Day 8 - Post Post-Salon Post

Seeing as I have about eight hours of train travel ahead of me, I might as well try to get caught up to today. Somewhere along the line, I seem to have lost a day somehow (my photos say it's day 9), but well, that's Italy! 

Time flies, as they say, and you can see the symbols for it on the sides of the entry to the monumental cemetery in Lecce

I'm leaving Lecce for Castellammare di Stabia (Roman ruins!) but I also feel like I'm leaving a new family behind, having met and really "Grokked" (a sci-fi term from Robert Heinlein meaning to understand thoroughly) these fellow travelers on the path of pattern, ornament, and art. It's so nice to be in a group where the word "acanthus"  doesn't send them scrambling for a dictionary. It was also nice to be in such a multinational group; we had travelers from the US, Japan, Spain, Norway, England and Ireland, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Latvia, Sweden, Denmark, Russia, Ukraine, and of course, Italy. It feels as though I have just expanded my (art) family by about tenfold. 

Part of our multilingual mass milling around before a group photo

Back to travelogue- after a decent night's sleep (though I don't seem to be able to get more than about five hours on any night!) I had  breakfast and said goodbye to some of the participants who were dispersing for various parts, did a bit of writing and travel planning for today, then got one of the free bikes from the hotel and set out. Lecce is a perfect town for a bike- flat as a pancake and generally smooth streets, though you do have to watch out for cars and buses and people walking along buried in their phones.

There are dozens of "streets" like this in the cemetery in Lecce.  Absolutely incredible!

My first stop was the cemetery very close to the hotel, which we had seen before but not managed to find open. I was glad I had the bike, since the entrance allee of Italian cypress trees was long. There was a large piazza in front of one of the baroque churches that cover all of Lecce, and then the cemeteries branched off on both sides. They were immense, with large family monuments all made of the butter colored Lecce stone, planted liberally with cypress, pines, and oleanders. It was enchanting- I was the only one there save for a few cats, and the architecture and stone work were both excellent. It didn't seem extremely old- mostly 19th century in the parts I explored, but the contrast to the newer sections was stark. The modern monuments had no warmth at all- they generally didn't even use the local stone, opting instead for gray and white marbles, with tinted windows and metal accents, looking more like miniature office buildings than monuments to a family's history. 

About as much charm as a refrigerator!

I wandered around in there for quite a while, did a drawing of one of them, unsuccessfully tried to lure a kitten out for a picture, got some water, and then headed back over to town on the bike, where i just meandered through the old streets without a map, stopping to take a few pictures outside some churches and trying not to hit anything due to the crummy brakes on the bike. 

Took a lot of accidental selfies on the bike as I was cruising

Eventually I found myself down in the opposite corner from the hotel, where there is an art and archeology museum that was again completely empty except for me. I went in (free!) and a guard ushered me up to the third floor, where they had a very good display of ancient history of the area, with ceramics going back over 5,000 years! I was left alone in there with a collection that would make the Getty quite happy, with multiple examples of many classic styles displayed with good information, unostentatiously. In another corner of the museum I found the Pinacoteca (picture gallery), where again I was alone- the guard turned the lights on just for me! They had one gallery of art from the Renaissance to the 18th century, and another with 19th and 20th. Not many names I recognized, other than a piece by Giuseppe de Ribera, but there were some very nice pieces, including an awesome cabinet covered with little dwarf genre paintings, some very nice majolica, and a curious statue of a putto covered with netting. Not sure what that was about, but it looked cool! 

19th c. ceramic sculpture. Ummmm?

Hit the road again to find some food, stopping briefly by a couple of grand old houses that were for sale along one of the busy streets. I pictured how pleasant it must have been when the only traffic there was clip-clopping horses, and how now you would need to put in triple insulated glass to really make it hospitable. Too bad, because I bet you could get them for a good price, and some of them had very nice sgraffito and decorations. I would have loved to at least had a chance to see what the interiors look like. Found some food, returned to the hotel and did some scribbling and more trip planning, and finished the day in the hotel restaurant with the rapidly dwindling crew from the exhibition. Packed up my gear late and went to bed for a few hours. 

Sold! Can you wrap it up to go?

Day 5-6 Post Salon Post

The Salon has officially ended as of yesterday (written two days ago- I have some catching up to do!), but today we are squeezing every last drop out of our hosts Stefano and Caterina by taking advantage of their planning to do some organized sightseeing to places I guarantee we never would have made it to on our own. Today about 60 of us piled into a bus (something I rarely do!) and we went down to the Adriatic coast, close enough to Armenia to see it across the water!

A final demonstration by Stefano Luca in the courtyard. I ended up being the model for it because I have glasses (and so did his design. Improvisation in action!

