December 30 2011

derp derp derp. Not doing a whole lot. Picked up some more watercolour paper and pens the other day and have spent the last few days sorting out my trip next week to England. So, now in the next few days before I leave (tuesday) I want to try and get some artsy stuff done. Lets see how realistic that goal is ha ha.

Been wandering around. There is a host of new tourists just milling about these days, so the streets are more cluttered. Good thing I've mastered my ability to sneak around pedestrian traffic from the days in Toronto. I went up the the Miniato al Monte the other night and captured some cool pictures of Florence at night.

December gets cold.

Well hey, it's gotten down to the frigid temperature of 11 degrees these days. Damned cold compared to how nice it's been not even a couple of weeks ago. Ah well, that cannot be helped. Myself and some friends decided the other day that a climb to the top of the dumo was in order.We started outside in the Piazza Duomo. There is a lovely christmas tree in sight of the entrance to the Duomo.



We had to buy tickets, which then were bitten by a machine to allow us entrance to the first of a series of narrow staircases. After a brief climb, we were vomited into a small room which contained a small number of caged statues.





I'm not entirely sure why the statues were caged, they must be something like the Weeping Angels from Doctor who. Anyway, after that it was for more climbing.



However arduous it was, we finally made it to the first level of catwalks which ran around the interior of the cathedral. The view was amazing and all the little people looked like ants.





This was followed by more climbing and another level of catwalks. Also, there was this sign all over the starwell and stuff. As you can obviously tell, it had absolutely no effect what so ever.



More climbing, more walking along narrow hallways. Through the windows we could get a better idea of how high up the dome we were.







More climbing.....




And then....!


Up top!







In the second picture there, you can see the tree I photographed in the first picture on this post. The view was breathtaking and well worth the climb and the 8 euros admission fee. I took a lot more pictures, like around a hundread more which you can check out on my google+ page here.

December 18

Things have been quiet these past days. School is out an I'm taking a much needed rest after the gong show leading up to critiques. Went out last night to celebrate one of my classmates (Melissa's) birthday. We ate some delicious nachos and then went to the Be Bop club, which is this awesome live music venue just north of the Duomo. They had a Rolling Stone tribute band playing and it was pretty damned awesome. Apparently, Tuesdays are beatles nights, so I'm going to check that out one day.

December 12

Things have begun to cool down since Critiques and our final show. Critiques, lasted two days (Monday and Tuesday) of last week, with the 22 of us split between the two days evenly. I presented first on the second day. We also had two guest critics (Artist Emmy Skensved and star of ArtStars, TV Nadja Sayej).

Our professor Sarah, Emmy and Nadja would critic our work in group critiques with our whole class. You stand up in front of the whole class and talk about your work and then people comment on it and give you suggestions and things. I was very worried about mine, but it went really well. Nadja and Emmy think I should keep going with a more abstract style of painting I developed a few days before the critiques, as they think that it's very strong. They also liked the contrast between my landscapes and monster paintings. Overall, the critic went rather well and the whole experience really boosted my confidence in my work. Especially after our mid-term critics where I didn't feel as strongly afterwards.

After the second day of Critics, we went to the American design and printing studio, called the Fuji Studio. Multiple American students have classes there and it's all about printing and fabric and jewelry design. They had an art show, so we went to see their work. I had a good long talk with Nadja, while we hovered over the buffet table. She gave me a lot of good advice on what I should do after Florence. Our guest critics were very approachable and they were all OCAD students at some point. The fact we could talk to them openly about issues and concerns was a boon, as they gave us an outside opinion on being artists and surviving in the art world.

Friday night, we had an art show with our work from the critiques. We cleaned the studio up, shoved all the furniture upstairs and bought a ton of food and wine. We didn't have a great showing of people. Most of the folks who showed up were really creepy. We even had one (obviously) drunk fellow arrive who immediately started trying to touch my female colleagues. The whole event ended up being more of a way for us to socialize with each other, now that the semester was over.

Thursday was our Art history exam. We had a review the day before, which essentially covered everything on the test. I didn't know slide dates very well, but I felt like I knew pretty much everything else. Dates was not a very large part of the test, so I feel strongly about my performance. We also handed in our art history essays the same day. I wrote my essay on the contrast between progressive and repressive painters in the early renaissance.

The weather has been warm, but also it's been raining pretty much every day for the last half a week. Not the best, but from what I gather the winter is a rather wet time of year. At least it still hasn’t dropped below 10 during the day and it actually feels like it’s getting warmer sometimes.

