The Florence notebook

Inside:
Fluid perspective
The Daedalus drawings
The Man of Incongruent Light (2)

After two years away from cartooning, I returned to the visual arts during the 1997-98 academic year, which I spent at Sarah Lawrence College in Florence. While studying art conservation and old-master techniques (e.g., fresco, egg tempera on wood panel, oil on canvas), I also studied drawing and printmaking under master printer Swietlan Kraczyna at il Bisonte studio in Florence, in the oltrarno neighborhood of the city (the artisan district).

The notebook I kept during the class, pictured at right, was made at a nearby shop called il Torchio—and is the best one I've ever used. I'm happy to promote their business.

Kraczyna himself was a hardass, and seldom accommodating. This rattled the students, who were used to the American approach to teaching art, which is more a hands-on, tuck-you-in-at-night method of keeping people infantile than a rigorous education. I don't know exactly when it happened, or why, but art education in the States deteriorated into exercises in "creativity." This finger-painting paradigm has left entire generations of doodlers bereft of the intellectual training an artist ought to have: studying art is nowadays a doctor's note excusing one from the labors of reading, from the serious debate of serious ideas, from the combat of critique. Kraczyna, a native of Poland and citizen of Italy, studied under Hans Hoffman in New York well prior to this travesty, and either didn't understand the expectations of his students, or else looked on those expectations with contempt. I took a liking to him immediately.

This isn't to say he and I were always outwardly friendly to one another. He was often bitingly sarcastic to me, and I wasn't afraid of paying him back in kind. He baited me; I defied him. I sometimes found his critiques of my classmates' work shortsighted, and offered rebuttals, which led us to a mutual enjoyment of sparring. I often tried to spin this so that it seemed I was defending my classmates, but in reality I was only interested in the discussion of art and technique, and wanted to explore the truth. If all of this was half-theater, it was also half-daredevilry—a teacher challenging his pupil to work, and a pupil challenging his teacher to teach. During the half-hour break in our long class, he and I would often continue our debates while the other students left for coffee (I'd go out later, when class resumed, with impunity), ever with the same intensity. We sharpened each other's opinions, accepted each other's arguments, called each other's bluffs. If I'd had the funds and the visa, I would have stayed an extra year just to bicker on that level.

My classmates found all this confusing at first, since all they saw was our public skepticism and hostility. Then, away from the studio, I'd defend his merits as a teacher, and praise the sense of his lessons (most of them, anyway) whenever someone had cause for complaint. Soon enough, I found myself explaining his teaching and giving critiques outside of class, trying to help others adopt a better attitude and profit from what he could offer them. They seemed grateful to me for it, and I was glad to help where I could. After all, tuition isn't cheap—especially at Sarah Lawrence; I figure, you're paying for your classmates' contributions too, so everyone better pony up what they can (including myself) to make the damn thing worthwhile.

All in all, it was a period of fruitful investigation for me; and I still regret that my increasingly demanding study of literature forced me to withdraw from Kraczyna's class, after a mere four months of work. At his suggestion, however, I did continue working a few hours a week, and at the behest of my former classmates I participated in critiques. By the time May 1998 rolled around, I had produced enough material to merit representation in the greenhouse gallery at il Giardino in Florence—a unique space in which I'm glad I could show my art.

None of the pieces on display in that show are currently in my possession, except for this notebook, which was exhibited (with marked pages) on a lectern in the center of the greenhouse. Aside from that, I have the Plexiglas plate used to produce my Daedalus print, but others own the final prints; and the larger works I produced (not that they were brilliant) I left at il Bisonte, with the recommendation that they be used for someone's papier-mâché.

Let's see some drawings already