Aloha!

Aloha from Honolulu, fellow earth dwellers. I have put down roots here for a month as I continue eastward on my round-the-world journey. I have rented a condo in Waikiki and become a member of Honolulu Printmakers, where I am working on stone lithographs. The images I am drawing on the stones were born in Italy, which is where the blog previously ended, and will now resume.

In my last post, I suspended the blog because I was without access to an Apple computer. That has changed: In order to complete an art project I was working on in Calcutta, I purchased a used Apple Powerbook. Now that I have untangled myself from the shackles of Microsoft Windows, the blog can continue. I have decided to blog retroactively, in fairness to the places I have visited, and because, although I do enjoy non-linear plot lines in movies, I prefer my blog to be served straight up.


So, I ask you to travel back to early November 2007, and take a short train ride with me down the coast from Carrara to the city of Pietrasanta, per favore. If you think of Carrara as the region's gritty working town, then Pietrasanta is the neighbouring picture-perfect tourist town. Similar to what Edinburgh is to Glasgow, or what Niagara-on-the-Lake is to St. Catharines. Whereas Carrara has plenty of marble quarries and workshops, but few hotels, and no tourists maps; Pietrasanta has loads of hotels, lots of pretty retail shops, and is home to some internationally renowned sculptors - attracted by the high quality of the the local stone and craftsmen, not to mention the allure of living in a place that Michelangelo helped make famous. Here in the main square you can see Bar Michelangelo, one of the many local businesses that use Il Divino's first name to attract customers and honour the artist. In the background, lit-up on the hillside is an old Roman wall fragment, a testament to the town's history and endurance. It is a charming town and I imagine would be a great place to visit again in the summertime when the festivals are numerous and the tables are spilling over with fresh seafood.


The main street in Pietrasanta at nightfall.




Carlo with his daughter Francesca, the following day, seeing me off to Roma outside the Carrara train station. I include this picture because one of the projects I am working on is photographing people with their chosen means of transportation , usually cars. But, only people who are passionate about such means. I knew Carlo fit the profile because he took such delight in telling me how wonderfully his car performed recently when had to race all night long through the Alps to pick up scale models from a client's studio in Switzerland. He knows and loves his Subaru STi so much, that he insisted he stand off-to-the-side, so that he would not block the view of the Brembo brakes through the front rim.

Although this is just a snapshot with my Canon digital elph, I find it is good when working up an idea to produce lots of images around it. Then, by looking at the results, one is able to see things that work, and problem-solve the things that need work. Sometimes new ideas and methods may show themselves; and sometimes it may become clear that the idea as imagined isn't working and is best abandoned. I find this helps to prepare for when you eventually begin the project "proper" with the "right" equipment et al. In other words, just get started somehow on whatever it is you are wanting to do, whether it is writing a novel, making a movie or producing a play. The process work is never a waste of time. The waiting around to begin is wasted time.