Cincinnati Dreams Italy

The Grand Tour 13: "The Group Halted In Germany
But Emily's Heart  Leapt Ahead to Venice."©
 Mixed-media collage on antique book cover. 

As mentioned in a post a few days ago, you can see how area artists view Italy next month in "Cincinnati Dreams Italy," a special exhibition downtown. It's the brainchild of Kathy Holwadel. She was asked by the Taft to plan a series of Italian-themed events to complement "George Inness In Italy," the museum's big fall exhibition.

Well, to say she got carried away is an understatement. The expansive local artists' exhibit - up to three dozen artists and counting - is spread out in four historic buildings near the Taft and is just one part of the line-up. There also are tastings, a bocce tournament and a communal dinner. The Taft has posted this page on its website with some of the details and there are even more on the School Amici website (that's the local Italian language school owned by Kathy's husband, Michele) and regular updates on the school's Facebook page.

I'll be showing in Park Place at Lytle at 400 Pike St. - right next door to the Taft - along with Kay Hurley, Oliver Debikey, Michael Wilson, Karen Heyl, Mark Patsfall, the Thunder-Sky group and Kevin Muente. As at each site, it's a great mix of mediums from painting and sculpture to glass and photography. Dates are Oct. 8-9, 15-16, 22-23. Admission is free and 30% of the proceeds from art sales will go to the Taft.

The Grand Tour 18: Mama Encouraged the Girls toContinue Sightseeing While She Put Up Her Feet

It's probably no surprise that since I collect all kinds of paper, some of it is from my travels. We've made a number of trips to Italy and while I find it hard to depart with my own mementoes, I did end up using a few in this piece: the lira coin, the ticket from the naval museum in Venice (I still have another one) and the oversized postcards of Rome that I found in a shop (they came from a marvelous book of sepia-toned postcards that unfolds to be about 5 feet long).  7.5" x 9.5" on archival mat board

Tool time

I've been gathering and scanning copyright free images of hand tools for quite some time. Some of the originals have turned up in collages while I've been tinkering with the scans for a line of greeting cards. I've found the images in a number of sources but my favorite, by far, has been a scruffy copy of "Educational Wood Working For School and Home" by Joseph C. Park.

It was created, wrote Parks, because of "the increased popularity of manual training as a part of the curriculum of the public schools and the demand for a text-book that can be put into the hands of pupils so that they may be held responsible for important subject matter in connection with woodworking." He was affiliated with the State Normal and Training School of Oswego, N.Y. (see postcard below). The first edition was published by MacMillan in 1908.

The author received engravings from a variety of American tool and machine manufacturers, as well as information on their products to use in the book and some of the pages are more than suitable for framing on their own, such as the ones showing nail varieties. Each time I page through the book, I seem to discover an overlooked image - so, the scanning continues.

The Grand Tour 17: Matilda's Decision To Remain in ItalyAnswered The Question That Had Hung In The Air For Weeks

This was one of those nice surprises. I had cut out the women from a Peterson's magazine fashion plate to use in another collage but decided on a different grouping. Then, while searching for an image, I found this golden-infused Italian scene and a new collage was born instantly. That doesn't happen often, but when it does, well, it's pure fun.

I was itching to use the beautiful olive branch, which came from a recycled publishers catalog cover, and had a few ideas about the text when I found this snippet in one of my "word" files. Yes, I'm organized to the hilt when it comes to filing paper and have to resist the urge to subdivide it all even more.

This might be one of my favorites in the series for the "Cincinnati Dreams Italy" exhibition, because it reminds me so much of light-infused autumn afternoons in Tuscany and of the silvery olive trees that lined the walk to one of the first places we stayed in the hills just outside Florence. 8" x 8" on archival mat board. (SOLD)

The Grand Tour resumes ... in Italy

I took a break from The Grand Tour series for a couple of months but jumped back into it head first during the past week with five new collages about Italy. They're for the exhibit, Cincinnati Dreams Italy, which will be held Oct. 8-9, 15-16 and 22-23 in historic buildings near the Taft Museum of Art.

The show's the brainchild of Kathy Holwadel, who has a penchant for thinking up cool ideas and it's just one of the events she's cooked up as an offshoot of the Taft exhibit "George Inness In Italy," which opens Oct. 7. There are dozens of Cincinnati artists involved. I'll post details - hours, etc. - as soon as I can; meantime, read more about it on La Piazza, Kathy's blog.

This is No. 15 in The Grand Tour series. I've started adding subtitles; this one - which I admit to changing five times in the last 48 hours - is "The Grand Tour 15: Upon Closer Examination, Elizabeth Realized That Her Guidebook Had Failed Miserably In Its Description of David." It's a hand-colored, antique Peterson's Magazine fashion plate combined with images from vintage guidebooks, maps and brochures. 5.5" x 8.5" on archival mat board with India ink. {SOLD}