Gondola Ride Kit: Instructions for a Heightened Experience

I'd like to introduce you to my little-but-powerful artist's book called Gondola Ride Kit: Instructions for a Heightened Experience. It's an ironic guide for living one of Venice's quintessential experiences: the gondola ride. There's a map, instructions and a trouble shooting guide at the end as I take you through the lagoon city in a whole new way. To start, I recommend the experience during the winter months of November to February, not your typical touristic season in the lagoon city.

Some the sections are dedicated to the five senses. You must concentrate on each one as you ride along in the gondola.

Canal Grande, original illustration by artist

Route taken by artist and recommended departure site to find your gondolier. 

For those who have read Dante Alighieri's Inferno, there is Experience B with references to Virgil and Minos, among others.

It's a guide. It's a book. It's art.
Enjoy this fabulous and unique read! Get your own copy. Buy one for a friend for Christmas! It will make for  an amazing gift for anyone leaving for Venice this winter. It can also be considered a special memento or just lets you dream about Venice with a new point-of-view. Not to mention that this little book is part of major public collections like Tate Gallery. You'll have a piece of art that is the "stuff" of museums.

This is the first time I have directly written about a piece of my art on this blog. I feel it is the right time and very relevant to your interests in Italy and my neighboring city of Venice, where I used to live. This artist's book is on sale for a great small price via Internet now. For more information, please go to my ETSY shop: http://www.etsy.com/shop/irenewoodburyworks

Thank you for supporting me as an artist and spreading the word about Gondola Ride Kit.

Let me know what you think once you've gone for your own ride with manual in-hand.

Handmade Scaffolding Cover

The people in Agordo, a town near Belluno, decided to approach the current idea of imagery on their scaffolding cover in the most artigianale of ways. Instead of using a sponsor's image to print over the entire surface of the facade area being restored, as is often done in big cities like Venice these days, or printing a photographic replica of what the facade normally looks like to place on the covering, someone got some paint and brushes and did their painterly and naif version of the original facade. I find this completely adorable. You can find this scaffolding painting across from the church in the center of town.

For some images of what the photo slick versions usually look like:

The recently restored Bridge of Sighs, Venice, with the sponsor Bulgari on display

Photo credit: flickr name: travellerlisa

For a picture reference of a Paduan version of a scaffolding cover, go to my post. 

At least Padua in 2009 advertised the City of Hope, part of the Padua Hospital system. It a hospital program for kids with physical problems.

Ingenious Suburban Italian Gardening

Such a terrific solution to this gardener's dilemma: how to grow squash in a relatively small space. Just use your fence to let the vine grow vertically. And when the squash gets big and heavy, seat it on its own custom-made wooden shelf attached to the fence and hovering over the sidewalk. In no time, you'll have some great chow for some autumn risotto di zucca.

I am very proud of my neighbor's ingenuity.

For a recipe for Pumpkin risotto, click here.

Extraordinary Packages

After living abroad for any real length of time, the need to send and bring items from the US to Italy becomes necessary. We all have this story. My first special one was a box full of expensive watercolor paints that I sent myself from home to my new temporary home in Rome for my study year abroad. I had sent the box to my former Italian teacher to make sure that if it arrived earlier than me, there wouldn't be a problem receiving it. At that time, we sent via ship and it took 2/3 months for a package to get to its destination this way. We did it to save about 2/3 of the cost of express courrier. But I mistakenly declared on the mailing slip what I thought was the authentic value of the paints, which was a high value. Why was that a problem? Because when they got to Italy, the addressee had to pay taxes and handling fees based on that large sum of money. When she alluded to having paid something, she refused to let me know how much so I couldn't reimburse her. It was a typical Italian "host" gesture. And as a 20-year-old American, I had no idea how to insist or understand what the money paid could actually have been. I just didn't have the experience yet.

Then there was the time I needed to travel from Italy to the US with a wooden box with lighting and plexiglass slabs, 2 of which were filled with water. It was a sculpture/artist book that I was getting ready to present to US gallerists and collectors. It weighed a lot and required an excellent packaging job to make the flight in-tact and undamaged. It was also 2003. When I stopped over in Vienna, the Austrian police had me come out to their handling area on the other side of the airport, holding up the flight, while they made me unwrap everything to show them that it wasn't a bomb. It was a miracle that they believed I was an innocent American travelling with a strange sculpture and they also had the patience to help me carefully rewrap each piece of my sculpture, further holding up the flight, so that it could travel safely to its destination.

