Thank you 2011

Harvest

It has been an amazing year.  We have loved it.  We have been living in Hong Kong for the most part of it; Thailand for a month, Italy over the summer and autumn.  Our boys have accomplished great things, placing their feet firmly on their journey and our art has thrived and we have some great new collectors of our art work.

Lost in the Cosmos

Early this year, we were invited by the Yew Chung Education Foundation to be artists in residence at the Yew Chung Secondary Campus in Hong Kong and Beijing.  This foundation has been a real patron to us, enabling us to live and create abundantly throughout the year.  We have created some interesting projects there.  Michael had the opportunity to do his first mosaic,  2 metres X 2.5 metres for the entrance to the school, using beautiful traditional glass tiles, called smalti, to create ‘Lost in the Cosmos’.  He has also completed a large 5 metre triptych of ‘Setting free the Golden Carp’, a really lovely sunset on water painting.  Shona had the opportunity to create one of her ‘Harvest’ series and was able to donate the complete bronze edition to the school’s charity fund, called ‘Seeds of Hope’, for building schools in underprivileged areas in China.  She has also been asked to do a 2.2 metre sculpture portrait of the founder of the school, Madame Tsang, which she has begun.

Setting fre the Golden Carp

Some doors closed and others have opened.  After 8 or so years, representation of Shona with Kwai Fung Hin Art Gallery in Hong Kong, finished this year as they made the decision to concentrate on Asian artists.  Meanwhile, DeeM, owned by Debra Little, interior designer, has opened a shop on Hollywood Rd in Hong Kong, featuring the work of Debra’s favourite artists, (Michael, Shona and Jacob included), her own designed furniture, ornaments and fixtures, as well as the furniture and lighting of really great designers of the last 50 years.  We are in great company and the exposure for us here has been wonderful already.

While we were in Italy this year, we did lots of work on our old properties and now have a gorgeous apartment and studio to rent on the river of Bagni di Lucca.  Our little mountain house in the village of Pieve di Monti di Villa, has a new roof and a new chimney and our studios are getting better and better.

Over the year, Shona had the good fortune to have two of her sculptures placed in public collections in Regional Galleries in Victoria, Australia, with a third sculpture pending, through the generosity of a private collector of her work.

Joy

Torso

In the meantime, Jacob and Jaquelene have been living their dream in Bagni di Lucca, Italy, with Jacob writing lots of music and working with new music collectives in Europe.  Together, they have been learning the ancient art of working a traditional olive farm in the hills overlooking Lucca.  Jaquelene has continued with her internet and bookshop, Jaquelines, and in their spare time they have clambered over the mountains with Jake taking beautiful photos of the area, which he is now selling in Hong Kong.

In the clouds

Quarry series

After his Tuscan retreat, carving marble in the mountains, Sollai found work in the huge mechanism of the back stage manoeuvres of the production, Zaia, of Cirque du Soleil in Macau.   While thus engaged he became very distracted by a lovely young trampolene artist, Danika, who is now his sweetheart.  Sollai lives in a wee little Portuguese cottage in the heart of old Taipa, the tiny old space strewn with Sollai’s paintings and drawings, paints and tools for sculpture. Danika is teaching him circus tricks so the two of them can perform together.

Thought

Blackbird

It has been a very lucky year for us all.  We are surrounded by great and lovely friends and family wherever we have gone in the world. We have all thrived in our working life.   We have great good health and we are all growing into an even better year next year.  We wish you in the year 2012, fortune and happiness and abundant growth.

Lots of love to you all,

Shona and Michael

Our Christmas 2011

Mike, Sollai and Shona on Christmas morning

We are in Hong Kong and decided to have Christmas in Macau because Sollai is there and the only one of our family without family. It has been the strangest Christmas we have ever had. Normally we are encased in family warmth and love and noisiness and too much eating and drinking and preparing and over excitement. Instead, most of our friends have left town, Jake and Jaqui are in Australia, and Sollai is working, and the quietness surrounding us has been huge.

