Escape; noun

An act or instance of escaping

• flight from confinement

• evasion of something undesirable

• distraction or relief from routine or reality (Merriam Webster dictionary)
  

In the midst of last winter, after yet another dreary day with darkness falling by 5 p.m., the frustration of the relentlessly horrible news and the needs of family and home responsibilities weighing me down, I scrolled through my emails. I read Patricia Miranda’s email about The Crit Lab’s summer trip to the Venice Biennale and a residency in the Italian Alps. I gaze longingly at the images. I imagine a whirlwind of art in Venice followed by a week at a rural residency… sitting outside, summer sun shining on me, facing the Alps, drawing, stitching my teabag pieces, and wandering the hills and medieval towns nearby.

Though always curious about the Venice Biennale, I never imagined going and here in front of me was the opportunity. Giving myself permission to take an international trip to look, think, and talk about art, filled me with excited anticipation and some trepidation. I check the dates on my calendar, and with an impulse very unlike my over-thinking self, I pay the deposit and hit the button to commit to going.

Arrival

I arrived in Venice after 22 hours of travel with fellow artist friend, Avery Syrig. Stepping from the train terminal I enter a new world. The Grand Canal lies before me, the sun bouncing and reverberating from water to the stone façades of the ancient buildings and stone churches. I’d thought there would be canals in certain areas in Venice as well as roads and cars. But no, it is a city of and bound by water. People walk everywhere, down narrow winding streets, through grand cobblestone plazas, and up over the canals on walking bridges. I did not realize how accustomed I was to the background hum of highway traffic, incessant honking horns, cars gunning their engines, train whistles and the drone of planes and helicopters overhead; an unwanted soundtrack of my life. Instead, there is the sound of water lapping against walls, the put-putting of boats, church bells chiming, of people talking with one another as they go about their daily tasks. I feel something tight loosen in my chest.

Taking it all in

Around every corner there is something I want to capture. My iPhone is always in hand, battery low. I exclaim one evening “is there any part of Venice that isn't beautiful?” The tinted stucco walls, constantly shifting and rippling canal reflections, swallows singing and swooping. Colorful laundry is hung to dry, the different patterns and colors reflecting each owner’s taste. Flowers spill from window boxes and fruiting trees hang out over sidewalks from private courtyards and gardens.

Every meal is like a work of art. Fruits perfectly ripened, rich aromatic coffee and shakeratos (shaken, foamy iced lattes), juicy tomatoes and burrata that made me purr. Fresh, simply prepared fish, Aperol spritz, flavorful olive oil and pasta. We leave the apartment at 9:30 a.m. and do not return until 10 p.m. in the evening, grateful for cool showers and air conditioning after hours spent in the heat, humidity and intense sunshine.

Art for days (literally)

The Biennale is inspiring and satisfying. I particularly respond to curator Cecilia Alemani’s decision to include a predominance of women and gender nonconforming artists. I appreciate the sections she calls “time capsules” and how these historical sections help to highlight artists previously excluded from historical canons that also set the current artists within that framework. I encounter artists with whom I was unfamiliar, whose work was often ahead of or contemporaneous with their well-known male counterparts. I submerge myself in the concepts, processes and materials: fiber, stitching, weaving, ceramic and glass work; tapestry-like paintings, magical realism, the human body, and evidence of the hand in much of the work I am most drawn to.

I am delighted to see a room full of Belkis Ayón’s large collagraphs and the paintings of Portia Zvavahera, allegorical, spiritual, and dreamlike that contain narratives passed on and told from generation to generation. Delicate egg-like plaster sculptures by Maria Bartuszová in the 1980s could be seen in any contemporary gallery today. In a time capsule there is the work of Aletta Jacobs, the first woman admitted to a Dutch University and for many years the only female doctor in the Netherlands. In 1897 she published “The Woman: Her Structure and Her Internal Organs,” with fold-out plates that she drew herself and papier-mâché replicas of the uterus during pregnancy; precise and life-like in miniature. I fell in love with Sandra Vasquez De La Horra’s incredible drawings impregnated with wax, depicting women’s bodies while simultaneously referencing mountains and landscapes. I sit beneath glimmering rafters to be mesmerized and lulled into mediation while watching Wu Tsang’s Of Whales video installation.

Equally impactful were vaporetto (waterbus) trips to the Islands of Murano, known for glass blowing and Burano, known for lacemaking. I wind through narrow streets, stumbling upon artisan workshops and watching people create, ever fascinated by tools of any trade. Lengthy conversations with shopkeepers in a hilarious mix of, Italian, a dialect, my mangled Spanish, English and vigorous hand gestures. Narrow cobbled streets give way to plaza after plaza with people sipping drinks, chatting and socializing, fountains whispering, the sun rosy and warm playing across the brightly painted buildings. In the evening, plazas with umbrellas and lights straight out of a van Gogh painting, whole families eating together and lingering over food and espresso, spritzers and gelato.

Onto the next adventure

I find Venice to be, in a word, rich. Rich with color and beauty, its people, the art, the architecture and the bittersweet awareness that this city is slowly sinking and being taken back by its watery canals. I feel the richness inside and cannot imagine leaving. But it is time to travel to the mountains to the Rural Residency for Contemporary Art.

Check back for Part 2 in a couple weeks…

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