The Anti-Conjuror

 

Honest, I am not the most dedicated, organized, or consistent keeper of sketchbooks.  That said, I do keep one in my purse, and one by the little television in my studio.  One of my favorite things to do when I just want to more or less relax and watch something I've recorded on the DVR is to pause the program and quick draw something from the screen.

I have a an inexpensive little (3.5x5.5 inches) notebook I bought at the drugstore last spring, thinking I'd fill it up and use it in a future journaling/sketching workshop for homeless high school kids.  I wanted it simple - just black pen and maybe a colored marker.  The notebook is slowly filling up, with jottings from trips, ideas from art books, sketches of things in the house, quotes and so on.  Anyway, I did this sketch while watching a show called The Illusionists, who turned out to be magicians working in various styles.

Dan Sperry bills himself as  the "Anti-Conjuror" and has gothic makeup, lots of tattoos, and a really interesting act.  I ended up liking his sketch best, complete with a fairly wonky job on the hand on the left side of the drawing.  I like the way the drawing ignores the center fold of the notebook, like the simple use of color, and I like the use of a frame.  I've been looking at books concerned with cartooning, and they use a frame, which make the drawing more appealing on the page, I think.

This may affect the design of my future pages.

Solstice

Today is the start of the winter solstice - a dark day.  I woke this morning to the dimmest of light, and a steady rain.  It was hard to haul myself out of bed, though the singing and tap dancing of the cat on my half asleep body was encouragement to get up.

The good thing about dark crummy weather is that I spend lots of time in the studio, though lately much of that studio time has been spent doing Christmas crafty things, organizing and cleaning, and reading about art - and not so much making of art.  Still, I have been playing around with some painting, and some collage work.

5x7 inches, paper collage

I am lucky to have friends who save old magazines and books for me.  This  little collage was assembled from a painting from a tattered guide to the Uffizi Gallery, a book of Japanese nature photography, and a picture of a butterfly from a very old National Geographic.  

I keep two separate files of collage papers. One contains all colors and textures from papers I have painted, or magazine pages that I have altered in some way. The other file contains photos and classic paintings, mostly from vintage books and magazines, but also old maps.  I have categories like Faces, Hands and Figures, Sacred Images, Animals, Birds, Insects, Plants and Nature, Diagrams and Graphs, Text and Numbers, and so on. Images for each category get stashed in a large zip close plastic bag.  I try to take out no more than three bags to rummage through to find materials that go together for any one collage.  

I like how this one turned out, and think it could be the beginning of a series

A Month of Orange: Olivia, for JKPP

Olivia, for Julia Kay's Portrait Party

8x10 inches, colored pencil on tan sketchbook paper

Volunteer Halloween activities and activities outdoors have taken up much of October, and I have spent precious little time in the studio.  I did make a series of note cards, using a Gelli plate and fallen leaves, and I experimented with painting over photo copies of vintage found photos using shaving cream and acrylic paint, but I hadn't really worked on any portraits for Julia Kay's Portrait Party (an online group in which I find lots of inspiration) - until last night.  It has turned chilly and the rain is making all the fallen oak and maple leaves into a sodden mess, so the only sensible thing for me to do was sit down to play with colored pencils.

I took a photo that Olivia provided to the group, altered it in Photoshop, then worked from the cropped and altered image.  I simplified the large shapes as much as I could and still maintain a recognizable image, then worked in a very limited palette, with texture plate under much of the paper to add visual interest.  I rather like it, though I need to do more to decide if this style is one I really like.

Anyway, Happy Halloween to anyone who ventures here.  It's raining in southern Wisconsin, so I doubt we'll get many - if any - trick or treat children.  More Reese's peanut butter cups for me.

A Month of Orange: Poe, Stoker and Shelley

The photo doesn't have anything to do with writers of horror, but it is the shelf in my kitchen. My orange for the day.

I agreed weeks ago to a couple of fund raising events at the local historical society.  There was an afternoon event where I used dice to tell fortunes for children and their parents.  I've done it before, but not for years.  I found directions for "divination by dice" online and used the regular fortunes for the adults and "softened" versions for the little ones.  Inevitably at least one person stops, and gets a funny look, and says, "How did you know...?"  But really, it's just a game.

