Odds and Ends

I have a few more pictures to share...and no specific theme with which to link them.


                                 Here are a few pictures of the Grand Canal:

I went to an adjunctive art exhibition of the Biennale called Venice Design, showcasing modern furniture concepts:

This is a wall hanging composed entirely of extruded and painted foam pieces that had been glued together (again, I think it is the idea of art from recycled material); interesting and effective

This was my favorite piece:  an orchid lamp sculpture

          These are from an early morning walk taken around my "home base" here:

          This is my favorite photo of the bunch, with that shadowy figure and the beam of light

Today I am packing for the trip back tomorrow.  This vacation has been fantastic, but I'm looking forward to coming home, (though perhaps not the trip itself as much).

I am so glad that you were there to share this experience with me!

A Trip to Murano

I rode the vaporetto over to Murano in order to see some of the beautiful glass pieces produced there. Murano is an island roughly a km to the north of Venice.  Since the 11th century, when glassblowers were made to vacate Venice proper due to the threat their furnaces posed to the many wooden buildings there, Murano has been a center for amazing feats with glass.  These artists were so highly regarded that they were given extraordinary privileges:  they could carry a sword, received immunity from prosecution for a variety of crimes, and were able to marry into noble families.  They also closely guarded the secrets of techniques, and held them within families.  Competition was great, and spurred them on towards great artistry.

Today, most of the secrets have been leaked, and Murano no longer holds the monopoly it once did.  But it's still an amazement to see what they can do.

Here are a few examples:

This is a fine example of old techniques vs new;  there's a move now towards greater simplicity and brighter colors

          This piece was on display outside a shop on Murano; the intricacy is astounding

I wish I'd taken more pictures to share with you.  There is so much more!  But for most of the time, I went from shop to shop, mouth agape in awe, and completely forgot to take pictures.

Mostly pictures

I'm continuing to explore as many areas of Venice as I can.  Here is yesterday's route:

It surprised me to discover it was more than 8 miles!

Here are some pictures:


                          This is the canal just in front of my apartment, called Fondamenta Zorzi

From an exhibition of glass:  famous artists worked with glass blowers from Murano to create all the pieces

                                                    The railway station of Venice

                                             Lorenzo Quinn's sculpture called "Support"

View of the Academia Bridge (only one of two wooden bridges, and the only one across the Grand Canal)

View of a typical neighborhood, from one of my walks

                                          This was in the window of a yarn store

                                               The window of a costumer, for Carnival

                                Typical neighborhood shrine area; these are common

The canal took a right-angle turn here;  I wish I knew how to paste this together with the following photo so you could see it as it was:

Room for buildings was (is) so scarce that early on they learned how to build supporting structures so that people could still pass below, but also use the space above for living quarters

                                                    The fruit and vegetable seller

The required Spritz

                                                                Reflection of Spritz

I hope that you will find at least some of this interesting.

In Search of Vinny "The Grape" Safuso

One of the high points of my trip to Venice in 2009 was the discovery of a bulk wine shop.  I remembered that it was in the Dorsoduro, but not precisely where.  Online searches didn't help.  From them I only discovered that what I was looking for was called a "vini sfuso" (prompting one witty individual to note that it sounded like a mafioso, named in the title of this post).  I asked many people once I got here, but no one seemed to know of this one specific wine shop.  Finally it was Google Street that helped me find it. And it's no wonder the place was so difficult to find:  it's small, and has no sign at all.  It's totally just a neighborhood hole-in-the wall, with several huge jugs of local wine...and a hangout for the local men, it would seem.  I found it this morning, and purchased a liter of Prosecco.  "Gas, or no gas?"  he asked me.  "Huh??"  ALL Prosecco is carbonated, I thought.  No, he assured me that was not the case, while gesturing towards a jug labelled Cabernet Franc.  So here's to one mystery solved, and the dawn of the next one.  Can Prosecco be non-carbonated and still be called Prosecco????*

*Well, yes, as it turns out!  According to Wikipedia, it comes in three forms:  spumante (very fizzy), frizzante (mildly fizzy) and tranquilo (you guessed it).  Who knew?


                                                                   Here's the shop:

On Venetian public transport

There are no cars or trucks in Venice proper.  All the "main streets" are water, requiring boats to get from one place to another.  There are, of course, thousands of secondary streets, or calles, requiring your feet for transport (not to mention the 450 bridges).  So everything...refrigerators, garbage, building materials...gets moved by boat.  But people-moving is by far the most common purpose for boating on the canals.  Gondolas, which began as a conceit of the rich centuries ago, are now only a conveyance for tourists.  A half hour ride will cost you anywhere from 80-120 euros (but, the gondolier might sing, making it perhaps worth it for many).  The main way to get around, second only to walking, are the water busses, called vaporettos.  All of these are not equal.  Of the 20 or so different "lines", the main ones that travel the Grand Canal are numbers 1 and 2.  They also link places like the train station and St. Mark's Square.  And they are always jammed with people from early morning until late at night.  Here is a little hint of what it's like to ride on one of these:

The notion of personal space shrinks dramatically.  Happily most people seem to shower regularly.

Art Post-Apocolypse

Yesterday I went to see another huge chunk of the Biennale, this time at the Arsenale.  This place is an amazement in itself:  seemingly miles of exhibition space with very high ceilings and brick walls,  There are some gigantic bays built over the water for large ships, as well.  So much art is here that you would need to spend an entire day at a very brisk pace in order to see all of it. I could only see a portion of it in the three hours I was there before my brain went into overload.

If there was a unifying theme in all of this, I think it's many artists' views of a post-apocalyptic world.    Many of the materials used were up cycled, or repurposed.  Also, there seemed to be a move towards a simpler, more basic social structure.

I took a lot of pictures because there was so much to like about this show, but I won't flood you with all of them.  Here are just a few (double-click on these to really see them):


                             A collection of very compelling figures; most were made with cloth

                            A woven tent of something like jute, to enclose a "sacred space"

                             Sculpture perhaps 12 feet tall made of pieces of Korean pottery

                                                Sculptures with women as the subject

                                                        Sculpture lining a hallway

                               Here is a biographical note about the artist whose work follows:

This room contained a spectacular installation of weaving and fabric balls that look like huge balls of yarn:

The smaller sculptures were all made of yarn and fabric as well.  Men seemed to pass this part of the exhibition by, while women were generally drawn in like magnets.  I wonder if yarn, fabric, weaving, etc. isn't a part of the feminine genetic code at this point...from centuries of developing expertise with those things.

These you will have to click on in order to appreciate; they depict tiny human figures trying to deal with a chaotic situation many times larger than themselves.

                                                  A room of masks, each one different:

                                            A sign which struck me as very amusing:

                               A Venetian egret (?) hunting in an abandoned ship bay at the Arsenale

I may have ended up drowning you in art anyway.  If so, I apologize.  There was just so much that was both impressive and beautiful.