Top left to right, Rowan, Shona, Mike, Sollai, Danika, Jo, Kat, Garreth, Justin, Sara

Sollai is working on Christmas day in his job back stage on the Cirque du Soleil. Our Christmas with him is breakfast; with him, his girlfriend Danika, and six other circus mates, celebrating wholesomely on fruit and yogurt and eggs and bacon and sausages before they leave to perform. They are all such a gorgeous looking bunch of young people. All of them are really healthy with beautiful taut bodies, high energy, high egos, and very much family to each other. It was lovely to be included in their Christmas morning and sad to leave when Sollai had to go to work. The fun seemed to be over too early.

Portuguese Restaurant, Macau, Boa Mesa

As we wandered around Old Macau, jostling with thousands of others, all the world out there on this day partaking in the festivities, we escaped down an alleyway and found to our joy, a simple little Portuguese restaurant that was open, yet secluded as there were not many customers, and we decided that it was here that we would have our Christmas lunch. We were so happy. It was a beautiful, warm little place, with lovely people.

Shona with a little Portuguese baby to mind over lunch

The owner Pedro was delightful, giving us good advice on the food and the wine, and we felt like we were home in Italy, the atmosphere similar.

yummy Portuguese wine

We had bean soup, whole grilled chicken in piri-piri with potatoes and salad, and chocolate mousse for dessert, accompanied by a warm, full bodied Portuguese wine. It was not the normal Christmas fare, but it felt wonderful, at other tables, families celebrating happily and comfortably in the homely surrounds.

Free Hugs

Finding a taxi to the ferry was another thing. It seemed almost impossible with so many people. But along the way there were groups of smiling young people carrying placards that read, ‘Free Hugs‘ and under laughing good will we all cuddled abundantly leaving Macau in the chill air of evening when we at last got a taxi. We arrived home, still with smiles on our faces and leapt under the doona on the couch to talk on skype with our family in Australia and watch feel good Christmas movies into the early morning, munching on chocolates and sipping on tea. It was a different Christmas, but it was beautiful too.

waiting an hour for a taxi in Macau

Danika and Sollai in his little Portuguese House in Taipa

Merry Christmas

Shanghai Foundries

taking a rest

Shanghai is such a crazy place.  It is a huge city, the biggest in China.  Its population is close to 20 million people.  Taking a taxi across town is not easy and can take hours just negotiating all the road systems and sitting in endless traffic. We like it here though, as all the little areas within the city seem to create a sense of community.

On our arrival, we had the good fortune to stay with Mike’s niece and her husband who both work with Nike.  Through their efforts, we were able to negotiate with a driver of a very comfortable Buick, to take us to two foundries for the following day.  They were each on different sides of this massive city.  It was to be a gargantuan expedition crossing that labyrinth of roads and traffic and then finding the foundries in tiny obscure areas in the industrial back blocks.  The first one was out past the old Hongqiao Airport and the second one was out somewhere near the new Pudong airport.

Shona in the foundry

welding

patination

patination

We have done some work with the first foundry before.  They are really lovely people and there was no problem with them shipping the work for us outside of China.  However nobody speaks English and so all the translation was done through the generous good will of a Dutchman whose Taiwanese wife gets a lot of her sculptures cast there.  It’s a big important foundry that does huge jobs.  It’s nothing for them to do 20 metre sculptures and there is heaps of work for them in China.  They model the work up from the maquette for the artists too if it is wanted.  The foundry process is pretty good here even though a lot of the preliminary processes are basic, relying on lots of human labour rather than technique.  The bronze is good quality; we used silicone bronze but there is a choice of other metals as well as the cheaper handmade-up bronze; the welding and chasing is fine, though it is best to be there when they are doing it.  They can pour massive sizes at a time with their giant crucibles and this is a real plus as there are less seam lines. The wax room isn’t wonderful but the workers are pretty good at the cleaning up and sprewing of the waxes. The moulds are ok, they do the job, just not the most recent technology.  They like to make a resin cast  for sandcasting which they are really proficient at and they also do the lost wax method.   The patination is ordinary, especially compared to the foundries we use in Pietrasanta, lots of reddy brown highly glossed sculptures, the green patinas are ok, just undeveloped.  We were pretty fussy about the chasing and ended up doing the patination ourselves.  Very sweet people to work with nevertheless, and they learn fast, its funny how you can get by mostly with sign language.

