Alba

After three years, this time I was again in Italy for the First of January. Which is also my Grandma's birthday. I was with my mom at her home – one of the  most sacred place of my memories – and, as usual, I was devoured by her beauty intertwined with my struggle to let her see it. She was used to be an incredibly beautiful woman, incredibly charming and strong in her firm gaze, dressed in great unique and bizarre style, always walking next to her equally stunning husband. But aging, for her, is anything pretty. She never accepts nor understand all the compliments I and my cousin Mary try to give her – not for kindness, but for our own need: as beauty lovers, we can't handle how she's blind to her own light. Yet, part of her charm totally comes from her severe and constant judge on everything, starting from herself.

She is the Empress of her complete, authentic Ruin *

and nothing can change her mind

(so far).

But I can't give up, and I tried to sketch her essence. After my whole life trying to portray her, that's my best attempt. And it finally satisfied me. She also saw herself there, which is not an easy result. I think I got that her so severe gaze, but, at the same time, all that Whiteness I love so much. Her inner child I connect with and I need to stand up. She often wears white, her hair are now white as the snow, with some pale blue fading out, and all her energies have this acid yellow purpose knocking in. It is so tender, to me, to look at this flower of my life. So, so severe, so angry and disappointed by anything nature arranged, yet so sensitive to tenderness in any non human creature she meets, but so, so blind to her own fantastical, tender, sweet, magic-cotton-purity forbidden smile greeting from any curve on her.

There's only one moment when she share her magic-cotton sweetness of spirit nudity: when she smiles. Which is the rare gift I always look for when I'm with her. Talking with her may almost turn in a videogame, for me, where each smile is my score.

But after having shown her this sketch, I actually got one of her best smiles, one of those come together with total surprise and emotion, as something in herself is whispering "hey, perhaps reality is a bit nicer and sunnier than how you see it". One of those smiles which is almost more a wide open mouth with wide open eyes because of that part of herself that is intrigued by starring at magic and yet slightly disappointed by the suspicion of being wrong about finding everything so negative. And that's how I got that smile on her, on the First of January 2016: while drawing her, my shoulders suddenly jumped, remembering out of the blue that as that was my first drawing of the year, my first drawing from 2015 happened as I woke up at my dear friend Jessie's place, on her couch, in the urge of picking my sketchbook and sketch my Grandpa Carmine (as a tree), while thinking of a huge painting to base on it. As I told her this – that she and her husband had been my first drawings of 2015 and 2016, by chance – she got this wide open eyes and wide open mouth.

I'd just want so much

to finally let her suspect a little bit that

"the Universe is a conspiracy on her behalf",

 

and not the complete other way around.

Her name is  Alba .

and it means :

Sunrise  * * * *

I'll be back on this.

________________________________________________________

* Ma la vecchiezza è una Roma senza burle e senza ciance che non prove esige dall'attore ma una completa autentica rovina.

Andrea Pazienza che cita Boris Pasternak, Pompeo

Seven years of flying fish

Just in time! It's not midnight yet, I made it home before, it's still the 9th of October! Happy 7th birthday, my dear little blog!

Thanks so much to all the people who shown some sweetness for it: much much love to all of you!
A special thought to Lu, for the very meaningful day she had today and shared with me, to Lidia, who wrote me this afternoon and have lots in common with Lu although they never met, and to Lu's friend who recently left Budapest for Austria, Palestina, Nepal and Spain, keen to help people.

▲ ▲ ▲ Cheers to the process of clearing one's vision, "as they say in Findhorn"
(as my thoughtmate says ♥ ). * * *

Just made, coming home, from the bus glass: the gaze which always I find traveling with me…

Argh, not in time: publishing the post at 00:01 of the 10th. Shit, sorry my sweet blog. But: you do know I've been thinking of you, and you know very well my little issue with time, don't you?


PS. And also: Happy Birthday, PJ Harvey!

Spider Eyes

La cosa più importante che vorrei dire insieme a questo disegno è:

TEA, SEI UNA FIGA!

Ciao.

****

Integral version with über-sweet-lovely-note

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.]

Just a regular John

Random sketch.

A regular John is always good for a random sketch.

Charming expression and specific source from: a Jul's photograph.

I adore how one of the most orange people I know has these default dramatic features.

(If morphopsychology turns you on too, well, do not miss iioo project and all the research its creator Andrea Riboni is now carrying. John himself is also very curious to see how he'd look into a iioo portrait. Can't wait!)