Saturday, I went to the Florence Biennale with a friend. The artwork in the exhibit was pretty lackluster at best. There was some fantastic works, but Sturgeons law seems to be holding true in the contemporary art world.

I have uploaded my artwork to my G+ account, so check it out here.

Final Critiques

We had our end of semester Critiques the other day. Today was a bit of a break while we got ready for our group show tomorrow night. I'll talk more about the critiques tomorrow when I have some more time. However, I have pictures of all my work uploaded (with better then normal photographs) on my google+ account to check out. Hit this link to check out what I've been up to.

All the work is on water colour and various sizes. The header picture for this post can help give an idea on scale for some of the works.

December 2nd

The other day, Peter took us to the Sagrestia Nuova inside the Basilica of San Lorenzo. Inside is where they buried all the dead Medici Family Members! Neat-o. They had a special place for the fellow who was the last male Medici (and thus the last Medici) and they have him buried in a special hidden door in the floor. While Peter was talking to us about this fellow (whose name I don't remember, but it was very Italian), the folks who work in the chapel-area decided to open to burial room for us. The floor numerically rose and then slid to the side, as a blue neon light shone out from the cavity below. It was the coolest thing ever. Inside the Sagrestia Nuova, they have some of the most beautiful Michelangelo's in the city (Day and Night and Dusk and Dawn), plus a room which contains all the sorts of marble in the world.

On a more personal note, I've been very very busy as Critiques are on Monday and Tuesday and our final exam for art history is on next Thursday. Test review is today and our essay for art history is also due on thursday as well. So much to do, so little time.

The city is getting more festive however. They have erected a giant christmas tree in the Piazza Duomo (right next to the baptistry). and more lights are being activated all over town.

Some artwork.

Some paintings I've done in the last while. My ability to photograph my artwork is complete shit, but this will do for now. They are all watercolour on paper.









Here is my side of my studio room.

Before I put my art on the walls



and after.



Additionally, the city has been putting up lights on the street which they are slowly phasing in at night. Makes the city at night a bit more colourful and bright.

November 23rd

Only a week and a half left until critiques. The fact I've been quite busy as of late explains my lack of posting in the last little while.

Arezzo, Monterchi and Sanasepolcro.

The biggest bit of news, is the trip my class went on last friday. Like the week before, our school rented out a bus for us. The main purpose of this trip was to visit a select number of artworks/galleries.

Our first stop was Arezzo in order to visit the Basilica of San Francesco. It contains artwork of Piero della Francesca. Most notably the "Story of the True Cross" which contains snippets of the biblical tail, which tells the story of the wood which was used to create Christ's crucifix. Seeing the artwork in person was absolutely stunning. I'm going to mention right now, that I do not have any pictures of the art work. Mainly for two reasons. None of the pictures I take could match those of official reproductions. Secondly and most importantly, no places allow you to take photographs of artwork. It's a copyright reason as if you take pictures, you wont buy their postcards or other memorabilia. Any place in Italy which contains an amazing piece of art, has a gift shop jammed in nearby to cash in on tourists.

Anyway, Arezzo was a nice small town. Besides the Basilica, there was not much to see or do (we did see an amazingly huge dog, which I thing was a Newfoundland.)

Th second place we visited, was Monterchi. We didn't even really visit the town. It was a very small place, which appeared to be in the middle of nowhere and contained maybe six buildings and no more then one dog and two cats. We stopped to see one painting, which was another Piero della Francesca painting, which was called "Madonna del Parto". Beautiful painting and had an entire house dedicated just to it. After seeing the painting, we were swept out of the door into the bus to head off again. We stopped in at Anghiari; which is an amazing town built on a hill, for lunch. Peter (our art history prof) loves one of the restaurants there and suggested we all get their seafood and wine. Afterwards, we wandered around the town and basically checked out how cool the place was.

Our last stop, was Sansepolcro. We went to check out their small art gallery which contained more works by (you'll never guess) Piero della Francesca. There was his painting of Christ's reanimation, which was really cool...But besides that there was not much else worth seeing. We stopped for tea again and then hopped on the bus for a two-three hour bus ride back to Firenze.

Here is a link to my google plus account where I uploaded pictures of the trip.

Today, I went to the Uffitzi for the first time with my class for art history. Big giant art gallery, very stunning collection but also very overwhelming. We had a whirlwind tour of a number of the early renaissance paintings (as well as some of the heavy hitters like Leonardo De Vinci, Raphael, Michelangelo and Caravaggio.

