First morning in Venice. I woke up to a thank you message from one of the flight attendants from yesterday. Soon I was out the door for my first run in Venice. There was so much to see I hardly knew I was running. We were lucky to be in a spot with a pretty wide area to run all along the waterfront and up by the Grand Canal. We had a good loop and just had to add a little on to that to get 3.1 miles. Every view was gorgeous.
We had free hotel breakfast at this hotel as well. I need this to not sound like negativity or complaining but the food and the coffee here couldn't hold a candle to the hotel in Barcelona. Not that any of this was bad, it's just that the hotel in Barcelona did it all so well. Now that things were just average or above average, it just didn't seem as good. Still, free croissants, cheese and cappuccinos? Nothing to complain about there. My only beef with the breakfast here came on the first day and it introduced me to the Italian pigeon. The hotel had a beautiful courtyard with tables and chairs. I immediately knew I wanted to eat outside so I grabbed my food and my coffee and set everything down at a vacant table. I saw Esnipes and Singletary and turned to walk over to speak to them. Within seconds my table was covered with angry pigeons. They ate my food, drank my coffee, shoved me down and took my lunch money. It was a total loss. I tossed the plates and dishes, picked up my pride and marched back inside. The pigeons owned the courtyard. Lesson learned.
It was time to meet in the lobby to head out as a group. There were instructions and tickets to disperse so we waited in the TV room under a sweet map of Venice. Look at Katertot. I'm so glad she was on this trip. I really like her.
As I said, I was the Instagram photo taker and most of my photos are framed well. But either me or H-Dawg were missing from all of the group photos so I set the timer for this one. The phone was propped at a weird angle but it stayed for the photo. A little cropping and you've got a pic of the whole group before heading out for day 1 of the Venice Biennale.
While the group gathered in the grass to discuss their research and what they planned to see today, I slipped over to the sign and posted my art.
The whole group with my art!
The Biennale is a big deal in the art world. Perhaps the biggest deal. It is a giant art fair held every two years in Venice in two major locations that neighbor one another, The Giardini and The Arsenale. Today we had tickets to the Giardini which contained most of the individual country pavilions. Each country gets a building/space and they are responsible for selecting one or more artists to represent that country with an exhibit in that space. These are living artists and most of the work is done within the space of the two years between each event, so it's new, new stuff.
You could see it as the best of each country but I'm not sure what that even means. There's some sort of curator selecting the artist(s) for each country so maybe it's a really great artist or maybe it's just an artist who knows people. Regardless, it's a chance for the public to get to see some really cool art installations and exhibits. I never found the name of the artist who made the sharks playing guitar and ukulele on the roof of the Central Pavilion but I really liked those.
And here's where your eyes get blurry and your brain gets fuzzy. It's immediately an overload of visual candy. The Central Pavilion had a lot of different work in it that was unified by the theme "The Milk of Dreams".
Emily was not feeling great so she didn't come with us so I tried to be mindful of things she would like and I took photos for her. Of course I took photos of almost every skull and skeleton I saw.
The Central Pavilion was a lot really fast so I took the first opportunity to take a break outside in this nice little courtyard.
After a couple of photos it was back inside for more art.
This was a very large marble sculpture of a peach seed. When I was a kid we had a family friend who used a pocket knife to make a couple of quick cuts in a peach seed and he would turn it into a little monkey. I wish I could remember how he did that.
And now we get to the real reason I traveled 4,000 miles. One of the major sponsors of the Biennale is Swatch. I love and collect Swatches. I took a peek inside the gift shop early on so that I could be thinking about what I wanted. These were the two Biennale themed designs. I had the rest of the day to think it over.
By lunch time (which on this trip seemed to fall around 2:00 pm) Emily felt better and wanted to join us. I was able to talk her through riding the Vaporetto and getting to the ticket gate. Then I met her there to help her get in. She went off to catch up on art and we ducked into the on site restaurant. It was a very cool place. We scarfed down our food and got back to it.
In the room of eyes, they found their matching eye color. Sadly they did not have whatever multicolored eyes that match me.
Soon we were off to see the individual country pavilions. The US pavilion artist was Simone Leigh and her work was definitely worthy. It was great.
I think this was Hungary.
And I don't remember the country but this was so lifelike and well crafted many of us kept watching the human parts of the sculptures to see if they were breathing or blinking.
Sean and Katertot in one of the exhibits.
I think this was Brazil and it was one of the most enjoyable ones for me. Not only did it feature a butt you could lounge around on...
It also had these lips attached to the ceiling. As I moved through the exhibit, I kept looking, wondering about the lips. Just as I was about to leave I heard something and this red bag dropped out of the open lips. The bag started inflating.
Within a few minutes the bag inflated to take up most of the space in the room.
It stayed inflated for a bit and then slowly deflated and withdrew back up into the open lips. It was so great to watch. I got to watch it happen twice and it caught everyone off guard.
I also loved this one but I can't remember the country. Everything was so bright and fun.
The exhibits closed at 7:00 pm and we stayed until about 6:00 pm. We spent about 30 minutes in the gift shop where I decided on the white Biennale Swatch and then we made our way to the vaporetto stop.
As the official photographer, there was always something for me to do. Emily was feeling much better and very happy that she got to see the first day of the Biennale.
Jericho speed walked every exhibit and probably saw everything at least twice. He was also working on his poses.
And Katherine had an outfit planned for each day of the trip.
Each night I had to take a few minutes and send photos to people from the day.
We gathered a group and got a table on the water at a nearby restaurant. I had en exceptional lasagna, aperol spritz and limoncello. Sean had gelato every day, I had limoncello.
I was hoping to try a cannoli and tiramisu as soon as we arrived in Italy but so far I had been thwarted twice. I settled for a great pastry of some sort while everyone else had gelato by the water. These moments were some of the quietest moments in terms of hype and fanfare, but they were some of the most memorable. Watching night settle over the water in Venice while eating sweets with fun people. Very nice.
No comments:
Post a Comment