Fast forward to 2012. Recently a new art project has demanded another important package to get to Italy. This time it's large sheets of handmade paper with deckled edges. I had to figure out a way to package the paper so that it would travel and not damage its edges, which are one of the best parts about the handmade paper making process. I was able to accomplish this with the help of a UPS shipping shop. But I already had too much to carry to bring it to Italy myself. So my father was given the assignment of travelling with the package when he recently visited. In order to do that successfully, there was still one piece missing to the packaging process. A handle had to be attached to the large, fairly heavy and awkward package. UPS couldn't help us when I was in their shop and time ran out for my own stay in the US. I left without making a handle, which I had learned to make out of string as a person living in Venice. In that city, you must carry everything so you learn how to make handles for all kinds of boxes.

In the end my mother made a handle. But not just a handle. She made a sort of vest out of denim for the package and then inserted a real plastic handle into the sheath.

I didn't want to open the package until absolutely necessary because everything was so "safe" inside the denim wrap, tape and cardboard. So the package sat in its "clothes" for months. I only opened it 3 weeks ago to get to a drawing I wanted to hang on a wall - finally.

Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture of my mother's masterpiece of practical creativity and sewing diligence which was that package before I cut it up. (I was in a rush that day.) Here are the outer remnants that still remain:

handmade denim outer structure for large package, including plastic handle, 12" ruler to show size

The important thing was that the package travelled beautifully.

Thanks Mother.

The Yellow Box Disappears

It's incredible but true-the yellow box will soon vanish from Italy's train stations. You know, the one you need to use to stamp your ticket before you get on the train. And sometimes you forgot or you didn't even know you were supposed to use it because you are a foreign traveller and assume by buying a ticket, that is enough to travel without a hassle on an Italian train.
Well, it's being replaced by a more modern variety of stamping machine which is neither yellow nor boxy anymore. Here's introducing Trenitalia's new slick machine.

Yayoi Kusama on Display Downtown

In the heart of Padua, Louis Vuitton has brought the art of the famous Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama. Her world  consists of obsessive dots.

What I like about this window display is that there isn't a single bag or Vuitton product in the composition. Just Yayoi.

The company is trying to bring this art to a new public that might not otherwise see it. For more about this mission, watch this video.

Reflecting on my Posts

Why did I dedicate 2 posts to my recovery, back to back? This is the question I asked myself.

While the Olympic games are being played, it has made me think. Many people are receiving medals for their  great efforts. All I have to show after a year of "work" and diligence is the possibility to get back to my former activity, although that's a lot more than some people can do. Not everyone literally climbs mountains. And some never get back what they lost.

I knew I would get back into my alpine activities but it amazed me that I really had to wait about a full year for that to happen, like the doctor told me from the onset. You always think it's going to faster for you: the young, active person. I also needed to keep up my physical therapy with a regular schedule of work, a house  to care for and other activities of everday life. Finding time for everything wasn't always easy.

It took me longer to get my tendon in order than my friends to give birth to babies, which they are in the process of doing now but got pregnant months after my surgery. It's ironic because most of us consider the waiting period during pregnancy to be long. My achilles tendon recovery was longer.

This is not the first time I have had surgery and had to go through therapy. It's actually the third over the last 15 years. I am probably a bit frustrated that I have had so much of surgery and injuries and recovery. Yet I know there are other people who have been through more. But that's in my head. My gut doesn't always care about those cases. Maybe  that's why getting over this operation is such a big deal for me.

I have to admit that my tendon still isn't perfect. It still feels raw when I push it. I am still doing physical therapy to help it along. I think I'll need to do that until I can truly lift up my body onto the tips of my left toes, a movement that I only do partially at the moment. August 4th was a year after surgery but I think I need another 3 months to get everything back in shape.

And then one day, I won't have to think about it anymore. The tendon will just perform exactly as it should.