For the past few days (about the past four) Two of my classmates (Megan and Michelle) and myself have been working on our presentation on something to do with Italian culture. We chose to do Fairly Tales and were scheduled as the last group to present. We recorded and animated a podcast (conversational instead of lecturing) and I think it was well received.

A couple of us got ben and jerry's ice cream yesterday. I got chocolate chip cookies and cream and it was rather tasty. I'm still working up the desire to climb to the top of the Duomo. It costs 8 euros to get into it, which is utterly lame. I don't really want to head up until I get a panorama stitching application for my Iphone. I don't know what else to say. Things are going nicely. The weather is getting chilly now. Getting to a high of low teens. getting to around 2/3 degrees and night.

Anyway, that is all for now.

November 17th

Some monstrous paintings I've worked on in the past few weeks.

Been a while since my last post. Not too much has really been happening in the past week. Mostly spending my time in the studio trying to get work done. Starting to get fairly cool here. Getting nice and chilly at night (like around 2 or 3 degrees at night and only around mid/high teens during the day).

On wednesday, we had went to Santissima Annunziata and inside the Florence cathedral (Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore). The SS Annunziata is a nice little church inside the Piazza Santissima Annunziata. By nice little church, I mean big and stunningly decorated church. Part of it was designed by Brunelleschi, but since It's construction has had Brunelleschi's original architecture altered with gold frillery and (sort of terrible) frescos. We had to sneak inside between sermons and apparently of all the churches they don't like tourists all that much (even students they frown upon). However, for the brief 20min we were able to be inside, it was absolutely stunning. We were not allowed to take pictures in the interior however, it's a common theme in churches in Florence. It's not to protect the art, as the pictures and flash wont damage a lot of it. The main reason is if you take pictures, then you wont buy postcards, so it's a copyright issue.

After that, we stopped at a cafe north of the Florence Cathedral for snacks and hot drinks and then proceeded into the Florence cathedral (which shockingly enough had no line for admission). As cool as the building looks on the outside, the buildings interior is fairly boring and the crypt (the part you don't have to pay to get into) has been converted into a gift shop. They also had a loud recorded voice saying "SHHHHHHH! silenzio per favore! SHHHHH! Silence Please!". It was the most odd experience, as it's so far the only church I've visited where they constantly hiss at you.

Friday, we had a trip to the Mosaic stronghold of Italy, Ravenna. We rented a bus for the 2 1/2 trip to Ravenna (which is on the Adriatic. The view along the way was stunning. We essentially drove to Bologna and then the bus turned to Ravenna, as we had to drive around the mountains. Unlike taking the train to Bologna however, by highway it was mostly outside of tunnels, so we got to see an amazing view of the Tuscan scenery on our way.

Inside Ravenna, we had a whirlwind tour of a variety of churches, baptistries and other sites. Mostly checking out anything to do with Dante Alighieri and the cool mosaic artwork all over the town. We saw the Baptistry of Neon, Mausoleum of Galla Placidia, Arian Baptistry, Basilica of Sant'Apollinare Nuovo and the Basilica of San Vitale,

We also stopped at a food market, which I'll admit I spent too much money at on my lunch and there was also a chocolate festival. They even had chocolates in the shape of metal objects and coloured to look like rusted metal objects. For example, you could get chocolate drill bits, saws, paint brushes, pliers, monkey wrenches and bags of chocolate screws. I got a chocolate clamp and it was delicious.

We left the town (which is a very small rich town) at around 4:30 and got back to Florence about two hours later.

Here are the pictures from Rivenna.




Ciao.

November 5th

Remember remember the 5th of November.
The gunpowder treason and plot.
I know of no reason why the gunpowder treason should ever be forgot.


Well, enough of that.

Today, on the way home from the studio, there was a small group of folks in white robes and shaved heads ( except for rattails), who were singing and dancing up the road. It was cool.

This past week we went to the Church of San Miniato al Monte. I went weeks before, but this time it was for Art History. Peter told us a series of analogies about his experiences with the priests of the church and other such stories. Really quite entertaining. However, we didn't see a whole lot of the actual church, as the moment Peter started talking about the art and history inside, we were kicked out for a funeral. We left the church. It was empty outside when we entered, but when we exited there was dozens of suited folks. Also, a Jaguar brand hearse.

Besides those things, this week's been basically about just working on classwork.

Actually, the leaves are starting to change and fall now. Autumn has come to Florence.

October 30th

Been a few days since my last post. So, what have I been up to?


