Venezia!

Schools over but I have a bit more to catch up on before a look at Venice.

Here is my final sculpture piece.  Its not exactly what I pictured when I started it, but I'm pretty happy with it.  

I got a little "photo shoot" happy with it and set up some lighting and background.  

This is the "front" of the piece.  I consider it the front mainly because I think its compositionally the best side. 

For my final pastel piece we were to choose a relatively contemporary piece and use their composition and subject matter to create a piece from observation.  I chose René Margritte's Son of Man because I thought it would be fun to do a surreal piece from observation.

It's not the best picture, I just didn't have good enough lighting in my room to take another.  Anyway, I'm happy with it and it got some good comments in my final critique.  

And now on to Venice.  Last week Casey and I went to Venice for a couple days.  We got really lucky with plenty of sunshine.  Don't let it fool you though, it was still pretty cold and there was still snow left over from a couple days prior to our visit.  

Luckily we came prepared with thick coats!

Venice is pretty interesting.  I think its cool that this is the parking lot for the church.  There were come buildings where steps just emerged from the water the the door.

Basilica San Marco.  This piazza was pretty ridiculous.  It was huge with tons of intricate arches around a million windows.  It seems that intricacy was a big part of Venetian architecture.  Anyway, after walking around the piazza and take picture, we stopped by the gondola parking lot and had a snack.  Then it was on to...

The Peggy Guggenheim Collection.  Its pretty much her old house filled with some of the most impressive modernist art.  There was Kandinsky, Margritte, Picasso, Tanguy, Duchamp, Dalí, Fontana, Marini and a huge Calder mobile.  So cool!  It was such a treat to see it all.  After walking around the whole city and spending a good portion of time at the Collection, we ate a late lunch and headed for a warm hotel in Mestre, a city just across the bridge.

The next day we woke up early and headed back into Venice.  It was beautiful in the morning.  There was a calm, tranquil, cool feeling to it.

This pretty much sums it up.  The water was so still and the sun had such a warm color.  

But don't forget, it was still freezing (as evidence of the ice on the boat)

We made our way to the Basilica della Salute, built for Mary of health that helped the city through the plague.  Inside the octagonal shaped basilica were a number of renaissance paintings and sculptures, including a painting by Titian, probably one of the most famous Venetian artists.  

Here's the shadow of the top of the basilica cast on a building across the way.  

After making our way through the city again we headed back to Mestre to check out.  

Right across the street from the hotel was a wall full of awesome art.  We went over to take a look and realized that the art works continued around the wall onto the other side into a big parking lot.  The other buildings that enclosed the lot also had huge street art works.  Our conclusion was that it was so event that the city had and the big street artists in Italy came to leave their mark.