Just a Thursday

Thursday is typically my longest school day, starting class at 8 and going basically from class to class until 7:30.  BUT, this past Thursday was pretty amazing.  

Starting off with Illustration class, we had a guest speaker, Roberto Innocenti, an Italian illustrator and winner of The Hans Christian Andersen Award which is the highest international recognition given to an author and an illustrator of children's books. It was absolutely amazing to get to talk with such a successful and talented illustrator, with so many unbelievable works. Over 70 years old, and having to be translated by our teacher, he was still able to show us the book he’s working on right now which was super neat to see his process, sketches, etc. Check out some of his stuff!

The Adventures of Pinocchio, published 1988

The Last Resort, published 2002

Nutcracker, published 1996

From there, I went with my drawing class to the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, which contains many of the original works of art created for the Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiora aka the Duomo. I love field trips with classes because you never have to pay for it your self. My teacher is also ridiculous. He insisted we get a class photo so he could email it to all of us (below). He's originally from England so has an intense accent but other than the accent he is exactly what you would imagine an art teacher in Florence to be like. He's very intellectual about the drawing process and is all about drawing from within and feeling the movements and motion. It's pretty hilarious.

Drawing class at the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo 2/10

Finally, in photography, we went to an old insane asylum on the other side of the city that now serves as a home to squatters and research labs. It was sort of too late when we went and got dark within the hour, (which yes, made it even more creepy than it already was) so in terms of getting good shots, we were limited. But, it was super interesting. Most of the buildings were locked, but in the past classes have been able to get inside where they found old x-rays, test tubes, and forensic labs. We were only really able to walk around the buildings but were able to talk with a bunch of the squatters. There were also SO many stray cats and dogs living there. The Italian government pays for the squatters to live in these broken down places and provide electricity and water for them. Though it comes out of the Italian tax money, it keeps them off the streets and from living within the main city, so they figure it's a better solution than kicking them out. Though it was a very interesting place to go and somewhere I would have never known to go on my own, I don't think I'll be visiting again on my own and especially not at night. I only brought my film camera, so unfortunately I'll have to wait till I get them developed to give you an idea of what it looked like.

To end the day, and because the only way to do it in Italy is with wine, we attempted a wine power hour. Quite the success.

All-in-all, it was quite the Thursday.