After returning from Venice, monday was spent pretty much doing nothing as I posted the previous blog post and got some rest. Venice was fairly fast-paced and most of us were spent by the time we got back. Tuesday I mostly spent working on some sketches, but to be honest I did almost nothing that day. Wednesday we had our art history class and we went to the Museo San Marco. It was a place where people could go to meditate religiously. The building was full of small little cells in which people would enter for extended periods of 'negative meditation'. The cells all featured paintings of religious scenes from the bible, but the best thing was the Annunciation painted by Fra Angelico. Also, Peter talking about if you do LSD you'll see winged elephants and flying horses was pretty great, as well as him talking about the one time he smoked a joint. We also checked out the Cenacolo di Ognissanti. The main boon about it was a last supper painted Ghirlandaio. Great stuff.

Thursday, I spent the day actually working on a new painting. After Wednesday's class, I got a large pad of hot press watercolour paper (about 18" by around two feet), so I got to work translating my smaller sketches into larger more finished works, with a bit of an alteration. After that, I was invited by one of my classmates to join her and some of my other classmates to head to one of their places to learn to knit. I had no powerful reason on why not, so I went. I got a couple balls of wool with the intentions on building a scarf or something simple. However, it's a more difficult craft then what I originally envisioned and accomplished nothing more then learning the steps and constantly re-doing my mistakes.

Friday, we had art history again, this time we checked out the church of San Lorenzo, design by Brunelleschi, as well as the crypt where Donatello is buried. After that, we hopped across the street for a quick look inside the Medici Palace, where we got a seven minute window to gaze at the medici private chapel painting. Very neat stuff, but they have a guard stand in the room with you telling you to leave once seven minutes are past AND you have to make an appointment.

Saturday, all day painting and now it's Sunday. Tomorrow is halloween, so we're having a party at our place tomorrow night. Our professor and Peter are also invited, so it should be fun.


It's been fairly nice here weather-wise. Rainy on monday, so I had to got to the laundromat to dry my clothes. Besides that it's been sunny with a high of around 20 degrees the whole week. A bit cold in the morning and at night, as well as the studio being really cold, but it's comfortable. It's still quite busy with Tourists, but that's to be expected.

That's all for now, however here are some imagines.

First off, a bird has taken a liking to my sun-roof.



Here are a couple of the newer paintings I did. I'm not too happy with the interior one. Too purple.




Finally, enjoying a nice hot cup of tea in the cold studio.

Lovely Venezia

Hello Internet.

The weekend we had our highly anticipated trip to Venice. We loaded onto the train from Santa Maria Novella at 8:30 in the morning and rode the two hour train ride northeast to Venice. The trip was fairly uneventful. As much of Italy is mountainous, the trains frequently ride in tunnels, not really enabling much in the way to look at.

Our first view of Venice from the train station is that of a large canal and bridges all over. Also, there are no cars in Venice. The streets are all quite narrow (and mostly unnamed) so the main form of transportation is to take a ferry around the city. Our first order to business was to get our ferry passes, so Peter and our professor went off to buy them for us, while we waited on the steps. Our Hostel was on an island, (which is what all of Venice is but....), so we needed to ferry there. However, we figured that we'd go to the hostel at the end of the day as there was no point shuffling back and forth and eating up tones of time. We started with a look at the Basilica di Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari (where Titians Body is buried). Afterwards, a group of us went to the Guggenheim collection, which was absolutely stunning. A few of us were rather ticked that our Professor told us not to bother go to it, as she said it was a "waste of time", which it wasn't.

We reluctantly left to meet back with her and the rest of the class, where we ran into Peter sitting at a bar drinking beer and asking for passports, claiming he was acting as border patrol for the Guggenheim. Two of our older classmates chilled with him there. I thought of joining, but I wanted to see the city, so I joined with Sarah and a larger portion of the class in exploring the city.hich was great. Weaving through the small narrow streets and over numerous bridges. We saw the famous Piazza San Marco, which was quite stunning. We saw a group of tourists feeding pigeons, which then began to climb all over them. It was really quite funny.

We met Peter and co. back near the armory and headed off to the Hostel, which is on a quiet area of the city separated from the tourists. We had two rooms selected for us. So we unpacked and then a group of us with Peter went out for Pizza. Our professor choose not to stay in the hostel with us and stayed in a B&B in the main part of the city. Having dinner with Peter was hilarious, as he's a really funny guy and quite knowledgeable about Venice and Italy. It appears like he knows everyone, as he was chatting familiarly with the pizzeria owner and with other people all over the place.

