Iris by the gate Blair Pessemier Acrylic on canvas 14 x 20" 35 x 50 cm
Iris Dark Background Laurie Fox Pessemier Acrylic on canvas 20 x 12 50 x 30cm
Iris Yellow Background Laurie Fox Pessemier Acrylic/canvas 15 x 22.5" 37 x 56 cm
Behind our house Laurie Fox Pessemier Acrylic/canvas 12 x 16" 30 x 40cm
Iris at the wall Blair Pessemier Acrylic/canvas 14 x 20" 35 x 50cm
View from the Tower Laurie Fox Pessemier Acrylic/canvas 18 x 24 45 x 60 cm
Artnotes: Looking for a ... STAMP!
"I want another
job," the man behind the window says, in English, "you think I am
joking but I am not". In fact, I
just wanted him to stamp our passport, a now near-impossible feat in Europe. We listen to his qualifications. He'd be great on a security detail involving
international commercial shipping -- he knows lots about trucks, speaks several languages, young. In case you need someone.
We had just been to
the Swiss border (45 euros for a tax sticker for the car), only to turn around
to try to get a passport stamp showing our entry into Italy. No dice.
Despite our Schengen
Visa (it doesn't say Schengen anyplace on here, the Italian official tells us),
we are required to have documentation of our passage from France into Italy, to
validate our lease agreement. So, we
took the opportunity to drive up to the lovely Lake Como, and onto Lugano,
Switzerland to procure said documentation.
At our first go
around, we were waved through by the border patrol, despite protestations that
we wanted a stamp. "Go to the
Police in Como", he tells us. At a
Carbinieri office we sit in the waiting room with a deranged-looking partially
undressed man, while the only policemen on duty conducts a lengthy and
hysterical interview with a mother and her son.
The policeman eventually sends us to the Questra, where we meet Franco,
looking for another job.
Lake Como is more
beautiful than I imagined it: enormous green hills surrounding a lake deep in
the valley. The architecture is
wonderful, the city clean, the people are happy. Despite the poor weather we were having, it
was a great outing. We lunched on the
best risotto we've eaten to date.
It was our second
outing this week, the first to see the Boldini show in Forli. It was an extensive representation of Boldini
paintings -- he is often just associated with pictures of attenuated, flighty
women in evening dresses and pearls. He
actually is a marvelous portraitist, as well as landscape painter. He enjoyed the support and communal
inspiration of the Impressionist artists, and writers and musicians of the day
(portraitist of John Singer Sargent, Giuseppe Verdi, Robert de Montesquieu). We
continued our trek to the Adriatic, where we ate fried squid at a roadside
stand, and Harika and I frolicked in the sea.
Franco suggests to
us we try another border crossing, as he steps out from behind the counter and
gives us his resume. A dozing priest
awakes in his chair. Have the prayers
worked, it is his turn? We say goodbye
and Franco (thankfully) resumes his post.
