Mumblings

A last look at Venice

Verona shadows

I have little to say or show this week. I’ve taken nary a photograph since returning from Italy. That’s not quite true. There were wild horses near San Luis, Colorado. So, I’m going to let the keyboard take charge and see where it leads me. I’ve had a story about Lenny Levenson, my friend and co-worker from the early 80s on my mind since we reconnected in Treviso, Italy in November. His story is a book waiting to be written. I’ve encouraged Lenny to write the book but like me he doubts that he has the drive and discipline to do it. But he knows more Levenson lore than I could ever learn. He should decide which secrets to reveal. Besides Lenny’s a natural storyteller and a fine writer. At worst my questions have bamboozled him into doing the research for a lousy blog post.

Italians smoke when they kiss. Bologna.

And vape. Florence.

Italians serve the best steaks in the known universe. Roberto Martone's dry aged steaks at La Trattoria da Olinda in Favaro were unbelievable. Roberto, in his words, works 26 hours a day. He cooked our breakfast, worked the grill at his restaurant till 11pm then drove us in the van to the Venice airport the next morning. The steak was top fiver. Ever.

Want a cab? Bring lunch. Florence.

This isn't Venice anymore, Toto. It's mustangs along the highway in San Luis, Colorado.

In the meantime, here are random musings and images from the barrens of my brain.

Small Works Great Wonders

Peggy presents her work

Sold. Just the way we like it.

We just returned from Oklahoma City where Peggy was an invited artist at the Small Works Great Wonders show at the National Museum of the Cowboy. It was her fourth year in the prestigious exhibition. All the work in the show was extraordinary, which is no surprise since the artists are among the crème de la crème of western painters. And I can’t say enough about the 220,000 square foot museum which celebrates the grand history of the West with special focus on the mythic American cowboy. It should be noted that cowboy attire from boot to hat was practically obligatory at the opening. I skipped the hat part. It musses up my hair.

Peggy with the proud owners of both paintings.

As to Small Works Great Wonders, Peggy’s paintings were luminous and poetic in a way that some of the paintings weren’t despite the skills so evident in the work. Of course, that’s just my very objective assessment. And both sold to a lovely couple from OKC who proudly announced. “We already have two of your pieces and we know exactly where we’re going to hang our new ones.” I find such enthusiasm, even love, for a artist’s work touching and unforgettable.

Peggy and Jane Hunt. Their work is behind them.

The Ivanov Immel Hunt wall in that order.

We've become friends with the Aleksey and Olga Ivanov, artistic and life partners formerly from Russia, who are Peggy's wall mates. Their energetic bronc buster and bison are the first pair on the wall. 

The Ivanovs and Immels at play.

The Albert Bierstadt Glow.

We first encountered Albert Bierstadt's work at the Palm Springs Art Museum 15 years ago. We were amazed that we had never heard of his monumental work and became ardent fans. This the Bierstadt at the Cowboy Museum soared. What a storyteller Bierstadt was. 

                    

Italian Lessons

Murano, the antidote to Venice

Montalcino

It wasn’t till the 18^th day of our three-week power tour of northern and central Italy that we realized that our sweet spot is the serenity of the countryside. Perversely all of our days were spent in cities till a winery tour in the Tuscan hills outside Siena reminded us that we’re at home under big skies with forever vistas. So, we booked our last two nights on a working farm north of Venice. It, too, reaffirmed our love of the high desert where we’ve made our home for twenty years. After a dicey check in, there was no one at reception when we arrived, we entered our second-floor room overlooking the farm and breathed for the first time since October 13. That’s when we knew our bliss in not in the city but in the calm of a village. That’s an awkward realization for an octogenarian who has professed his desire to live in bustling neighborhood in one of the world’s great cities, for complete immersion in city life and language for a full year. After Venice, Verona, Bologna, Florence, Siena, glorious cities all, I’m reassessing the way I want use the rest of my life.  I still crave more adventures, more surprises, more learning, more languages, and most of all new friends who were strangers till we shook hands for the first time. But where those experiences will take place is under review.

The broad Adige River and rainbow, Verona

A Venice Nocturne

The Prosecco Hills between Treviso and the Dolomites

Peggy had wanted to visit Venice with me for thirty years. For her significant birthday, I planned an itinerary the would be the greatest hits of historic Italian cities. I bit off more than we could comfortably chew. Schlepping two much stuff on public transport was a nightmare. The pressure and fatigue of our schedule was debilitating. What we saw as amazing, but fewer stops with more time in each and with much less baggage would have been a better idea. A single rural location or small city with daytrips and some overnighters as we've done in the past may be the ideal formula for a relaxed, creative idyll. We avoided driving on this trip. We'll rethink that, as well. There's a lot of freedom with wheels.

Il Campo, Siena

Peggy had been lobbying to add Siena to our itinerary. The weather had become dank in the north so visiting warmer Tuscany beckoned. Thankfully we opted for four nights in the Medieval city. Our apartment, the least expensive of the entire trip, was perfect but for spotty internet. We were on a quiet street a short block from the center of the city. Everything we wanted to see was less than a ten-minute walk. We were revived by the longer stay and the warm sun. An intimate tour of three wineries in Montalcino capped with a 2014 Brunello Reserva at a one women vineyard and cellar was perfection.

