The book

Ok, so I know that I havent written anything in quite some time, so sorry about that. Life here is just spectacular. it is a transforming experience that continues to surprise me. We just finished our first class and that is mind blowing to say the least. We went to Rome for 4 days over a week ago and just finished our final project for the designo class. We had to choose between creating a large scale drawing of a location here in town or make a book. I chose to make the book. It is definitely not the kind of book you would expect though. We had to write a 1001 or less character text based on the writing style in the book Invisible Cities by Calvino. We had to create a concept based on the city or a specific place and create a book that correlates with our text. We had to pick a specific part of the book to incorporate in our own text as well. So that is just the writing aspect. The book itself was made out of recycling our previous drawings (if we wanted to) and had to be 400 cm long folded accordion style creating 40 total squares, 20 on each side. We then had to go about the town and find naturally occurring letters. Meaning something that makes the letter A, B, C, D etc but was not meant to be read or seen as a letter. Those pictures (26 in total) were then scaled to be squares 1 inch by 1 inch. Next we transferred the image to pieces of linoleum (that we cut to size) and carved out the letters to make stamps. We had to decide how we wanted our text to appear in our book. It did not have to be ligible or seen (things could be put over top of them eventually) but we had to put them on somehow. We had to stamp our every letter to every work to every sentence... that is just part 1 and two basically. We then had to create a visual counterpart to our text that when you look at it hung, you can correlate what you read or hear from the text with the book. It was an exhausting project that just got more intense as you worked. It was the most obscure blank canvas I ever worked with but I am so excited that I did it and made a piece that has so much meaning. Here is my text
   "When you arrive at the city on a hill, it is hard to distinguish its form immediately. Its multiple layers shift from black and white to color. It takes time to get to know the city. A visitor who stays for a short time may only uncover the obvious attractions: the gardens, wine bars, architecture and ceramics. You have to be willing to explore, open hidden pockets, unfold the stop signs, and slide the broken door aside in the ally way to find the vibrant details that make up the city. The secret is that the forms within are black and white and will only be seen in color of one chooses to uncover what is beneath. It is the mood of the beholder which gives the city of Orvieto its form. Sometimes two people will look at the same unfolded sight and have two different perceptions of what they see. The beauty of the city will be revealed to those who are in the mood to discover it."
 I will post pictures soon of the final result. It was a long and tedious project but was so fun to create. I learned so much about myself and the city as I created it.