This week is proving to be just as busy as last week. Monday, I painted all day (practically). Right now I am in a frustrating place in painting where I am disagreeing with all the suggestions my teacher is making for me because I feel that her ideas will remove my voice in my paintings and replace it with hers. Usually this is not a problem to disagree with an art teacher; however, with our painting teacher, she acts like her ideas are the only correct direction to approach our artwork, which is quite bothersome. Hopefully this will change in the next few weeks. On a happier note, after dinner that night, we all got to watch the movie, “Room with a View,” which was played because, in addition to being an adorable romantic story, it takes place in Florence. It really is exciting to watch movies that are filmed in the cities we have visited. I can cross this movie off my ever-growing list as we visit more and more places.
Tuesday was already my third teaching day, where we were making comic strips about our super heroes that we created the week before. Although the third graders were more active and wild than usual, it is clear that each day of teaching gets better. We were really able to push the concepts of the project this time and once again, every student took their time to explore their imaginations. I am constantly amazed by how much I am able to communicate to the kids even though I know so little of their language. If I could take anything home with me from my experiences abroad, it would most definitely be the entire third grade class from the Cortona elementary school. The rest of the afternoon was devoted to book making. We are learning a new stitch to bind the book together, and although like the other techniques, this one is also very time consuming, I am finally getting my own rhythm of working with all the aspects of book making. Even more importantly, I am finally getting inspired about ways to not only perfect my technique of book making, but ways to apply meaning and further dimension to the books I make. After dinner that night, we had yet another faculty presentation. This one coincidentally was presented by my book making teacher, Amy, and the jewel/metals teacher, Krista, both of whom showed us a very amazing collection of work starting from their high school days. I think it is so cool to be able to see the early work of such well-established artists.
I woke up Wednesday feeling feverish, so I actually spent most of the day drifting in and out of sleep until art history in the late afternoon. The only thing of note is that I got my art history exam back, where I did splendidly. My teacher announced to the whole class that someone misspelled the word abbess (the woman in charge of an abbey of nuns) throughout her entire essay as abyss. That someone would have been me. I guess I need to brush up on my spelling.
Thursday, I woke up feeling so much better. I guess I just had a one-day spell of something. Thursday also seemed to be the warmest day we had so far. I had my first run in shorts! Also, strawberries for some reason were way cheaper at the produce market. Such a good day! Painting also went better today. We critiqued the painting that I was frustrated with, and I decided to try out my teacher’s suggestion for the background of my painting in a way that still seemed to have my voice. I painted over the brushy, blended brush strokes in the background with flat bold winding stripes of color that contrast dramatically with my delicate pepper. This was actually inspired by a page that I colored in a coloring book using this same technique for the background. I want to push this idea further with future paintings, but I am not sure how I am going to do this yet. After painting, because it was so beautiful outside, I decided to go for a nice walk before dinner. During my walk, I explored a different direction of a new nearby mountain; I was taking in the most stunning scenery when I stumbled upon the famous “Le Celle”, a gigantic, charming, and beautiful Franciscan monastery founded by Saint Frances himself in 1211 in the middle of breathtaking woods and with a waterfall running through it. I did not actually know what this place was (I could only tell that it was some sort of monastery) until I got back and showed our art history teacher the pictures I had taken of the monastery to find out what I had discovered. Apparently she is planning a big trip with our program to go see this place. She was shocked that I walked all the way there and back. I was proud of my adventure. My Thursday ended on an excellent note with the BEST sandwich ever! Lately, dinner at the restaurant has been lacking, so I planned ahead this evening by buying a sandwich at the local food market. It was a Number Eleven: spinach, peppers, eggplant, sun-dried tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, (I added pesto to this) on fresh focaccia bread. This sandwich was the most incredible post-dinner I have ever had, no question. I think I will need another sandwich tomorrow. And the next day.
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