The Hanged Sign

Voor Roos.

The original center symbol has been delicately created by JK, who I deeply thank for letting me play with these lines.

*

More December Sketches

Playing with colour for new artworks, random sketching, random writing out of my mind and memories… Or not so random perhaps…

Here some other sketches from my current carnet, they all from December.

The first three are from a very cool musical gig at ACU, on the 12th. The definition from the website of the artist, from Poland, does fit:

Bajzel [meaning: mess] is the purest definition of "one man show" and "one man band". He is a band. He is a musical chameleon tap dancing on pedals, live-looping guitar, bass and beats into virtuosic alternative art-rock exhilaration.

 

The followings are stolen from a very warm and free party in Den Haag (The Hague) at my sweet friend Dorotea's new place.

Dorotea taking a picture

Dorotea, Johannes, Marilù, Stefano (who incredibly resembles a schoolmate I had in my art academy and who now lives in Australia (oh ciao Peter!))

Dimitris

On my way to portrait Dorotea, for some reasons something very challenging to me: I gotta do it with colours, she's too shining to add a black unreal outline to her skin…

Random, from my fantasy

Lovely Lynn

Random strip coming back home on the train…

And again…

And then a portrait made during a video call with my dear friend John, Gianvito, or however you want to call him. I'm very glad of this one. He said "Eta, by now you see everything in your way, did you realize that?"
He's usually very right about me. :)

There is also a digital variation of the colours…

Enough for now.

Much to do, here – I want to keep updated my post by showing some glimpses of what's going on around my nails, but not much time to tell and write. Soon I'll scan also my sketches from the Cremonapalloza Rock Fest, the X edition!

Little Eta's musical gift if you made it till the end of the post: check out this band, The Peanut Butter Conspiracy, related to Jefferson Airplane.

Stay positive, folks. Even this January. Especially this January.

"You must do beautiful dreams, Grandma!"

Even more than usual deeply antifascistly yours,

Eta

#EmilioResisti!

[E se siete in Italia e per caso leggete il mio post, considerate di unirvi al corteo nazionale, sabato! O di crearne uno nella vostra città, ci sono vari presidi contemporanei già in altri luoghi. Mai come ora vorrei essere in Italia. Mando tonnellate di sostegno virtuale. Trasformiamo le lacrime in nuova energia.]

3voor12/Utrecht presenteert ||| [On]zichtbaar in Utrecht ||| Fotoboek met 10 jaar Utrechtse popmuziek

I had almost forgotten to tell it!
[On]zichtbaar in Utrecht made it and, after the successful crowdfunding, it has been published and presented on the 30th of November, at Tivoli Vredenburg.

This is a little fast double sketch I've done during the presentation (from this lucky carnet).

It's really an awesome book, collecting a wonderful selection of the photographs made by 3voor12/Utrecht in ten years of music reports of the pop scene from this lovely town.

I volunteered in the team a few times but it has been always very interesting and, unexpectedly, one of my photographs has always been selected for this book. It's really really tiny and it's on the last page, but I must say that it's a pleasure to watch it together with all these other beautiful pictures. When I finally had the chance to browse this book, I was really impressed. 3voor12/Utrecht made a very remarkable work, making all this book and, of course, during all its history of reports.

My photograph, the third one from left to right on the left page, is from a Kodiaks concert at dB's.

Thanks to 3voor12/Utrecht, to who joined the crowdfunding and congratulations to all the ones who run this project!


CheeriO

My Bea Delight I

2015 is starting with two huge gifts I couldn't really expect, 'cause in the years they managed to be hard: meeting Bea B. and meeting Bea B.

They are two different Bea, they were both my schoolmates, they both tend to disappear in their own world, which for one has been Singapore and then Scotland and for the other has been Venice but above all then her art and her passions. Furthermore, of course, in 2012 I left Italy as well, so I also became harder to reach (or way easier, it depends…).

The years passed by and after the school we met one or two times, not for very long – but never doubting of our friendships, although also our virtual communications have been rather little.