The evening event involved three people who did fifteen minute readings from classic horror stories in the darkened and decorated Lincoln-Tallman restorations.  I prepared a reading from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and performed in costume, in the bedroom where Abraham Lincoln stayed in 1859.  I had a good time - and I hope my listeners did too. I wish I had a chance to hear the Poe and selection from Dracula, but you can't have everything.

A Month of Orange: A Walk in the Woods

I've been busy trying to take more photos of old headstones at Oak Hill cemetery for Find A Grave, and also getting my reading from Frankenstein ready for the RCHS event on Saturday.  And I've slowly been clearing out flower beds, though I hate to pull out anything before the frost actually kills it.  Still, it is a delight to be outdoors.

This afternoon my husband and I drove to Carver-Roehl park to just take a leisurely walk, listen to the squirrels making a racket in the dry leaves, the woodpeckers in the trees.  Winter will come, soon enough.

A Month of Orange: Indian Summer

We are having a few days of Indian summer, warm days following the first killing frost of the season.  I still cannot bring myself to pull up all the annual plants that are still blooming, even though I know I should take advantage of the mild days before cold comes again.  I have been making sure to get outside for a while each day, even with my script to prepare for the Halloween event at the Tallman house this weekend - a 15 minute reading from Frankenstein.  That will be done - but weather like this cannot last much longer.

I couldn't post yesterday because we were in Madison with out long-time friends watching the Badger football game from the warmth and comfort of a State street bar.  We weren't sure if this was the 39th or 40th year of watching a Badger game together, but we were possibly the oldest people in the eating and drinking establishment.

Finding orange is getting a little harder, especially if I want to find a photo that is not either a pumpkin or a flaming orange maple tree.  Still, nothing wrong with either of those.

This is a giant pumpkin from the Peck farm stand between Spring Green and Madison. Love the giant pumpkin.  There used to be one nearer, perched on top of a local silo, but storms blew it down  few years ago, smashed it to smithereens - and it has never been replaced.

A Month of Orange: Pink Pumpkins

We saw these "pink" pumpkins at a farm stand on Monday - to me they look more peach than pink, but hey! 

I've been busy the last couple days with my twilight cemetery tours - Chill at Oak Hill.  I dressed up in black Victorian garb and led 40-50 people each evening through the older parts of our historic cemetery, telling some of the creepier stories I know -  a terrible well digging accident, a murder/suicide, a lynching, three different clairvoyants, and a couple of supposed hauntings.  Actually it was fun for me, and I was excited by how interested people seemed. I wish I had a photo of the beautiful sunset each night, but I was too busy to worry about finished before sunset to worry about taking pictures.

A Month of Orange: Wisconsin Hillsides

This is another photo from our weekend jaunt along the Mississippi River, and the driftless areas of western Wisconsin.  What is there to say that isn't already clear here?  We live in a state blessed with low key beauty which seems to peak on warm sunny days in October.  It is then that our trees, every bit as pretty as those in places like New England, change daily in shades of gold, russet, and flaming red, set off by fields alternating green and gold.

It's hard to see scenes like this, spotted from a wayside park on a county road, unless a person decides to abandon the four lane highways, and slow down.  Of course we have the luxury of being retired, and no longer in much of a hurry.

Fall Song

Another year gone, leaving everywhere
its rich spiced residues: vines, leaves,

the uneaten fruits crumbling damply
in the shadows, unmattering back

from the particular island
of this summer, this NOW, that now is nowhere

except underfoot, moldering
in that black subterranean castle

of unobservable mysteries – - -roots and sealed seeds
and the wanderings of water. This

I try to remember when time’s measure
painfully chafes, for instance when autumn

flares out at the last, boisterous and like us longing
to stay – - – how everything lives, shifting

from one bright vision to another, forever
in these momentary pastures.

- Mary Oliver

A Month of Orange: Great River Road

We have a personal tradition of every autumn heading out, in the convertible if weather allows, and driving much of the Great River Road along the Mississippi River - Wisconsin's West Coast.  Sunday was unseasonably warm and summer-like, so we filled up the cat bowl, threw some clothes in a gym bag, and took off.