a local farmers truck

Michael and I stayed out here for several weeks at a time a couple of years ago, getting four big bronzes cast for Saudi Arabia.  There is quite a respectable hotel around the corner with seriously hard Chinese beds and an attached restaurant.  We are really out in the whoop whoops here, so we found ourselves under constant observation and interest from the local people.  It was great in some ways.  The streets were spotless, cleaners came along everyday and washed down the pavements including the rubbish bins, shining up all the stainless steel.  The guys would walk along in pairs and threesomes with their shirts rolled up over their bellies and tucked up under their arms.  And it was quiet as there was very little road noise with most of the traffic being electric motor bikes.  Of a night there would be this old tinny music on the loudspeakers, put on in a little square and everyone would be out there dancing, it was all a bit random, girls dancing with girls, courtly old men with their tiny elegant wives gracefully circling the jostle.  We had a great sense of delight in the feeling of the community being together.  It wasn’t easy though.  The food was pretty tough to get used to as there is very little that has been westernized out in the sticks and no matter how hard you try you can’t get anything without pork or some gristly thing in the middle of it all.  One morning at breakfast we asked for their best coffee, it was very expensive.  It arrived looking lethally strong and black with this fatty, creamy looking swirl in the centre.  Mike stirred his and the swirly substance fell stringily from his spoon as he raised it.  It was a raw egg in the coffee. It was a bit much for first thing in the morning so we left the hotel and went to the local grocer, buying yogurt and biscuits for brekky instead. So, here we are back again, and getting prices from Mr Liu for some large projects.  He promises to email the results, and in the end the pricing is about the same as the next foundry we go to.  It just becomes a matter of preference for their procedures.  For interest sake, the name and address of this foundry is:  Shanghai Guangyi Sculpture Casting Co. ltd, China.    No 24 Xin Hunag Rd.  Shanghai, PR China.  Tel : 86-21-69581968    fax: 86-2169581969

out of the kiln, foundry 2

rubber mould, foundry 2

wax room foundry 2

After this foundry and a tour nearby of our friend’s immaculate studio in an industrial park, we wound our way back through the spiral of roads of Shanghai to the Pudong side. The next foundry, I found on the internet and they are linked in partnership to a foundry in Switzerland.  I thought this association might be very good recommendation for the quality of workmanship and particularity. When we contacted them, we got a reply in english and it turns out that several people in the foundry speak english. Easy peasy.   A lovely girl took us on a tour of the factory and everything was spotless and tidy and very organized.  They use silicon bronze, which was our requirement for these jobs, but also brass and aluminium.  All the materials are excellent quality and the engineering structures inside some of the large works were top quality stainless steel.  The wax studio was immaculate.  The mould making was a little old school, not as advanced as Italy, but good nonetheless, using silicon rubber.  The patinas were better in this foundry.  We had the maquettes of the sculptures we wanted to get cast in larger sizes and the girls in the office sat down and measured the sculptures using exact formulas, a system used by one of the foundries we use in Pietrasanta (Fonderie Versiliese), to get the exact amount of bronze in the piece.  The formula gave an almost identical price to the one that Mr Liu gave, using just his eye and the years of experience to come up with.  We felt really happy with this last foundry, probably because the workshops were so tidy, we could speak english without having a translator, and the quality was as good if not better than Mr Liu’s foundry.  It just remains to be seen now, on more logistics involved with the projects whether we will go ahead this time with the project and with which foundry as both have a lot going for them.  For interest, this last foundry is called: Sainteen and their website is www.chinaartcasting.com

I’ll do an update when we get the casting done.