Juxtapositions and related questions

I fully expected to publish pretty pictures of our forced march from Venice to the Prosecco Hills and on to Verona, Bologna, Florence and now Siena. My expectation if not my plan was a travelogue interspersed with stories about Stefano, my photographer friend in Venice, and my touching reconnection with Lenny Levenson and his wife Meryll in Treviso just north of Venice.

I had thought we went in separate directions in 1982 but in fact he took a position with one of our Pizzeria Uno franchisees in 1984, right after we opened the Denver Uno. We opened more than twenty restaurants together and books could be written about those heady days. I left the company after opening the Brentwood, California restaurant in early 1985. So, Lenny and I hadn’t seen each other for 39 years. When we met for appetizers at Lenny and Meryll’s condo in Treviso, I told Meryll that Lenny was the most talented restaurant guy I’d ever met. Meryll told Peggy that Lenny idolized me. So, we're even.

That was the plan till circumstances interceded in the form of two photography exhibitions that we discovered quite by chance. On our first night in Bologna, we saw a banner for a Vivian Maier retrospective a mile away. We had 16 minutes to get there in time to be allowed in. We virtually ran to the gallery and arrived with a minute to spare. Street photographer Vivian Maier was unknown in her lifetime as a nanny in New York and Chicago. When boxes of her negatives were discovered by a former employer her work found an astounded contemporary audience and she is now recognized as one of the great street photographers of the latter half of the 20^th century. To see perhaps 200 of her extraordinary images was breathtakingly good luck rivaled only our surprise encounter with the prestigious Siena Awards, an international photography competition held every year. The work was cutting edge, adventurous and large scale. Technical virtuosity was the hallmark of the show.

Among the award winners was The Ameriguns, which speaks to America’s gun culture as examined by Italian photojournalist Gabriele Calimberti. I’ll let Calimberti’s photographs speak for themselves. I'm including all of the images in the show because every one tells a story and his juxtapositions of the rabid and the banal are chilling. I can't unsee them. 

A Little Italian

My new best friend, Stefano, whom we met late on our first night.

Canal life.

Family unit, Venice style.

Working class.

The lagoon at sunset.

It’s 9pm in Bologna and I’m pondering my blog for the first time in a week. In most cases the subject and images have percolated for several days and by this time Sunday night I’ve done twenty or more edits. To say that I’m not focused on this entry puts it mildly. I don’t know whether it’s too many stimuli, being bone tired, no free time or the world’s worst cold, but my mind is an empty vessel. So, here are some random shots with little descriptive text. And to add insult to injury last week’s images included a couple of color ones which were rendered in black and white by blogger.com for reasons that escape me.

All of these are color photographs befitting Venice and its Crayola hues. If they don’t appear in color squint your eyes and pretend.

Lost in the Crowd

My queen on her throne at the Guggenheim Collection.

Venice is the most visually arresting city I’ve ever seen.  Peggy’s been touting the place for thirty years and I can see why. That’s why we picked the city of 118 islands as the perfect location for her rather large birthday. She’s still two years younger and refuses to catch up.

The Grand Canal.

The Basilica di Santa Maria della Salute

Pilings and dock

Giovanni, the gallery dog

Nighttime on a canal with no name

As to Venice, it has no bad angles and just every shot is recognizable as, well, Venice. And there’s the rub. I despair that I'll muster a photograph that’s more than a picture post card. The unrelenting tourist hordes will drive (or have already driven) a marginally sane old man crazy. All that you’ve read about Venice being visited to death understates the situation. I hate crowds. Then there’s the blight of retail stores ranging from Made in China to Hermes and Bulgari. To get where you want to go takes you through a never-ending gauntlet of merchants grabbing for your wallet. It’s aversion therapy for the addicted shopper.

Still, I’m in this beautiful place with the love of my life. And we’ll always have Venice.

Start to Finish

Thursday of last week Peggy and I drove to Grand Junction, Colorado where she was judging Monuments and Canyons, an invitational plein air panting event held by the Colorado National Monument Association to benefit the Colorado National Monument. It was the seventh year of the event which has raised $700,000 for the stewardship and preservation of the amazing place. On Thursday evening she did a plain air painting demonstration from 7 to 9pm. In other words, the painting would stop at 9pm whether she had finished or not. She opened with the disclaimer that she might not finish since was attempting a larger size, an 11”x14”, than she would normally use. Happily, she finished about 20 minutes early to a hearty round of applause.

I find the journey from the first brush strokes when the shapes in the painting are established to the completed piece to be miraculous. I can’t fathom how an artist can deliver a vital, evocative, work of art inside two hours. Yet, there it was at 8:40pm Thursday night after four hours of sleep and a harrowing nine-hour slog from Taos. Peggy’s drive and endurance are beyond me. I was toast, while she proceeded to judge the show Friday afternoon between 2pm and 4pm, give the awards at 4:30, joined me for dinner down the block in bustling downtown Grand Junction, and attended another art opening across town at 8:30.

And we were on the road back to Taos at 7:30am Saturday morning. On the way we stopped at her gallery, Sorrel Sky, in Durango to pick up some frames and a real baguette at Bread.

The woman’s a machine. And I'm not.