globalmoxie: Fiesole: An Afternoon at the Paolo Conti

Yesterday we attended a family art workshop on Italian Futurism presented by our friend Molly, who owns and runs LetterArteMente from her homebase in Pistoia, Italy's 2017 cultural capital.

The workshop was in Fiesole, at the Fondazione e Museo Primo Conti, on the backside of town, down the hill a bit.

The property Conti bought in 1945 as residence and studio.

Paolo Conti, self-portrait.

More Conti.

I think I saw this tipo in Piazza San Marco.

More Conti.

This. This. This, people. This is the reason. We can do something like this, as a family, on a whim, with the kids. Drive up the hill to Fiesole. This is a main reason why we chose to give it all away in the US and relocate to Florence.

The workshop was presented in collaboration with Jane Harman, a local art restorer of repute, originally from Glasgow but now seamlessly Florentine. It focused on Futuristic typography, as we all learned about what words meant for Italian futurists, and how they liked them to look, and why, and what colors they wanted to use most often. Jane had wood, and a jigsaw, and sandpaper and various files, and letter stencils. The 8 or so families got to work.

Eleanor invites herself into another family's project

Mmm ... we got to less work. Eleanor was super into it, but too little to do any of it. As soon as she saw the table with paints and brushes her fingers started itching, much like her mommy's. "I want to paint, I want to paint!" she whispered to me.

Vic was having none of it and eventually calmed down enough to read his Legolog. Eleanor continued to explore and try everything out.

E. and I painted a few wood blocks. We all ate snacks, and inspected the tools of the artist himself, carefully preserved in situ, along with a human skull.It was really fun - such a treat to get out among beauty and get into some high culture. We will be doing more of Molly's events!