Fast train to Shanghai

We are choofing away on the train again.  Really fast. 304 k’s an hour at the moment, Beijing to Shanghai.  A five hour trip.  I remember doing this trip with our boys in a four berth apartment, traveling overnight.  I think you can still do this, but the fast train is so convenient.  And its great not getting on a plane all the time.  Mike is happy his carbon footprint has been a tiny bit reduced and I suspect we are now destined to do a lot more train travel.  We are in the first class, (business class is the top for comfort), as the seats are wider and have more space in front of them.  The stations for this train are space age and when we get to Shanghai, the experience is streamline and efficient, all of us in a flow and out into an abundant line of taxis.

CCTV building, Beijing by Rem Koolhaas and Ole Scheeren - through the back window of a taxi

Two nights, two days in Beijing’s Yew Chung School – we worked really hard putting together 4 talks to the older secondary school students.  Such a warm and friendly school.  We were so welcomed and included and really looked after by the staff.  It was great doing the talks too.  In wanting to share the knowledge we thought we had, we learnt such a lot about ourselves as so much of our knowledge is autobiographical.   In one of the subjects we discussed, we talked about our life as artists and trying to make it ‘happen’ for ourselves. It’s amazing how life and opportunities change.  In our early years there seemed to be more time to take the time and really engage in the process of being an artist.  It’s important from our perspective to put in the hard yakka, before you can expect to receive the accolades we all want.  The process of growing artistically is a worthy journey and we love how it has honed us, shaping us into our greater selves and creating our artistic longevity.

sleeping on the fabric

old cups at the outdoor antique market Beijing

old spectacles, Beijing antique market

Man with stuffed pets out side antique market Beijing

On the other side of the coin today, there are so many possibilities and avenues for artistic growth for these kids and of course for ourselves too as we take it on. The internet for a start has made it really simple to get basic marketing done, as well as generating a whole new artform.  Your art now reaches the whole world where once it was confined to the area you happened to be in or had access to.  But you have to be innovative and competitive as everyone is out there on the same platform.  Artists striving for recognition often use shock value in their art and can afford to be a flash in the pan, because that is all the notice they are likely to get these days anyway, unless they can be extraordinary enough to keep reinventing themselves ahead of the trends.  For marketing and continued celebrity status Damien Hirst would have to be the master and perhaps it would be Hirst who has been the most influential today in changing how art connects to the public, the collectors and the art galleries. He, (or was it really Saatchi, his great benefactor), may have been the one who really turned the art world into an art industry.  A path that is quite unromantic and as mercurial as today’s seasonal clothes fashions. There’s no limitation with art, nor with life, but I am very curious about how to still create depth and meaning in art for a society that is becoming as conditioned to fast art as it is with food.

Roger Hackworth - interior designer for Capital M; Espen Harbitz - general manager; Michael Cartwright - artist for Capital M restaurant, Beijing

Last night we went in to Capital M Beijing Restaurant where Michael completed a repair of a small tear in one of the big canvases of his mural.  It was great seeing this work of his again.  It’s a wonderful, truly luminous work.  The colour is so rich, and intense, comprising many layers of the same colour in variations, its complexity contained by simplicity.  Lovely and utterly engaging.  Cameramen are constantly coming into the restaurant to do major shoots of important and famous people in front of the canvas and the artwork keeps appearing in magazines and newspapers.  Nicole Kidman,  Veronica Etro, were both in recently and it seems the list is long and growing. While we were there, one of the designers, Roger Hackworth, arrived from Hong Kong and sat down to a meal with us.  It was gorgeous to see him in this luscious environment, at rest with it and completely besotted with his contribution to its beauty.

Now we are entering Shanghai and after a very relaxing trip and a good night’s rest we will be heading off to the foundries to get quotes on some of the projects we are creating for.

