Winter Venice

In the winter, Venice is like an abandoned theatre. The play is finished, but the echoes remain. Arbit Blatas To build a city where it is impossible to build a city is madness in itself, but to build there one of the most elegant and grandest of cities is the madness of genius. Alexander Herzen [...]

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Wabi Sabi, Dwellings for Imaginary Civilizations, Nightverses

Wabi-sabi is a beauty of things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete. It is a beauty of things modest and humble. It is a beauty of things unconventional. From Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers Charles Simonds began building clay villages, ruins and what he termed ” dwellings for imaginary civilizations of little people” in the [...]

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Reading Tea Leaves (and Fortune Cookies)

Well, this is no good! August is almost here and once again balmy summer days flew by with traveling, urban escapades and some R&R…while the postings have been mighty sparse. I have been a curious tourist in my own city and state, and, in between summer courses,  the roamings included a visit to Joshua Tree National Park, Much [...]

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Tales of Salt Cities

“Here is a splendid volume from the Terry Gillam school of fictional photography… The book comes in a sturdy slipcase and features complex landscapes, painstakingly created, and digitally peopled by actors playing out scenes which conjure up a mystical Middle Eastern civilisation. Enigmatic, but beautiful.” AG Magazine “This is a beautifully structured text with an [...]

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Drawn Resolutions (and calling for mandatory poetry)

  As designers, architects, artists, we use the ability to first visualize then communicate  a desired outcome. Implementation means having the courage, discipline and perseverance  to  bring that vision into the physical realm. I love to write, and to write lists, but this year I am doing something different with my 2011 resolutions. I am drawing them. It [...]

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Dispatches from Milano: I Navigli

Before the first day of the month comes to a close…

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Dispatches from Milano: Sketching and Card Making

 In the monastery adjacent this church, just a few minutes’ stroll from my house, one can find Leonardo Da Vinci’s ’Last Supper’. The apse (widely attributed to Donato Bramante, and dated around 1490) is significant as it signals a crucial transition from the Late Gothic style of the nave to a splendid Northern Italian Renaissance in the [...]

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Welcome to my Piazza, my outdoor living room.

This is my piazza, do you want to join me? We can walk inside the Battistero and talk about Islamic influences in the architecture of the Rinascimento in Firenze…or maybe just stroll about like tourists. Let’s take that via,the one on the left, do you want to come with me? Every time I consider  imaginary [...]

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Collages in Art and Architecture

I have been thinking and wanting to explore collages again since this summer, when I was so inspired by Hector Perez and his students’ work with SoCal Ex–but not until today I finally acted on that impulse. I have two works done and one almost complete. Two to share, and one part of a larger, [...]

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Contemplating Trees

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Imaginaire : an evening with Magritte (and colors)

After some meetings today I stopped by the library, Futo coffee in hand, and indulged in my favorite Architecture periodicals: Domus, Architectural Review and Harvard Design Magazine. An article on Surrealist Houses launched an expansive search on the Architecture of René Magritte; will share some of the findings here. I am also thinking about watercolor [...]

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Ode to Pens

The Man with Many Pens by Jonathan Wells With one he wrote a number so beautiful it lasted forever in the legends of numbers. With another he described the martyrs’ feet as they marched past the weeping stones and cypresses, watched by their fathers. He used one as a silver wand to lift a trout [...]

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It’s June. It’s Good. NaBloPoMo.

Happy June! I hope the long weekend was restful and re-newing for all. I was fortunate enough to enjoy the beautiful weather in San Diego, and explore the Torrey Pines coast and beaches, and hike a cliff (!) For someone like me , a city creature, who believes in the great indoors, this is no [...]

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Virtual Yoga (Human Landscapes) and finally, the definition of diagram

The image above aptly illustrates the process behind diagramming, which is one of summarizing and and rendering a concept more abstract, more immediately communicable. Abstract in this sense is intended as ‘ reduced to the essential’.  Diagrams are, according to Joe Nicholson: 1. a simple drawing showing the basic shape, lay-out, or workings of something [...]

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Artuesday | Students’ Work!

I spent the better part of last night ‘curating’ and putting up a small show of my students’ work. Last quarter I promised my Neoclassic to Modern Art students I  would organize an exhibit of their art in the main foyer of our school and I am happy to announce that that’s one promise kept:) [...]

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Artuesday : Paintings of buildings are portraits, too… {c’est fini}

I finished my Third Street Homes ‘portraits’  (thankyou Planetary Folklore for the great quote). Since the last iteration I refined ground and sky, went over the watercolor with Prismacolor pencils to give the homes some texture, bumped up the contrast, pushed the darks a bit and, finally, worked on the vegetation and added the framing [...]

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Artuesday: An Ode to Coffee| A New Water Bottle

I wanted to share some of the things that make life better: 1. A  water bottle that makes you happy and keeps you cool for hours. 2. a coffee mug that offers you coffee at ideal temperature with new technology … or just looks thermally  good (mine is orange) 3.  Beautiful Pantone Mugs to brighten [...]

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Artuesday: Sketchbook Exchange II and the wonders of Tara Donovan

I started a new sketchbook exchange with Mike Riggin, a Teaching Assistant at my school. My initial contribution: illustrating two of my friend Sarah‘s poems, and an origami heart– due to my recent infatuation with Between the Folds). Also I must, must, must tell you about an art show that could have possibly changed my [...]

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Third Street Homes- (First) watercolor

Well, here is the finished (first) watercolor layer.   One more iteration is needed, as much as I am ready to move on to the next project. Contrast and shade and shadow, ink and lineweight, and perhaps a layer of color pencil for texture.  What I am looking for is for these homes to ‘pop’, and [...]

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Artuesday {two days late}

I have been squeezing some plein air drawing/watercolor-ing in between classes, lectures and sketchbook exchanges. This is the continuation of the project started last week. I inked the pencil drawing to use for a future marker rendering, and started to give it some lineweight, while I continued with some washes on the original- now finished- [...]

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Artuesday- Happy Homes and Guiding Lines

Happy Tuesday. Throughout my four years of teaching Tuesday has always been my ‘work at home’ day, the one costant in the changing tides of quarters, classes and schedules. Today I thought I’d start a special Tuesday section, when I have more time to start new projects. So here is the first artuesday: this is [...]

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