Leah--second thoughts

I've settled in, established more or less a routine, and now I can say: I live in Florence.

That being said, my curiosity has reemerged, and I'm glad it decided to show up. It makes me wonder now just how long it's been dormant. I was wondering sort of a similar thing the other day when I was appreciating an orange, and I realized that I could finally taste, I mean really taste it, and the citrusy sweet tingled my taste buds. It seems like coming to Florence gave me my taste buds back, something that I thought was slowly disappearing as I got older.

It's not just tasting though. I am captivated by little visual details: the way a blinking car light make the bricks of a wall jump in and our in synchronization, how the steam undulates in irregular patterns as my pasta water boils, how the light comes through the glass in Studio 41-- a slight gradation of pastel colors.

I'm also finally making connections.
The object I chose to work with on Tuesday was a jar of white beans. I've never really thought about beans for that long before. In the end I concluded that beans are holy. They are nutritional, simple, and democratic (a food for everyone). For me, religion is ideally this: nutritional, simple, and accessible to everyone.

From this jar of beans, I chose two words (I eventually got to them via the mind map exercise): wholesome (as my conceptual idea) and halo (as my physical idea). I admit that halo is kind of a conceptual idea as well, but through the centuries it has become a physical thing.

I've collected photos of all sorts of halos, but I've been slower on the "wholesome" research. Today I storyboarded the word wholesome, and from that I concluded that in my definition of the word, I generally think of it as things that are "old-fashioned"-- such as making things by hand, brown paper bags, manual labor, carrots with the dirt still on them, fresh, natural milk in a glass bottle, not wearing makeup, etc. I'm not sure if things in the "old days" were more wholesome, or if it's just a bias I have. I just looked up the word "wholesome" on an online dictionary, and the first definition is this: conducive to moral or general well-being; salutary; beneficial. It's sad, but I do think that the more "advanced" we become as a society, the more we suffer in terms of "moral and general well-being". Of course this could be argued, but as evidence I will say that the things that I think are wholesome are things that do make me feel healthier and that these same things are generally now considered "old-fashioned."

Anyway, these are the thoughts bubbling in my head right now. I'm eager to see where everything leads me.

Oh, and as a quick additional thought: We are lucky as artists that it is our job to think about things so deeply-- to have time to ponder such basics is luxurious. Just thought I'd throw that out there.

Here are some photos of this week.