First class, Hong Kong to Beijing

Morning somewhere in China

Crickety crack,crickety crack.  The window is black and shiny, reflecting cups and kettle and nuts and dried fruit and our beds and our recumbent bodies, resting in this cocoon that is shooting over the earth, relentlessly, rocking and jagging towards Beijing.  We are 24 hours in this train, from Hung Hom station in Hong Kong to Beijing.  We’ve been looking forward to it for days.  Hong Kong has set a heavy pace for us, all of our own choosing, albeit.  But our legs today are allowed to rest, at last.  From morning to night our legs have undergone a regime fit for training an army.  We walk thousands of miles in underground tunnels, in streets; dodging people in and out, fast and slow; up hills so steep, its scary to go down; stairs and stairs and stairs, endless walk ups in old fashioned Chinese buildings without lifts (and to think we have just signed for a month on one of these, 4 stories high, with a roof terrace, but at the end of the day…with the shopping…).  And everyday we are happy in our studio working at Yew Chung, shuffling around in that other worldly state, but standing on our legs, nonetheless.  Perhaps we are fitter, because now I walk up a hill without puffing, and every morning I feel an energy in my legs that feels unconquerable, until now, when just lying on the bed in our little ‘luxury’ 2 man space in the never nevers of China somewhere, I feel my legs quiver pathetically as they re awaken from their melt down into the mattress and non existence.

A comfy trip

We have been in Hong Kong for a month now.  Hard to believe because it has gone so fast.  We are once again at the Yew Chung International School in Kowloon Tong as artists in residence, both on a lovely project to beautify the school.  Mike’s project is to create a 5 metre x 2.5 metre water painting for the entrance to the school’s theatre and art gallery.  Mine is to create concepts for a portrait of the founder of the Yew Chung schools.  This trip up to Beijing is to visit one of the Yew Chung schools to give some talks to the students about ‘art’, and also to visit the Shanghai art foundries to get some casting quotes on the Madam Tsang portrait.

Industry in China

Morning has come and fields and endless building projects flash by.  Decrepit buildings near the railways only not beautiful because of the rubbish and rubble and obvious poverty with windows stuck with newspaper.  Cities with lots of anodized chrome and granite.  Little men in uniform standing on the platform at attention as the train whips by.  Trees, silver birches, elegant and nude without their leafy dress, dots of leaves like a headdress at the crown.  Lovely wispy willows with long floating tails drooping over waterways.  Industry, lots of it, lots of ugly blue roofs, U.N. blue, Michael calls it, lots of hangar style buildings.  Rattle rattle, chigga chigga, rocking gently through the grey.  We are in a first class cabin for two.  It has its own bathroom.  It has the typical hard Chinese beds.  We are glad we bought fruit and nuts and a few tea bags.  The food is not appetizing, and all is not perfectly clean.  The stewards are a happy bunch, enjoying life enormously, lounging in the dining car when the customers have mostly gone.  Sleep in the night was a random affair with all the unaccustomed jigging and jolting and flashing light and we are still gently drowsy, delighting in our own space without guilt, glad for this low key resting after such Hong Kong busy-ness.

Sleepy Mike

Sojourn on Tuscany’s Wild Capraia

Jaqui, Jake and Mike

I have so much to catch up.  I want to write and say that we are here in Hong Kong but the sensory flavours of Italy are still filling my palette and I can’t yet settle down to the low down on Hong Kong. Sorry. My heart is still in Capraia.

coast line of Capraia

It’s Mike’s birthday and what do we give to someone who says they have everything.  Jake and Jaqui call me down to Jaqui’s shop and together we huddle over the computer, scouring the internet for cheap holidays, cheap flights to exotic countries – after all, we are all going to go and help Mike enjoy himself so it’s all multiplied by four! But in the end there are only a few days that Jaqui can spare and we start looking closer to home.  We find the island of Capraia.  From photos it looks like a small and wild island, once a penal settlement, definitely not touristy.  We click,click click buttons and we’ve organised a two bedroom apartment and the boat trip and the map to the Livorno port and we all wear secretive grins on our faces for a whole day while Mike is bemused by it all – sure he has sussed out a trip in a plane somewhere and convinced that it has to be tropical because I have packed bathers and T shirts.  Bagni di Lucca is enjoying spectacular weather, but it is autumn and the mornings and evenings are chilly now, and even in the day the shadows are cool and long – it’s not in your head to swim at this time of the year.