Day 2.


We spent the majority of our trip at the Biennale. This is the big international arts festival. We woke up early, with the lights and power off, to breakfast in the dark, where my flashlight came in handy. During breakfast they got the power working again and there was hot water and coffee for all! We arrived at the front of the Giardini area of the Biennale at 10am, got our tickets and spent the rest of the day inside. Many countries are present in the Biennale, with many having their own unique pavilions which the corresponding countries built themselves. All the pavilions are unique works of art themselves and some are quite stunning structures. In the center was a 'main pavilion' which had works which are sort of the miscellaneous works that couldn't fit into other pavilions. A majority of the artworks were video based or installations,which I am normally not the most excited with. However, some of my favorite pavilions (Greece, Israel, czech republic and Korea) were just that. The Canadian Pavilion had work by Steven Shearer. It's easy to find his work online, mostly drawings of figures. Admirably made, but not my cup of tea. Also, the Canadian Pavilion is shaped like a maple leaf. Lulz.

Most of the pavilions focused heavily on political and social issues, which made a lot of them very heavy and dark to look at. Many were very graphic. True art is angsty so they say. For example, the Egyptian one was based on the recent revolts (and it was among the only countries which I feel should really have a reason to follow this theme). All the Polish works were videos talking about WW2, which was disappointing. Israel took the subject of land-grabs and border issues really well however and was among the best in my eyes. I cannot really explain it however, but it was done with a series of video works.

The main Pavilion was chock full of a variety of works, including three Tinteretto's, which didn't really fit into the whole 'Modern Art' feel which is the premiss of the show. Not that I don't mind Tinteretto's. Standouts for me from the 'Padiglione Centrale' was this one odd video which was absolutely hilarious and poked fun at art in general. It also made very little sense.I have no idea who made this video (I failed to get a name), but I want to find out what it was. When I do, I'll let you know.

By the time we finished, it was getting close to 6pm, so we collected (about seven of us) at Piazza San Marco, to find a place to eat. I don't know where it was, or what it was called, but away from the main tourist area of the town (well away from San Marco north east-ish) we found a nice little restaurant which served well priced three course meals. I had a Lasgana, Grilled Porkchop and a salad all for 13 euros, which was not too bad all things considered. Venice is the sort of town which sucks away your money quicker then you can say "ATM" so this was reasonably priced all in all. A few of the other folks in our class wanted to meet up with us, but we had no idea how to get to where we were. We managed to find our way back to the hostel afterwards (I have a good sense of direction (at least with the compass rose) in cities, so we found our way back to the San Marco, then onto a ferry back to our little island.

Day 3

On our last day, we spent until 2pm at the Arsenale segment of the Biannale. This was mostly works of independent artists along a long corridor. For the most part, fairly meh. There was a few works which were quite interesting, but for the most part I didn't consider it as good as the previous day. That is until we reached the Italian Pavilion at the end. Stunning is the best word. They did their best to blow the rest of the Biannale out of the water, with a veritable legion of artists and artworks. Also, this was one the only places in which there was paintings..All if it amazing. Outside they even had a sculptural garden. We had only 20min to see it, as we had slogged our way through the rest of the event, taking everything in. Someone could spend half a day in the Italian Pavilion alone, the time we had left (as we had no idea what we were missing out on) was a crime. Needless to say, we all arrived late at the meeting point with our professor.

We quickly hustled back to the Hostel to grab our stuff, then saw some Tinteretto's in the Squalla San Rocco, which was a huge confraternity and is an absolutely stunning building bristling with art. Peter talked to us about the Tinteretto's and then we had some spare time before we needed to return to the train and head back to Florence at 6:27pm.

All in all a great trip and a city I would love to visit again.

I took a lot of pictures, so instead of spending a long time uploading them here (as the blogger photo uploading system sucks) I'll link you to them on my google+ account.


Biannale pictures.


Venice Pictures.


Until later.

Mid-Terms are over!

Yesterday, we had Art Histroy and saw the end of our two days of Mid-Term Critiques.

Art history saw us meet Peter at the Florence Cathedral Baptistry, where he talked to us about the design of the structure it's self and about the significance of it's three doors (mainly who created them). Also, how the Baptistry was used as inspiration for early renaissance architecture. Peter, seems to know everyone in Florence, as while he was talking he stopped someone on the street riding a bike to engage in greetings (who is a great artist who we'll be visiting later). Also, later we visited a fantastic quiet little church out of the way of the throngs of tourists in the Piazza della Limbo, which is where they buried babies who died before they could be baptized. Anyway, inside the church, the priest came out who Peter also greeted warmly. A really funny guy. He kept on reminding us to bring a towel to Venice, as we'll need a towel.