 Our first stop was the Harbor View Cafe in Pepin - best known as the childhood home of Laura Ingalls Wilder.  Pepin a a very small town right on Lake Pepin, which was beautiful Sunday, filled with sailboats.  We didn't make it to Pepin until after one in the afternoon, but we still had a wait, so popular is this eatery.  I started with butternut squash soup, delicately seasoned with lime and cumin, and very good indeed.  The main course was fine too, though not orange, so not pictured here.  It was risotto balls filled with melted cheese with a side of roasted vegetables.  Too bad we live so far away from The Harbor View.

We didn't have any idea of how crowded the highways and little towns would be on Sunday.  Apparently everyone with either a convertible or a motorcycle was out, enjoying the blue skies and warm temperatures. It was something of a shock, although everyone was so happy that it was hard to even object to the roar of the Harleys.

After spending the night in Trempealeau, we headed to Lacrosse for some views from Granddad's Bluff.  I had seen the summer view several times, but never the colors of autumn.

After that we cut back across the state, sticking to the small county roads that twist through the hills and coulees of the driftless area of western Wisconsin. 

Our trip home took us to Peck's Farm Market near Spring Green, where I indulged in some time at the petting zoo (I have a weakness for the white deer and the goats), bought some apple butter for morning toast, and gawked at the pumpkins and squash.

It was a fine little jaunt.  Perfect, pretty much, with lots of shades of orange to discover.

A Month of Orange: Fresh Farmers Market Carrots

Is there anything as fine as really fresh vegetables from a local farmers market?  These sweet beauties caught my eye on Saturday. Those odd looking greenish brown items on the left are ground cherries, which also are quite nice, though not so versatile as the carrots.

I'm feeling silly tonight - thought I'd share a line from the late great Shel Silverstein:

What did the carrot say to the wheat? Lettuce rest, I'm feeling beet. 

A Month of Orange: Pumpkin Patch Painting

I have gotten out of the habit of daily painting the past month or so.  This time of year I want to be outside as much as possible, knowing that cold weather is on the way.

 

Pumpkin Patch, 5x7 inches, oil on paper

Habits, including good ones, can fade.  Since I prefer to keep my painting habit, I sat down a few days ago with a small scrap of mat board and did this little study of some pumpkins.  I put rather a lot of color in the acrylic under painting, and tried to leave a bit showing when I added the oil paint.

It isn't a masterpiece, but the colors are cheerful, and it fits the season.  It's going to the gallery today.

A Month of Orange: Lobster Roll

OK, I'm cheating, but I had to show off my lunch from our trip last month.  I'm counting the toasted roll and fries as orange.  We took a Holland America cruise from Montreal, to Quebec, to Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia, to Bar Harbor, and finished up in Boston.  It was great fun.  Beautiful scenery, light houses, flowers, history, the works.

When we tendered in to Bar Harbor, the day was not very nice.  It was cold and raining.  Luckily for us, we had spent a week in Acadia National Park about twenty years ago, and had wandered up and down touristy Bar Harbor then, when the weather was warm and sunny.  The weather being what it was this particular day, we ducked into one of the first restaurants we saw near the water, and I ordered this wonderful lobster roll with sweet potato fries and (to quote the young woman who served us) a "wicked hoppy" IPA.  When I took this photo I had already polished off a cup of clam chowder so delicious and filled with tender clams that I wanted to purr like a cat.

There is nothing more to say.  That lunch was just about perfect.

A Month of Orange: Road Trip

Sometimes we take out our convertible for a drive on the back roads.  That's what we did yesterday afternoon.  Actual designated Rustic Roads are nice, but lots of ordinary rural roads are long on beauty and short on aggressive traffic.

I took this photo through the windshield of the car.  Do those field of picked corn count as orange?

How about this not-so-rustic roadside farm stand?

We both enjoy taking the Colsac III ferry at Merrimac.  It's free, and a grand way to see the Wisconsin River.  The life preserver is orange - and so is the trim on the railings.

We ended up in the town of Roxbury, at a supper club called the Dorf Haus Supper Club.  I suspect we were the only people there who didn't know everyone else.  The bartender made a fine old fashioned (a must for Wisconsin supper clubs), and the German fare was altogether satisfying.  I liked their decorated entrance, too.

