which is kind of famous. I pretty much laid out in the sun and napped and read most of the day on the beach. Wonderful. I also walked around town a bit and saw a castle and the quaint little town. After some coconut and pistachio gelato my day was pretty much complete. :) It’s the life.

Roma Snapshot and Chocolate Masters

Apr 5th – 16th

So, it’s been awhile since I have been on here. I apologize for the lack of posts, but drawing has consumed my life lately. Last week was full of drawing until Wednesday, and then we left for Rome early Thursday morning and stayed three nights and came back Sunday evening. It was an amazing experience!

For starters we stayed in apartments all within about a 3-5 minute walk from the Pantheon in the heart of Rome. I fell in love with the city. The old and new, the street and the sky, the colors and sounds, and much more blended together to create a wonderful city unlike any I have ever been to before. I saw sculptures, paintings, buildings, and piazzas created and designed by masterminds such as Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Caravaggio, Bernini, Borromini, Raphael, and many more. I absolutely loved every minute of Rome whether it was enjoying the most delicious gelato in the world from Giolitti (con panna – with cream on top…yeah be jealous) and walking to the Pantheon with it, standing in awe in front of a Caravaggio, looking out across the city from the top of St. Peter’s Basilica, taking a night walk (aka photo-walk) to the Coliseum, throwing a coin in the Trevi Fountain, eating at the best pizzeria ever, pondering how the baroque architects managed to make stone look so wavy and fluid, gazing at the hand of God in the Sistine chapel, or any other numerous adventures/sights/sounds/tastes.

My eyes watered up for the first time ever over a piece of artwork. I was looking at Peter being crucified upside down in a Caravaggio and it moved me. Am I that much in love with Christ that I would be crucified, let alone request to crucified upside down? I gained a new appreciation for sculpture and architecture this past weekend. I might come back and give you some more details on Rome at some point if I get the chance, but that was just a brief overview.

From this past Monday until today I have logged over 50 hours of drawing with conte and eraser in hand. At times it has been frustrating and at times I have been tired of drawing, but it definitely stretched me and I was able to see myself improve drastically just from day to day within this past week. I now understand more fully what it means to get lost in your work and to look up and realize that 3 hours had past when you thought it had only been 20-30 minutes. After a super busy week with lots of late nights drawing (1230, 1, 130, and 3am last night) I am ready for a more relaxing weekend here in Orvieto. I am getting ready to go to a concert this evening in the Duomo and then have plans to go work on a farm Sunday afternoon to help plant in return for a free farm-fresh lunch. Also this weekend there is something called Choclando in town which is like a traveling chocolate festival. Supposedly the top ten chocolate masters from all over Italy will be there so I’m excited about checking that out. I’ll try my best to get a couple Rome pictures up soon and maybe add a little more to the blog about the past 10 days.

So, the concert in the Duomo was pretty amazing. They had it all lit up with professional lighting that changed colors throughout the concert, which was pretty sweet. It was a requiem with an orchestra and full choir performing it. Today I went to Choclando (the chocolate festival I mentioned earlier) and got some really delicious stuff. I had a green tea and raspberry dark chocolate truffle, some little balls of chocolate filled with straight espresso, some pistachio cookies, a chocolaty frozen drink, and numerous samples of yummy chocolate treats. They had some sweet chocolate creations like wrenches and floppy disks made of chocolate that actually looked metallic.

I wondered around town looking for a spot for my final drawing that is due by the end of the week and just finished choir practice with Eduardo for the special Easter service.

Orvieto wandering pics

Here is the view from down at the end of town looking back towards the monastery with the landscape. The arrow on the right is pointing to the bell tower of the monastery and the arrow on the left is left edge of rectangular monastery to show you where I live.

This is a view of the valley from a garden area right near the monastery.

Rooftops in the medieval quadrant of Orvieto.

Clocktower from the piazza del Popolo (piazza of the people)

View from near the center of town...

Right before sunset at an edge of town you haven't seen -

An olive grove on the edge of town near the garden the second picture was taken from, but shot in the other direction...these pictures don't do the greens justice or even the yellow wildflowers or the silvery green olive trees..

