Monday, April 01, 2024

Artnotes: Tricked Out

 

31 March 2024  Stimigliano RI   ITALIA
Baffled Bunny   Laurie Fox Pessemier    Acrylic/canvas    9.5 x 12  24 x 30cm  250.00 

Walking up the street today I noticed someone’s name on their mailbox.   It was big letters, edge to edge “FARAONA”.  It had the sense of being cut out of a newspaper.   When you see big letters like that, placed near one another, on paper, it gives a different sense than reading it on a screen.

I enjoy type a lot and recently downloaded a font "Barbra" on my computer, which I used with the Pompeii book.

Three Peppers  Laurie Fox  Pessemier  Acrylic/newspaper 17 x 23.5"  43 x 60cm  250.00

We bought the Repubblica this weekend, with the “D” (for Donna (woman)) section.   There were in fact two extra sections, in an extra large format.   They had the best styles in there I’d seen in a long time, from gossamer prints to sequined handbags.  Some styles made me laugh out loud, others were clearly AI assisted, but a vast majority of them were just wonderful. 

I can spend an hour now, looking at the rotogravure, deciding what is AI or not.  I think that publications should be required to list if they are AI, or photoshop-ed, or in some way technologically tricked out.  It doesn’t have to be on the photo itself, just a section in the back of the publication.  Today I saw a model’s lower leg that rivalled the length of the upper leg and torso combined (and it wasn’t the angle). 

Who cares? You might say.  Maybe I don’t have enough to do.

Easter Egg   Blair Pessemier    Acrylic/canvas  12  x 12"  .30 x 30 cm  350.00

We are in Stimigliano for Easter.  I watch the little girls in their frilly frocks going to church; men wearing white shirts.  I am wearing my Easter dress, which purported to be embroidered, but in fact is a photo print of embroidery.  You could be fooled if you were drunk and the room were dimly lit. 

We met friends and their friends over coffee.  A honeybee, in a boon for the fruit trees, is flying through the corridor of our house.  He’s a beauty!  We are inundated with flowers and budding leaves:  pale green, pink and white.   I wore my new dress of those colors, and a hat when we went out to walk Berlino del Bosco this morning.   Those Repubblica models have nothing on me.

Luigi's Begonias  Laurie Fox Pessemier   Acrylic/canvas  16 x 13"  40  x 33cm  450.00