Last days in Pietrasanta

December 17, 2012 § Leave a comment

Pietrasanta

Cinzia and I on our way to lunch

Spaghetti alla Scampi

Un bel “cazzo” chiselled into a marble balustrade. Here graffiti is done with a chisel!

In front of the Duomo di Pietrasanta

For the past three months I rise early, get on my bike and go down to the bar, take my cappuccino and paste sfoglia alle crema and then peddle off to the Del Chiaro foundry where I have been working.

The day is punctuated by “pranzo” lunch at either of two places “Port a Luca” or “Croce Verde” both Trattoria’s that offer the typical working mans midday meal of primo and secondo, bread, vino and strong black coffee to finish off, basically hearty good meals that are inexpensive.

Its so wonderful to live in Italy, I find myself absorbed in a poetic flow, a caressing of the soul. It doesn’t take long before you enter into relationships that become like family, this combined with the “Art Refugees” and I describe “us” the travelling band of Artisti from all over the world as such, because we are drawn here for very special reasons: we love being in Italy, love the culture and the Italian people.

In the time we have been here we have been to gallery openings, gatherings parties etc. We have made many new friendships and we will miss our new friends.

We watched crews of workers with trucks and cherry pickers putting up lights and projectors. The result is a very beautiful “Evento per Natale” in about a dozen places around the city, a history of City the people and times of Pietrasanta unfolds, using a scrawling calligraphic hand writing, poetry and verse has been projected on the city streets. In the Piazza’s photographs of locals artigiani, of cooks and working people etc well known to the city are projected this is interchanged with video’s of a local dance group performing dance movements projected on walls and over shuttered windows with families inside, strangely ritualistic…. Pietrasanta seems at night like a wonderful stage set. My heart is profoundly stirred by the poetry and sensibility of this “Installation”.

The facade of San Agostino with video projections

The verse constantly changes with the text enlarging and moving

I have finished the full size clay sculptures for the “three runners” commissioned work for Melbourne High School, and so am at the stage where its now time to wrap things up and get ready for the journey home to Melbourne.

Verses of poetry projected on the Piazza

The street to our Apartment . I like the feel of the white pebbles under my feet, texture punctuated by a row of little leds

Peter Schipperheyn Sculptor