PS. The quote was unconscious, I realize it now, afterwards. I don't tell it. I'll send a kiss-thought (eh, i miei vechi bacipensieri…) for who will get it first. I know I can count on at least two of my readers. Go! Guess it!


PPS. I'm getting closer to the magic day when I'll publish my post number 666. This post is kinda special too, it is the number 666, on one hand, but only considering the drafts too. I'll do something for the number 666 between the published ones.
Just to make sure you know that when I'll burn away, even my dust will feel like Rock.
(And also because this kind of things excites my cousin McA.)

I adore when I immerse myself forward into my childhood to warm up my little hands and then I make very unexpected things, CIAO VICTOR CIAO PAOLA ho cinque anni, anzi 3!

Once again, approaching a new work, especially if it is a commission, first my hands decide by themselves to do something totally different, like that first they have to get rid of any previous spot and make sure they are clean and ready to immerse into a new world. At the same time, somehow this way they listen better to what's going on here into my inner seascape, to potentially pick it up as style, technique or mood for the coming work.

This time the new work I'm going to do the front cover for the novel The Grand Tour by Victor Lorandi Iturrieta. This story is part of The Red Universe (“not only one book, but a series of stories told within one existence without barriers” – here also on fb).

The automatic spontaneous and pretty uncontrollable stream of drawings I made to warm up my hands happened on the new sketchbook I just bought. I must say that I'm very happy with these pictures and I love how they show, I believe, how healthy I feel. The way I draw is so much my gauge!

Now I just terribly wish that the way my ritual looked sane and unstoppable will be as happy as the actual working session for Victor and that this preparation will somehow turn useful to my illustration for him. But I know it will (and knowing it, finally knowing how my creative process works, is an extremely huge satisfaction and joy).

See you soon with much more: the cover for Victor and a bunch of other things exploding in my hard disk and in my room!

Cheerio

Etita

PS. The way I matched the colours here comes from what my body learnt in Iceland the past year. What impressed me the most has definitely been the new way I could see the colours there: the strength of some pastel colous and the elegance they can have next to some acid shades. The greens and the light yellows and the way pink is not a gender symbol but perhaps a psychedelic liquid echo. Oh yes. And how beautiful to find myself buys again with wax pastels?! That's a news of this fall, it was ages I wasn't using them this way. Like seven years ago, during my dinosaur obsession making flyers for Sydrojé (scroll till the bottom here to see)! How fun.

PPS. AAAAND… Happy Birthday, Victor! ;)

"Why Do You Knit?", a short-movie/long-trip (by one me ago)

I thank my friend Masha for insisting on making me subtitle my old short movie Perché lavori ai ferri?.

I made this raving, paranoic film more than four years ago, for an experimental course of my Bachelor in Media Design and Multimedial Arts; this very interesting course was named Theater, Real, Reality. I was already late and I had to hurry up, so many things aren't well done. Above all, now I hear different calls, so this film doesn't tell anymore what I feel I want to share.

Still, I think I never made anymore something good like that, in movies: the direction, the editing, was terribly fitting the idea – and I sincerely think there is "something extra". Because of the duende and because that time I probably made it to reach one of the effect I mostly care in cinema: that thing someone calls "Psychorealism".
I think there is "something extra" also because of not a few people telling me they did find much of themselves in it.
I want to thank them too, their feedbacks have been very important to me, to understand what I had done and what I could do, especially in that period of my life, so insecure.
All this, though, happened within the Italian language, so now I'm very curious to see if this video can create any similar reactions also subtitled in English, to not Italian speakers; it will be a little challenging – so, please, feel free to comment or write to me…

Well. Enjoy.

(But not too much.)

By the way, smiles, yarns and strangers are still among my favourite elements.

…As one can tell by the previous post, after all.

The Louder Laughter

As I entered the theatre, in the last row I saw two empty seats next to Nik. One was for sure for Nancy, who was probably going to arrive in a little. So I went to Nik and asked him if I could seat next to them.

I had my first winks with Nancy and Nik that afternoon, while I was standing in the entrance as lovely cotton candy girl for the KLIK! Amsterdam Animation Festival, which I joined as volunteer (having really a lot of fun). Ironically, when I was a child I never tasted any cotton candy, they didn't appeal me at all, and my first time was only a pair of months before the festival, by chance (grazie a Lady Nocina!). But, apparently, cotton candy recalls sweet early memories to most of the people: giving cotton candy for free as I had to do was indeed a very pleasant task, because everyone was infinitely grateful for that unexpected flashback with that hypnotic machine. So it was for Nancy, who indeed was enthusiastic just like a child.