Here is one of many interesting doors in Orvieto

Door 2 - very odd

Door 3 - on the Corso - main road

That's all for now :)

Orvieto, Conte, SpanItalianglish, Hiking, Hot Springs, Roma Football

Mar 27- Apr 4

Well, it’s been awhile since I posted. :/ I will try to give you the highlights of this past week and weekend and not have a super long post, but we will see. Ha.

So, a week ago we started the second semester/month of class, which is drawing studio for me. I have not had a legit art class since elementary school and so this class has definitely been pretty overwhelming for me. My prof said that the class will root us in the fundamentals, but it is also an upper level drawing class so at some points I definitely feel in over my head and lacking compared to most of the other students. It has been humbling and frustrating at times, but overall it has been a great learning experience for me. We do a ton of drawing. We spend 3-5 hours in class each day and then anywhere from 2-4 hours plus of homework each night. Please pray that I can continue to learn quickly and not get discouraged when things don’t turn out the way I want them to.

Ok, so after class was over this Thursday and after I had eaten lunch I went out and just wandered the city with my camera until dinnertime. It was amazing. I got to see parts of the city I had never seen before and saw different aspects of the parts that I had been in before. I love Orvieto and would not want to live anywhere else. This weekend was the first weekend that I have not left Orvieto and so it was super relaxing to just slow down and enjoy the beauty that is all around me.

On Friday I got up around 9 and went out with my camera again to check out the morning light and wandered the city again until 1pm when I went straight to lunch. After lunch I exchanged my camera for conte(oily black drawing utensil) and paper. I stayed out in the city drawing and exploring until 8pm for dinnertime. It was glorious. Between Thursday and Friday I was out in the city for over 12 hours!

Quick story about the end of Friday before I cam back for dinner... I was out drawing a gate into a driveway when the gate opened and a guy drove out into the middle of the street. He stopped and rolled down his window and asked to see what I was drawing. I came over to his window with my hands all covered in conte and I’m sure I had smudges all over my face as well.(a fact you just have to accept as the norm…you are always covered in graphite, conte, or whatever we are drawing with) ha. I stood there talking with him in a mix of Italian/Spanish/English for about 15 minutes or so with his car parked in the middle of the street (he was at the end of the street so he wasn’t blocking traffic, but it was still funny) and then he said the sun was in his eyes so he had me go around and get in the passengers seat so we could continue talking. I ended up talking with this dude for like 45 minutes to an hour! William was from Columbia and had only lived in Orvieto for 5 months. He was a Presbyterian priest and had his little shirt with the white collar on. He will be leaving in a little over a year to go back to Columbia. Anyway, I am not going to go into detail all about this guy, but it was a super engaging and stretching conversation. His English was not that great at all…he knew a few words pretty much. We talked primarily in Italian even though his native language was Spanish, but he realized that I wanted to work on my Italian so he stayed in Italian as he seemed pretty much fluent in Italian. It was so much fun though and so helpful with helping me learn Italian. Normally if someone knows a decent amount of English you can ask in Italian how to say a word and then say it in English or describe the word in English to get them to tell you the Italian word. This guy though didn’t know that much English so I was forced to use other Italian and Spanish words to describe the word that I was looking for in Italian. It was really sweet though and I hope to find more opportunities like that to practice my Italian.

On Saturday I decided not to go out in the city, but after going to the market and lunch I brought my blanket, pillow, Bible and a few books out into the courtyard of the monastery and just napped/read until dinnertime. So wonderful. The weather as you can imagine from the fact that I have been outside a lot has been simply gorgeous. The occasional breeze and 75-80 degrees…sunny…blue skies. ☺

This Sunday(yesterday) I had the unique opportunity to go on a 3 hour hike each direction to some hot springs. It was a great hike and the hot springs were great. I mean no big deal just hiked to some amazing hot springs and then hiked back. After we got back and ate dinner we had our first guys night out. My roommate, Prof. Doll, my RD (Josh), and I went to Alessandro’s (my Italian teacher) apartment to watch Roma play Juventus in football (soccer). Alessandro is a huge Roma fan and so we helped him cheer on Rome. It was a lot of fun and hopefully we will be able to do it a few more times while we are here. Sadly Roma lost zero a due (0-2). :/

Hopefully I’ll get a few more pics on here when I get the chance!