But first I should wrap up the Salon. Reminds me of an old perspective drawing lesson. The student asks, "How do you draw an elephant in perspective?" To which the teacher responds, "Easy, just draw the box the elephant came in!" Thus I will attempt to give some perspective on this monumental event by describing a few of the details and organization that stand out to me. It will still only be the box the elephant came in, but at least it will be a start!

I did so much talking and visiting (and a bit of work on the collaborative mural) that I hardly did anything on my demo panel, which was supposed to be a design for a border on my exhibition panel. Oh well, I'll finish it at home, where I can concentrate.

Despite it's being my first experience of the Salon, I have been aware of it for several years, and have made friends with a number of participants through seeing their work on Facebook and elsewhere. It felt like a homecoming to meet them in person, and I felt welcomed by all, especially our hosts, who put out an insane amount of energy and effort to make this a truly stupendous event. Despite a few bumps in the road (some stolen brushes, some dirty bathrooms- none of which was their fault) the venue was fantastic, the organization was amazingly good, and I think everyone involved felt truly grateful to have been a part. My wife Marianne came with me to Lecce thinking she would probably skip out on her own to do more sightseeing and touring, but ended up staying for every minute of every day to see the progress on individual panels, the group mural, and the incredible demos.

Candlelit entry to the castle where we had the closing ceremony for the conference. Stefano and Caterina have set the bar much too high for anyone else to follow!!

The closing dinner was held in a castle- not a Disney castle, but the real thing, with a romantic candle lit rooftop garden and a vaulted hall that held all of the 100 or so people that were involved. Fabulous food and drink were a part of every day here, and I think we sampled almost every Southern Italian dish that exists, much of which was seafood, which didn't bother me at all! Today on the second day of the post- Salon event we ate more seafood than I have ever encountered in one meal, in the lovely sleepy port town of Gallipoli, on the Ionian sea. More about that tomorrow.

The Sea Cave of "Zinzulusa", or "Drying Laundry" in the local dialect. 

Back to our first day of post-salon activities; after riding in the bus for an hour or so to the south east tip of the heel of the boot, we were first treated to a boat ride into some sea caves- sort of a mini-version of the Blue Grotto at Capri, but maybe less touristy and therefore more fun. There was also a walking tour of another cave that had some pretty impressive stalactite and stalagmite formations.  In a local dialect that reflects the Greek heritage of the area, they call it the "Cave of the Dirty Laundry" because the swallows' nests built on the hanging formations at the mouth of the cave reminded the sailors of drying clothes hanging out to dry.

In the area of Santa Cesarea Terme is this amazing rockwork that is part natural, part manmade.

 Then we hopped back on the bus and drove past some really beautiful coastline areas, pausing for 5 minutes at an ancient Roman bridge that is right on the coast, near some thermal baths. At the town of Otranto we were treated to our first lunch spectacular- I don't know how on earth they kept the price of our day trips so low- $40- considering the food and drink on top of the bus ride. Had a nice post-prandial swim in the harbor there and toured a church that has one of the largest mosaic floors I've ever seen- a tree of life.

A bridal party walking through the streets of Otranto

Then it was back to the hotel and a simple dinner in town, collapsing so that Marianne could leave the next morning.

Day Four- Cafe con Lecce

In the city of Lecce, in the heel of the boot of Italy, they have a regional coffee drink called an "espressino", an expression that would get you a small (read: thimble full of) coffee anywhere else in the country, but here buys you a delicious cup of espresso with a bit of milk and a hit of chocolate, a perfect lunch ender.

Triumphal gate into Lecce was made in 1548 for the Habsburg emperor Charles V, and much of the other architecture comes from around this time.

A lot of things are different about Lecce, a town that has a very distinct character derived from its unique history as a very old town supposedly founded by Cretans from before the time of the Trojan Wars (ie- more than 1,000 years BCE!)  It was an important agricultural center from the middle ages onwards, reaching a peak in the Baroque 15-1600's, when much of the architecture of the old town was created using the local limestone (dubbed "Lecce Stone"), still an important export, along with olive oil and wine.

The newer parts of town are filled with many architectural and business failures, such as this shuttered gas station that proves that "Googie" architecture wasn't limited to just Los Angeles 

Our hotel is just outside of the historical center, and the contrast, as in many European cities with intact historical cores, is pretty shocking. The outside looks gritty, semi-abandoned, with many boarded up houses, and architecturally confused. By contrast, the center is very uniform, cooler (despite the scarcity of trees), and inviting. The uniformity is due to two things: the yellow ocher color of the stone work that makes up almost every single building in the old town, and the profuse Baroque ornament that encrusts everything there. Besides its color, the other characteristic of Lecce stone is its softness; you can actually carve it using nothing stronger than a wire brush! It corrodes fairly quickly also, creating some fascinating patterns made by water and even wind.