Five o’clock Sunday morning we clamber out of bed.  I was going to drive to make Mike feel it’s all special – but it unnerves him so much that he begs to drive – surely I can’t be that bad! – and we head off up into the dark valley to pick up Jake and Jaqui staying with her mother near Lucca.  They sleep in.  It’s a small panic.  They pack whatever they can lay hands on in the sleeping house and make their own sleepy way to the car and then truly we are on our way, directing Mike through Lucca, then onto Pisa where by now he is convinced we are going to the airport, but we pass it, he is really not sure anymore till we get to Livorno and direct him to the port.  Then at last Mike sees the signs to Capraia.  His face lightens with revelation and laughter fills the car.  We go and have coffee in the little bar opposite the ship berth, stepping over luggage and dogs, the light gently breaking over the tall masts and cranes of the docks.  Jake out there with his cold cappuccino and cigarette, camera snapping snapping as the golden light wraps itself softly around the blackness.

Jake and Mike on board the ferry to Capraia

We are all tossing gently on the old ferry boat.  Jaqui goes below deck to sleep – she’s feeling queasy.  It’s chilly, the wind blowing against us in the morning air, the diesel smoke, acrid. I wrap myself in absurd layers of cotton clothing and revel in the wind and the new sky and the deepening blue of the sea, the rails of the boat, white and stark and clean.  It feels liberating to have left the shores, like some old life was being forgotten.  Only a week to go and we must leave for Hong Kong, so much to do, but today it’s as though scissors have separated us from all that knowledge and all we have left is Now.  Amazing.  Mike and I are really not Now people.  We are people who are always heading somewhere – what is that saying about stopping to sniff the flowers?  Well here we are, sniffing and forgetting.  We all feel so happy.  It’s beautiful to be with Jake and Jaqui like this.  Mike can’t stop talking with Jake, millions of ideas between themselves spilling over, the two hour journey, swiftly over.

Old Tower on Capraia

Capraia emerges before us, hilly, old rock towers on outcrops of more rock, rocky landscape smothered in low foliage.  Interesting.  The island looks really fortified, with ramparts older than the existence of the gaols.  It must have been an island that was always invaded.  We step off the boat into the port and make our way up the hill to the old town.  It’s lovely.  The season seems to be over and lots of places have closed down, but you can tell there has been a buzz here over the summer, lots of eating and drinking places.  Lots of holiday places.  We are in one.  It is full of warm light and is comfortable, a good little kitchen, good beds, we are sorted. We proceed to eat and walk and walk and walk all over the hills discovering the old gaols, ruins amongst the wild mint and thyme and giant Mediterranean pines. A feeling still of oppression on this side of the island, it is after all only twenty or so years since the closure of the island as a penal colony.  We are utterly exhausted, feeling already that we had experienced several days in this first introduction.  We eat expensive pizzas that night and die in bed not to waken ’till morning when the sun pouring through the windows has us bathed in sweat.

Mediterranean Pines over Mike, Jaqui and Jake

It’s the smell.  Pungent.  Sweet.  Minty.  We are clambering along paths on the other side of the island.  Fennel – it’s fennel.  We love fennel.  It’s so good for you.  So good for the digestion.  We start picking.  We pick fennel.  We pick thyme, rosemary, nepitella, peppermint.  We are so excited.  We feel like the ancient people of the land scouring the terrain for our special condiments and teas.  Fish wrapped in fennel.  Chicken with thyme and rosemary, mushrooms and zucchini in nepitella, peppermint tea.  Oh yum.  And it’s Mike’s birthday and it is all such a savoury delight.  We are hours walking the hillsides over the cliffs, scrambling through the scratchy harsh vegetation, old stone walls, remnants of ancient farming days, foraging in another world, forgetting to swim, forgetting to go Somewhere, forgetting to even Look and See.  It is hours of perfect contentment and when we get home we are still silent.  Jaqui slips into the kitchen and prepares a gourmet feast.  Jake and Mike at different ends of the table are carefully sorting out their herb collections making little bunches to hang in the sunny window.  I am sorting my little gathering and trying to help Jaqui but managing to be very un-useful.  The afternoon wanders away and eventually we walk on our full tummies and find an old tower down by the sea in the cliffs.  The boys swim in the evening shadows and scale up the stoney sides of the tower to peer inside the black empty windows.  Jaqui and I shiver slightly on the rocks, looking up to where the sun still spills over the cliff face and urge them to come along.

