I arrived in Venice in the rain late last night. The vaporetto (water taxi) dropped me at the Giglio stop, and I wandered up the narrow alleyway toward what I hoped would be my hotel. It appeared. After checking in and making my way to a tiny room on the top floor (3rd), facing the street, I found to my delight that the windows and shutters opened. As the sounds and feel of the night rushed in,  I saw for the first time the spectacular church I had passed blindly on the way in, Santa Maria de Giglio, for which (I now know) the vaporetto stop is named.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’ve just come from London, a Project Zero Conference, and where I’ve traveled before. It’s still largely unknown, though I’ve explored some in the central city. But I noticed that “landing” sense of awe and confusion the first night there, too — a wash of colors and forms, swimming in some miasma of disorientation and curiosity.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Waking slowly this morning to lovely and unfamiliar sounds everywhere — church bells, right here and near and far distant; cart wheels and heels on cobblestones, rain and water dropping, a child singing, muffled voices speaking Italian, the iron lamp hanging from the ceiling in my room — I found my senses all behaving as if they were fingered hands, reaching out toward the smells, sounds, air, and tastes of breakfast (with impossibly yellow eggs).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Returning to my room, I started to journal at the lovely writing desk. Everything here seems to call for attention to an aesthetic experience. Is that Venice or my expectation of Italy? An interaction, surely.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Soon I leaned out the window into the city —  slowly discovering the life in the friezes and statues of the church below. I lingered on the angel with the book and staff, noticing the pigeon wires on his/her (gender ambiguous) head and arms, the fullness of his flesh, the subtle gaze down — in thought? Reading? Praying? The motion of her raised right knee, ornamented by time with rectangular cracking. How different from the night before! How familiar somehow, these new friends.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It isn’t just the difference between night and day viewing, nor the effects of the flatness in emerging from travel, though those have something to do with the bewildered fuzz. But the difference that seems most salient slapped me boldly — “learning about” art is entirely different from experiencing it. Being in situ makes it natural to befriend works, understand artists’ intentions and subtler nuance that evade me in a reproduction or class. I try hard there, to compensate, but maybe that furthers the difficulty of the relationship. Here, it’s not studying so much as befriending. On my first trip to Italy, my first to Venice, my first to a Biennale, I’m panting to make a whole new circle of friends in the works I’m about to meet. And I wonder — can we bring that sense of ease and delight into the classroom and studio? What a gift if we could.