Afterwards we had Crit's. It was long and tiring to go through it, but seeing everyone else's work consolidated together for the first time was really great to see, especially as I've not even really had the chance yet to see some of my colleagues work. I ended up going first today, by virtue of my last name. I got a lot of good feedback and ideas to expand from. Everyone else's work is quite stunning. We have a very talented selection of artists here. After we finished Adam, Iskuhi, Michelle, Megan and myself decided it'd be great to have a celebratory dinner, so we went to a pub near the school we've been calling "Sneaky Dee's" as it reminds us of a similar place in Toronto. Also, they have the most delicious Chicken Wings I've ever had. The drinks they have are terribly expensive, but the food is reasonably priced. After that, we hung out at Meg's place while calling the rest of our classmates to get together and hang out on the steps of Sante Croche and sort of party. Turned out well and we all had a very good time.

Tomorrow we head to Venice, which is really exciting. I'm not too sure what to expect there, but it should be great in any case.

Here are some random pictures I took while walking around. All around Piazza della Duomo.

October 17th (Games Day Special!)

Yesterday, I spent the whole day at games day in the nearby city of Modena. By nearby I mean a two hour train ride. So basically I packed up my chaos space marines, grabbed my tickets and my bag and headed out.

I cought an early train at the Santa Maria train station at around 8:30 and headed out. The train had little compartments and this italian family shared the six seat cabin I was in, however they got off halfway through the trip, leaving me in the cabin alone for the rest of the way. I arrived in Modena at around 10:15am and (with some initial trouble) found the correct bus to get me to my stop. Neat side note, I drank a ton of caffeine on the way to the train station, so at Modena I really needed to take a piss. So I get to the washroom and there are two paper towel dispensers on the wall. I thought that was a bit odd. However, when I got into the stall, it was just a hole in the floor. So yeah, fairly interesting toilet.

Anyway, back to the real story. I got to games day in this sort of large meeting hall based around a single large auditorium. Basically, the whole event was staged in hallways on the first and second floor of this place, while they had a few seminars in the auditorium. I decided to get my forge world order out of the way first and after a half an hour of waiting, I was able to pass my reservation order email to an employee to get my order. Some folks didn't get an order in ahead of time and were basically pointing at the catalogue taking ages to get through. Anyway, after that I got a book signed by the famous author Gav Thrope, who also wrote my chaos space marine rule book. I then followed him to the auditorium for a Q&A session, however there was a bit of a problem in that all the questions were asked in Italian and never translated (loudly) to english. Then Gav would reply in english and the translator would translate it back to italian. So, I got &A but no Q. Ah well, I leaned some neat tid-bits about projects he might work on, but nothing warhammer related, all Black Library related.

They had demo tables for all the current and no-longer supported Games Workshop games. So they had Warhammer 40k and Fantasy battles, but also Mordheim, Warmaster and Aeronautica Imperialis. There was also two xbox's set up with the new game "Space Marine", but I didn't care for that. I ended up getting a game in with a guy from Sicily and you can read about that here.

The event closed at five and I found myself heading back to the train station (with less concern this time and som italian fellow almost had a heart attack when the bus stopped violntly and my army cas fell off a seat. He didn't speak english, but I cought the jist of what he said. I then overheard him talk to some other folks about their forge world orders and I could pick up a bit of what they were saying as I knew what they were talking about, at least. When I went to change trains in Bologna to head back to Firenze, I made the fatal discovery that what I thought was the 'departure time' on th e ticket, was in fact the estimated arrival time and ended up missing my intended train. by like ten minutes. Note to self, when I don't know when an event will end...don't by return tickets in advance.

All in all, a really great day and besides a couple of hick-ups well worth the trip. Also, while stranded in Bologna for a little bit I found out that one of my Favorite bands..Fleet Foxes..Will be playing there next month, so a negative turned into an opportunity to see them live at long last.

On the way back to Firenze, I got a message from one of the girls that I should stop by the studio as soon as I got back, as it was a friend, I thought that something serious might have happened by the abruptness of the message. In reality, they just wanted me to change a lightbulb for them. I then got an opportunity to describe what I had done, to an audience which didn't really care.


Train cabin


Venue


Some of the hall



My Banner!



Gav @ Q&A



Some of the cool stuff (Armies on Parade and random tables)