Capraia landscape at sunset

Up. Up. Up. Come on you guys.  We’re going swimming.  It’s our last precious day and the day is gorgeous.  Scrambling inelegantly out of bed, into showers and in go mode, we pack our things quickly while munching on bread and jam, left over birthday cake and slurping milky coffee. The day Is absolutely gorgeous. We are elated as we bounce along the stoney ancient paths, wondering how they could possibly farm the land – grape vines, surely grapes need soil.  The wine is probably like the herbs, the taste condensed and aromatic and full of sun. In the middle of a path an old wriggly tree bends obligingly into a love seat and our young lovers cosy up and wish we would go away.  Caves in the rocks above and the boys can’t help themselves, more impetuous scrambling over boulders and through brambles to get in there, pirate kings of a severe domain.  We are in love with the land.   It gets to you.  Its wildness.  Its tough abundance.  Eventually we descend into a rocky cove and before we know it we are all in the sea, bobbing buoyantly up and down in the transparent turquoise water, little fish and waving sea grasses gently caressing our passing bodies.  So, so beautiful.  We are full of promises to ourselves to return here again in the early summer, perhaps come over on the vespa even though we would never torment it on these hostile paths, pitch a tent, rent a sea canoe, or a motor boat for a day, investigate these tiny little coves and play in this miraculous water.  Our spirits have returned to the earth and we feel so rejuvenated.

rocky coast

So here we are, fresh and ready for a couple of months sojourn in Hong Kong with new wonderful projects to create at the Yew Chung International School.  Capraia, for all the time that it was only brief, created an oasis of rest, joy and family love.

sorting herbs

reflection of the old fort in ancient vats

Jaqui overlooking the port of Capraia

Leaving Capraia

Venice and the Biennale

Venice, at the mouth of the Grand Canal

I walked down the street today, pensive in the soft autumn air, it was such beautiful light and I felt like I had forgotten to look at the hills and the trees for ages.  A friend of our’s died recently, a gentle, quiet and sincere man who had chosen excellence for all the things he had done in his life.  It really made me think about life and the speed of its passing. Its times like this, I feel urgent to do and be all that I want.

lions head, Venice

Recently we went to Venice and managed to get a half day in at the Venice Biennale.  What we saw, was terribly underwhelming.  I can’t believe the mediocrity of the people who curate this stuff.  It is supposed to be cutting edge but it has so many times been done to death.  Has no one a sense of history anymore.  In the 20′s, the time of deconstruction of art, really memorable stuff happened, like the Dada performance of a woman peeing on stage.  Cubism.  Fauvism. In the 60′s abstract expressionism, pop art.  But why is the ‘in’ thing still to deconstruct and not to recreate out of all the debris that happened.  Why, after nearly a century, are artists still trying to do the same thing and being held on art bureaucrat pedestals for doing it – no skill criteria needed, and certainly, god forbid, no soul, just a good soppy head explanation for it and a fantastic head for marketing.  Boring.  I remember in my student days, over thirty years ago, going to the Sydney Biennale and there was a similar stack of bricks on the floor then too.   I say this, and I want to say, I don’t care.  But I do. I care because art is an expression of humanity and art as is applauded today, says nothing about the greatness of our cultures and society.  In one hundred years are we going to wander around the great cities of the world to admire all the junk that has been made, or are there hidden gems, fresh and beautiful, still to emerge because for now they are out of fashion and still struggling to be heard and seen?  I am sorry, I took no photos of the Venice Biennale.

St Marcos Square, Venice

But Venice was beautiful as was evident to the millions of people tramping the streets and lining the Grand Canal.  People love greatness and will even queue for hours in the broiling sun to tour San Marco’s duomo and the Doges palace.  They’ll spend their last dollars sitting in restaurants on beautiful piazzas with romantic music being played to them, sipping on bellinis, because it all touches the soul.