A Month of Orange: Silk Wreath

What a joy it is to be able to be outside this time of year!  Today skies were blue, the weather was moderate, and the trees are starting to turn just a bit.

My orange for today is an old silk wreath I hang inside on a door with colored glass.  I like Halloween, but I tend to put out decorations that are just seasonal, not much that is meant specifically for a holiday.  That's not counting my plastic light up pumpkin, of which I am unreasonably fond.

Our house is full of harvest gold.  When we moved in in 1990 I was wild to get rid of it, but after a while I just gave up and embraced it.  At least this time of year the old fashioned color looks good - or at least appropriate. 

A Month of Orange: Painting at the Neighbor's Place

Some folks just have a sense of how to decorate outdoors.  Me, not so much. I plant, and sometimes I water or weed, but I don't decorate.

Down the street and around the corner neighbor is a retired art teacher, and it shows in her back garden.  About a month ago she showed up at my door and invited me to come paint or draw at her place.  Even though I am something of a loner, I said I would, and I showed up with a sketchbook. I did draw - nothing to write home about, but I also took some reference photos.  This delightful woman has all sorts of potted plants, bird baths, feeders, sculptures, and so on.  I liked the red here in the chicken and the terra cotta pots.

Close enough to orange for me.

A Month of Orange: Construction Signs and Barriers

Janesville has had more than its fair share of road and street destruction/construction this summer.  First one half of Main Street, then the other was dug up right down to the water mains.  Stage one of the project is mostly done, though there are no plantings yet to replace all the trees and shrubs and planters that were removed.  At least half the street is finished.  The other half has some concrete now, though the sidewalks still must be reconfigured, lighting put back in, and who knows what else.

It is a mess, though we are assured by city officials that the downtown is experiencing a rebirth, will be better than ever when this phase of roadwork is complete.  I hope so, and I hope that people who have been scared out of downtown this year so far, gotten out of the habit of visiting downtown businesses, will return once all this orange disappears.

A Month of Orange: Impatiens

Now that it is flannel shirt weather, the impatiens that drooped during hot weather have perked up.  They'll look good until they get zapped by a hard frost.  The older I get the more difficult it is for me to maintain long beds of flowers, so I've taken taken to scattering around large plastic pots of the shade loving flowers in my garden.  An added benefit is that if frost is forecast early in the fall, I can drag the pot into the garage over night and keep the color going a little longer.

Sometimes less is more.

The Peace of Wild Things
By Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

A Month of Orange: Mums

The weather is cooling down, and some of the annual flowers have already taken a one way trip to the compost heap.  Cool nights and damp weather agrees with the garden mums and the pansies that have stepped up to take the place of the summer exhausted plants.  I like this cobalt blue pottery planter, but discovered that any old plastic pot can show a pop of color with just some hardware store spray paint.  The blue pot on the left is an example.

Challenging Myself - A Month of Orange

I decided that I need a distraction from distressing national and local news stories, worries about a sick beloved kitty, guilt over neglecting exercise and not doing artwork.  So it occurred to me to take on a little challenge, something positive. 

The colors in our yard are gradually changing, and I began putting a few autumn decorations out, and many of them feature some shade of chrome yellow, or orange.  I will keep an eye open for those colors, photograph them, and share them here.  Maybe I can find some good quotes or poems to go along.

This photo is of a black eyed Susan vine.  It's an annual, planted to replace the honeysuckle vine that finally reached the end of its days.  For weeks I thought the seeds were duds, didn't sprout, but then a couple weeks ago I checked the trellis on the south side of the house and there they were.  ll that was needed was patience.

Nothing Gold Can Stay
Robert Frost, 1874 - 1963

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

Summer is Over

This week in southern Wisconsin has been glorious - blue skies, temperatures in the 70's, low humidity, few bugs.  These are the sort of days that when I was teaching, inside a cement block room all day, I wanted more than anything to be outdoors.  I appreciate my freedom to come and go, to paint my front door, plant a pretty mum, photograph at the cemetery, take a top down ride on a country road.