Both of my Bea have reasons to be in this part of Europe this January, though – and it has and it is hard to believe that I'm going to finally have chances to meet them!

This week I met "the first" Bea, and I had my first Bea Delight and I could trip again into her very genuine and trustful heart.

Now I'm looking forward to meet "the second" Bea.
Last time I did I also had to scream it loud, it was 2009 and I had written this post.
Meanwhile, check out her beautiful art… Ptičkart!!!

Ciao, cara BeiBei! ♥♥♥

Grazie ancora – e buon ritorno ad Aberdeen…

"Not Flamingos"

Heidi and the 9 Feathers  – no, wait.

I meant, we! Ah!

So, wait, let's start all over again.

Thing is that today, 13th or 14th of January 2015 (depending if you count the New York City time or the Dutch time zone), today more than ever I feel I'm "a Feather" too: I'm really a member of this amazing band and it's really a big joy! And this year I feel that somehow I'll manage to meet Heidi Harris, after some years of collaboration, and perhaps, who knows, all the Feathers. I'm so glad!

So, let's start again… We picked up the Flowerism from Felice that I've shown here some days ago as illustration for Not Flamingos, a song to let you taste a bit in advance how their coming album will sound!

Plus! Later today (14th) there will be a gig from them! I won't be there in New York, but I hope to hear them on streaming! I think it will be very special!

Enjoy!

Much love to all the Feathers over there in New York. Feeling you so much from here!

FIRST PLEASURE, THEN DUTY

So that the duty comes much better.

Fishagall flies over the Flowerasms

Turning 25, I had told myself that I would had embraced myself as woman, and therefore as mother.

So I did. In the sense of being a "universal mother", not in the sense of becoming the biological mother of someone specifically – I don't want to, first of all because of the current world situation.

I found feelings I had pictured on my-grown-up-self, like the serenity that calmed down that newborn on the train as I touched his/her foot, on the train, a day in May, with my friend Shivesh, who first was shocked and then told me that touching the feet is his mother's wisdom tip to cheer babies.

But I also found one unexpected feeling: discovering a new joy, more maturely understanding what really is being, at very biological first, a daughter – a huge fortune I can fully enjoy (despite the distances and with a Very Special Thanks to the technology and the love).

This portrait is the smile I feel for my parents – it's the smile that they mostly see now over videocalls.

I had the urge of it and it's really out of my thankfulness for them – to thank them, both in once.

It may look weird to portray me instead of who I'm thanking, for example, but I know that more than everything else they're letting me feel their pure and true wish for me. And I know that, since I'm geographically far away from both of them, my presence totally meant for them is exactly what can sweetly please them the most.

Portrait Of A Daughter – Young Nora

We can be one world
We will be one world
In the Jungles of the Mountain Young Nora loves the mountain
And the Mountain feeds the people and the Wheel keeps on turnin'
REVOLUTION!

Jefferson Airplane, The Wheel
1989 (my birthyear)

This drawing came out of my nails the first night I drawn this year, light licked by the Chagall's retrospective that I've seen in Milan with my friend Andrea and my mom, one of the last December days.

Before to do this illustration, I really had to tribute Marc Chagall. Not that this can be vaguely enough: I have no way to express my love for his art. The simple idea of his sensitivity totally devastates me if I think about what he had seen happening in the 20th Century. To me he's a flower into the dust and the drop of his existence rocks the branches of my highest waves.

Furthermore, fish widely flew through Chagall's lands (and, of course, I'm slowly gathering them on my tumblr Piscem).

But before the Chagall's portrait, the first drawing of the three I made that night has been a jump of colours roll between my fingers, as it happens when I understand I only have to give room to my inspiration and to shut up.

This drawing is my 10th Flowerasm.

