Alexandria's antique adventures

This week I'm not really sure what to write about. My mind is kind of wandering around like I feel like I did all weekend. I have mostly been just thinking and working things out in my head about the direction of my project. I am slowly having more concrete ideas and this weekend attempting to gather materials helped in that process. After my meeting with Jana, I like the direction of a series of actual dolls with unique characteristics. I thought maybe having each one having a characteristic of a place, person, thing I associate with the doll/material/characteristic, but that is still unknown. I was mostly successful, but it feels like here it is really easy to have really bad timing on account of the hours and random days stores are closed. (one craft store which is past Santa Croce was closed the two times I went there and another little store by the duomo was closed all weekend and the antique market in Piazza Ciompi was closed when i made it there too) So I was searching out a fabric store that I found pretty easily and could probably spend more time there searching for different textures and colors of fabrics. I went around looking for things that reminded me of places and people in my life, although i didn't go in there with that intention, I guess it just kind of happened when I found a fabric. I also wandered into a small antique book store and found some old postcards and the place smelled like cigar smoke and this old man was sitting in the back, it was kind of a "this wouldn't happen really anywhere else" moments. Although during my collecting it felt like everytime I found something I needed, I would think of something else that I have no idea where to find it. Overall, this weekend was a lot of collecting and looking. 

The highlight though, was that I did make it to the antique fair at the fortezza da basso, which was very interesting. There were tons of intriguing things and I tried to take pictures without looking too strange. I was really attracted to the old postcards and photos, some with stamps and handwriting on them that are the remnants of a note between two people and now somehow it is in my possession. I really hope I can incorporate them into either drawing or theme sequence projects. Since I have been focusing on dolls, I did look around for those and finally found a doll stand with some very cute dolls, others beautifully made and others a little creepy. I talked to the woman who was selling them and she told me about some of them and where they were from. They ended up being very expensive, but I really wanted to buy one, so I did manage to find a small one that was made in Torino. I feel like now I just have to start working and see what happens and maybe solve a few problems about materials I'm missing...

photos