And again she was that enthusiastic when the cartoon Gay Purr-ee* started, because it was a film she watched many times and she loved since her childhood.

She was not just enthusiastic, she was having some very serious fun, actually.

I mean, she was laughing much louder than me.

 – If you know me, you know that's a serious matter. –

Her laughter was absolutely the louder in the theatre and probably the louder I've ever heard.

I'm a total fan of laughters, so I just joined her pleasure with all my heart.

At a certain point, she held my hand authentically happy and she thanked me for sharing the laughs; then I couldn't avoid to proudly tell her how much the laugh is actually meaningful to me and that it has even been the topic of my little thesis, leaving the high school.

The feeling was totally like that satisfaction of finally meeting someone who understands, for both of us.

«The point is that I laugh of absurdity. I just see the absurdity everywhere – and I laugh of it.»

«Indeed!»

We completed our sentences each other.

«It is like… Waiting…»

«…for Godot!»

And so it was that she mentioned me Norman Cousins, who healed himself by laughing (thanks above all to Marx Brothers filmography!).

You also have the Internet, so I won't steal you the joy of  eventually researching more by yourself, since my current informations are not very deep yet. Here I just want to specify that, of course, it's hard to know how actually Cousins survived 26 years more than his doctor prediction, but, after all, I'm not so surprised by the power of the laughter.

Are you?

…All this disconnected post, by the way, it's because I realised I didn't publish yet my humble Nancy's portrait, nor the other few sketches I made at KLIK!, and since I just noticed her birthday was the 10th of February, well, that's perhaps a nice chance to fix that, isn't it?

Here's Nancy, folks!

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A cellist at the lobby…

…and the drummer

Mr. Paul Rudish
(dedicated to my beloved Elisa Cristantielli)

* I had never watched Gay Purr-ee (1962, Abe Levitow) before, but I sometimes had a familiar sensation… But for sure that's not because I instead know The Aristocats (1970)… it must be a mere coincidence…

Masha And Rudi Are Beautiful.

 –  Andiamo, Rudi!

Rudi is so sleepy that he doesn't understand Masha is telling him she's also tired and she wants to go home. He's already lost in the dreams, doesn't listen. She just tries to wake him up gently and sweetly.

Meanwhile, I contemplate the scene on my couch from my desk and I grab my beloved sketchbook.

A few months ago, Masha and Rudi did that thing, that double signature, you know, that thing that tells loud also to the law that two persons love each other and want to stay together.

All the thing happened in an unusual way. They didn't mind about the traditional huge parties which people feel kind of mandatory. They just wanted to make sure their union can't be broken by anything, no matters the nationality or the place where you live.

Still, I and their other friends wanted to celebrate such a wonderful love.

So we told them a nice bunch of lies not to let them organise anything at all, we blindfolded 'em and Michele drove them in a bakfiets, the typical Dutch cargo bike, bringing them in our favourite spot in town, where we gave them our gift and we finally partied.

At that moment and during most of the beginning of our surprise, I was so excited that my hands physically couldn't correctly handle the camera; I've been thrilling all the time.

And afterwards, I was so busy with having fun and with chilling out, that I didn't take the camera at all.

…So, well, forgive the quality of these pictures. Still, it's much pleasure to share them also on my blog. They come from a very precious and emotional day, so I wish you'll feel that as well.

Thanks again and again to every single friend who made real that afternoon.

At the end of the ride

Leaving the bakfiets

Entering our "secret" place

Opening the gift

Uncorking the bottle(s-s-s-s-s)

(go, Rudi, gooo!!!)

And enjoying it all…

*

This drawing was the sketch I made as crown of the pie made by Michele (our favourite cook ever…). As reference, I used a photograph which my dear friend Carolina Farina can recognise among hers… indeed it was a portrait she made of them during her backstage of Animal Insect, the video we made for Heidi Harris the past may. That videoclip has been basically the first reason we started to meet, also because after accepting the invite to act for me, Masha decided to help me on the set. But what first inspired me to picture them as characters was exactly their love, which hypnotised me when I didn't know them very well.


And, well, I can't tell how sweet has been being by their side during that afternoon…




* If you also wish to dance so passionately like Masha and me in that picture, here our secret!



Ops, no, wait. That was not our secret (also, you know, it's a secret, after all…).
Still, you better listen to that song and shake your ass, anyway.