Venice, workshop

Venice, small canal with gondola

And when it is real, it does touch the soul.  And it is in these times that  excellence makes sense.  That striving for the ultimate creation of your life is really important because it is something you can leave behind for civilisations to grow upon.  Then we can die.  We can die because we have made life grow.

carnival masks in Venice shop window

Seeds of Hope, ‘Harvest’ by Shona Nunan

'Harvest'

While we were Artists in Residence in Hong Kong at the Yew Chung International School, Shona created the bronze sculpture, ‘Harvest’, in an edition of eight. The sale of all eight works will go to the charity to help build schools for underprivileged children in China. If you would like to know more about this, please click here to download a pdf. info package for Seeds of Hope and the Harvest sculpture.

The Bernabo Thermal Spa of Bagni di Lucca

Marisa Frulliani at the entrance to the Bernabo Terme

Today the old Bernabo thermal baths were open to the public for viewing, completely refurbished with all the massage tables and oils and candles and gently running water into ancient marble baths.

Spa room with marble bath

I wish I could ‘write’ smell and sound.  All our senses were cocooned in the perfumes of oils and music that wrapped themselves around us, creating such a feeling of well-being and beauty. I love the renovated ornate paintwork already lifting in the humidity and creating organic earthiness in this pristine, elegant environment.

Hallway

We met lovely Marisa Frullani, soon to be new proprietor of this establishment when the permission is finally passed.  She explained that these particular waters were healing for skin ailments which is why there was such an emphasis on the baths.

large bath

I state the obvious because the ‘Jean Varraud’ thermal establishment , up the hill, is not about emersion in baths but is more about curing respiratory ailments so you go into the caves where the hot humid air from the hot pools steams you inside and out. After a couple of days of these sessions, you come out of the caves feeling like your lungs are open, deep and empty.  Its such a peculiar but exhilarating feeling.   The waters of the Bernabo are supposed to be high in curative properties and are known for their healing of skin diseases like psoriasis, rosacea, dermatitis etc. so emersion in the baths is the go.  There is even a story of a leper being healed long ago, when he drank regularly the waters and lay in its pools, at a time when the Benarbo springs were a local secret protected by the villagers under straw and twigs.

domed ceiling

The Bernabo source

The Bernabo is part of some really interesting history.  Known for its thermal springs since Roman times, the Bagni di Lucca area has always been famous and popular throughout Europe.  But perhaps its most glorious period was in 1805 when the French came in.  Napoleon’s younger sister, Elisa, married to Felice Baciocchi, built the spectacular villa Reale with huge stables at Bagno alla Villa.  With money, power and a big vision she created new roads, pretty pathways, parks, and buildings, modernizing all the spa establishments and creating a luscious and delightful summer escape for the rich, cultured and privileged of Europe.  She employed Italian and French technicians, architects and engineers to work throughout the town and in 1812, Charles Sambucy, an architect, was commissioned to extend the Bagno Bernabo and to make it and the other establishments into modern medical centres.  The Bernabo was completed in 1812 and takes its waters from the side of the hill of Corsena in Ponte a Serraglio, on the beautiful scenic treelined road that also takes you to the antique thermal baths of Docce Basse, currently being restored, San Giovanni also being restored, and the Jean Varraud which is in use but in need of a little uplift.

View from the Bernabo overlooking Villa Fiori and the new passerella

Marvellous to me, how important it is to have benefactors in life who have the power and the glorious vision to change things, to make life beautiful.  What an honour it would be to have the privilege to sweep aside the protests of the small minded and even the practical to make instead something for history and for all those who partake in its creation, to be more greatly improved and in love with a wonderful life.

The old Casino

Last night the casino opened again with new owners.  It is the first casino built in Europe and Roulette was invented here.  It is a relatively small but lovely building with a gracious and elegant interior, spoiled only by intrusive slot machines, but perhaps these are a necessary evil.  There was a hint of an old world in the late night as jazz wafted out over the river, the lights golden in the blackness, and people gently promenading everywhere along the river and the passerella.  This old town was alive.