The Flowerasms are a series of artworks I started in October, after my trip in Italy to read my book Felice; only in these days I understood how to title them and I'll start soon to show them. They are the main reason of all the time I'm needing to elaborate the memory of my street performance summer and to start to translate my book in English: a new generation of art, total consequence of my book, is asking for my attention. Soon I'll publish the rest of the series.

Flowerasm 10 – Chagallian

Something else happened this fall. I'm learning much more deeply my creative process; as my old followers may recall, this has been a terrible struggle for me: now, I'm experiencing one of the most satisfying season of all my life.

Apparently, rituals insist on showing their power into all this and I'm keeping happening in painting my forehead with the colours I'm going to dive into, time by time.
This night, I involved Fishagall too (originally Fish Chagall).
Fishagall is a wooden fish I found in my favorite Utrecht shop, De Oude Pijpenlade, and that I'll probably repaint every time I'll feel like, according with my craziness and moods.

Now Fishagall is playing hide-and-seek, I think – but I can't tell for sure, my little desk is covered by a maze of layers of oil pastels, wax pastels, waterable pastels, brushes, towels, ecoline, pencils, markers, pens and even the eraser (hooray, that's always so hard not to loose it!). If I find Fishagall again or if he decides to come out, hopefully he will send me some good vibes for my illustration for the cover of The Grand Tour, the first novel of the trilogy from The Red Universe by Victor Lorandi (yes, this is also taking more then unexpected, but we're appreciating and finding a sense for this creative process too).

Much love,
from this flower-shaped volcano and its stream of flying fish coming out!

The Feathers are getting ready

Yesterday I woke up in front of the most brightening windows I could imagine for my 1st day of this so hopeful 2015, in Amsterdam, and the first thing I've done, after my very healthy, beloved and regular checking tour at the toilette, has been, back under the blankets, grabbing my current sketchbook and my colours from the backpack next to me and starting to sketch my grandfather Carmine as surrealistic symbolic cosmic tower tree, as note for a painting I pictured today and that I want to make on a big canvas, soon. It has been a sudden inspiration after my first 2015 phantasying after the sleep.

Later in the evening, while I was waiting for the bus to go in the center of Amsterdam and then back to Utrecht, enjoying my time walking, I realized better this little sweet thing: the first thing I made after my first 2015 awakening has been: drawing, working.

:)

I think that's one of the nicest wish I could give to myself, considering the little big goals I set for this year (you'll notice about that, I hope).

In the Amsterdam Central Station then I found this big piano up to be played by any person (there was a viral video I've seen months ago with such a piano in another train station somewhere else). Two people were playing and singing, quite nice, and a lonesome wild fellow was dancing with his red red red umbrella!

Coming back home I had to struggle to do not sing and jump and dance all alone in the street, with this too-big smile for my little cheeks.

Yesterday I kept thinking of all the beautiful people I met in my life and wishing them the best, despite I sent a very few texts or so. I had a big smile also thinking of my dear Heidi Harris. Back home, I found her request to use an illustration I made this fall for the new album she's working at with her band Heidi and the 9 Feathers. I made this illustration a little after my trip in Italy for Felice and the consequence of two-three months backpacking and performing has been this extremely hot need of research into my style, I started to do stuff totally different, feeling completely amazingly free. Most of these works are still illustrations that I didn't show. Daring this way, I also happened to do something that I wasn't sure if I like or not. That's the case of this drawing I had made for Heidi and the 9 Feathers. After a while, we agreed together that it was not the one we wanted for the cover of the album. But the album is now coming soon, on the 27th of February, hopefully with the art we want for it, and in the meanwhile this strange weird freak picture can anyway visit your eyes to make you a little more curious… (So it's now the profile picture of Heidi and the 9 Feathers and their way to wish you Happy New Year!)

 …The way I mix media is getting more and more insane, by the way, so no surprise if I end up sticking things on paper. You recognize those leaves, right? (Mediterranean friends, I know you do!)

A lot of feathered rainbow brightening wishes from me too

PS. Love you, Feathers! So cool to play with you! Big big hug from The Netherlands to New York!