Lecce stone corrodes fairly quickly, but the ease of carving it means that the stone carvers here are never short of work

Lecce has been nicknamed "the Florence of the South", but it is really very different. First of all, it is dead flat, and the old town streets are very narrow and lined with shops. Bikes, cars and even trucks still wind their way through, but it looks distinctly challenging to navigate. Secondly, that uniform character almost gives it an artificial feeling, somewhat akin to Disneyland, as if one shop had made all the buildings at once for a single audience, unlike the eclectic mix of Florence, with buildings from many different periods made of different materials and colors.

Animal and figure carvings can be a bit goofy at times

In addition, the provincial nature of being far away from the major cultural centers, combined with the ease of carving the stone, means that a lot of the stone ornament is extremely ornate and somewhat naive, with figures and animals that are entertaining, but not totally correct. This also probably adds to the Disneyland impression, since some of those sculptures are quite funny. There are also many churches everywhere (hey, it's Italy!) though quite a few have been deconsecrated and are used as shops or even an art gallery. Inside the ones I've gone into the same ornate character continues, with more "Solomonic" columns (spiraling shafts named after their alleged history from the Temple of Solomon) than I've seen anywhere else.

Section of a Solomonic column, of which there are dozens around town.

At night the streets are very well lit, with a yellow cast light that only increases the uniformity. I'll write some more about Lecce in the next few days, but I think I'll post this one now, so I can get ready for the closing event of the Salon tonight. Ciao!

Day 3- What is a Salon anyways, and can I get my hair done there?

The motivator to come to Italy, to this very unusual town of Lecce in the heel of the boot, was to attend an event I've heard about for many years but never attended: The Salon. Basically, the Salon is a yearly traveling conference of painters who specialize in the traditional decorative skills of trompe l'oeil, wood graining, faux marble, gilding, ornamental design, and murals of many different kinds. It is an information and technique sharing get together of some of the best painters in the field, some of whom have studied it formally at schools like the Van der Kelen school in Brussels, which has been open since 1882, and others like me who are essentially self taught.

Entry to the Accademia where the event is being held

The Salon itself has been in existence for over twenty years now, beginning in Belgium in 1992, and has met in Paris, Tokyo, Seattle, Sweden, and elsewhere. Basically, each of the invitees (you must be invited by a member) brings a sample panel of their work, and many also create another panel while there so that others may watch their technique. It's also open to non- participants to come and observe, and there is a lot of socializing and of greeting those that one already  knows (sometimes pretty well in fact) via Facebook or other social media. This year it looks like the field is quite large, maybe around 100 plus people, augmented by various spouses, children, assistants and students.

An assortment of panels from all over the world surround the courtyard area.

As you enter the ornament encrusted Accademia di Belli Arti you come into the courtyard, where each participant's work is displayed on a board. The subjects and techniques are varied, but all of it is professional and several of the artists are pushing on the boundaries of the field. After passing through the registration hallway you can branch off into three hallways where painters are working on more panels, and watch fascinating demos that include all of the above mentioned techniques. The hardest part for me is not to be wandering around constantly watching, when I'm supposed to be working on the border for my panel. Actually, I got corralled early into helping out with the large collaborative mural at the end of the hall, and I have the feeling that is probably all I will do until we are done, and I'll do my border work at home.

Pierre Finkelstein demonstrating his incredible wood graining technique for the crowd while Stefano Luca translates into Italian for him. Stefano is one of the organizers of the event with his wife Caterina Manisco, and they are both incredible ornamental painters in their own right.

The are also more formal demos each day given in the cloister courtyard, where seasoned pros like Pierre Finkelstein, Jean Sablé, and Pascal Amblard show methods for wood graining, skies, and trees, quickly and definitively. Many of the students from the Accademia come to watch these too, and they fill the halls with questions and wonder. Really cool to see all of them get some exposure to the work we are all pursuing.

Pretty good crowd of artists, students, and curious onlookers for Jean Sablé's lecture on creating clouds with an oil based paint technique.

There are also a small selection of manufacturers present, with specialized brushes, pigments, and a few books available, and Golden paints freely provides any and all materials needed for the demo work, which meant people didn't have to lug all their paints through customs and TSA. Nice!

Brush lust runs high at this event!

Well, I'd better wrap this up now- I've been skimping on sleep because of all the great things to see, and meeting all these faces I've only ever seen on Facebook until now. It is very much a whirlwind, all of it pleasurable! A domani!