But, summer was good too.  I backed away from entering my art in many shows.  I did enter two WRAP (Wisconsin Regional Art Program) shows, and came away with mixed feelings.  I enjoyed both presenter/judges - each as very accomplished and enthusiastic.  But neither struck me as being a very articulate judge.  I can accept differences in taste and opinion, but I want whoever is judging the show to present clear criteria for what makes one piece better than another.  Simply saying "I liked it" isn't enough, and neither is the perennial lament that the show was difficult to judge.  Sure it is.  But the judge's job is to have, and to apply, reasonable criteria and explain it to the people did the work, and paid for the privilege to show it and have it judged.  For the judge to admit they know little about sculpture, or photography, or abstraction, and then go on to judge anyway is a disservice to everyone.  Maybe there can be two people at these events, a presenter and a different person as a judge. I don't know.

I went to fewer Monday evening figure drawing sessions than in previous years, mostly because through much of the summer it seemed that Mondays evenings were stormy.  The studio is about twenty miles away, and sessions are in the evening, so if the weather is bad I generally just stay home.  That said, I went to about four sessions, and did some drawing that I enjoyed.  The last one I attended was a month ago, and I only took out the sketches to spray fix this morning.  I'm always surprised by them, when they've been put away for a while, and usually like them better after that breathing time passes.

 This weekend is the State WRAP event in Madison.  My painting didn't win any special award, though my little artist trading card sized painting was chosen to be included in a calendar, and sold, which was nice.  I look forward to the social event on Friday evening and the speaker on Saturday.  It's humbling to see how much good work non-professional artists around the state are doing.

New Collages

I go in streaks, painting for a while, then going back to cutting and pasting.  On Friday I drove to Madison to deliver a painting to a WRAP show at the Pyle Center, and took the rest of the morning to visit Artist and Craftsman Supply, and the galleries at the Overture Center and the Chazen.  My favorite show was at the James Watrous Gallery, a retrospective of the work of Madison artist/illustrator David McLimans.  I had never heard of the man, but his collages of animals and insects created from bits of maps spoke directly to my heart.  So much vision vision and skill!  Unfortunately, he died of a heart attack last year.  Why had I missed his work before? Anyway, I wanted very much to clear away the paints for a bits and get out my own papers.

These are three recent collages I did, all from my stashes of found and altered papers. All are six by six inches, on gessoed watercolor paper, designs inspired by examples in a book by Randel Plowman.  Some of my old and now disliked watercolors are hidden underneath. 

Waste not, want not.

Revisiting Vintage Family Photo

12x24 inches, oil and collage on paper

This is a work in progress, something quite different from my usual approach to painting from old candid photos, much brighter, more stylized.  The original photo is of my grandmother, Bernice Tess, and her good friend, Elizabeth Thompson. I have several photos of them and their families together at the beach, hiking, on driving vacations and so on.  But the picture of Liz and Grandma reclining by the shore has always tickled me.  My goal here was to drastically simplify the image, play with patterned paper for their blankets, and use color for decorative effect, rather than try to imagine what the actual scene might have looked like.  I still need to paint over patterned paper at the bottom, and add shadows under the women, and I am still trying to decide whether or not to define their faces more.  Right now their indistinct faces appeal to me.

However it turns out, I'm having fun.

Community Figure Drawing

The one area where I have learned to work a bit larger comfortably is at my summer session of figure drawing.  This summer it seems like nearly every Monday evening featured thunder storms, some of them memorable, so I missed a couple for those, and last week I had a senior moment and drove the twenty or so miles to the session only to discover I had forgotten my drawing materials.  Duh.

But the week the weather was fine, and I loaded the car early in the afternoon so there was no forgetting.  Our model, Will, is very easy going a comfortable, and all went well. 

I usually do ll the shorter poses on Canson "Biggie" sketchpads with charcoal.  I like the short poses, which allow for variety, and lots of practice. Also models can hold more interesting poses for short periods of time, unlike the longer poses which need to be something a person can hold for 20 or more minutes.

The last poses of the evening are a little longer, 20-40 minutes.  I don't especially want to work on this sort of sketch more than twenty minutes, just because by that time I am usually getting tired, and I am not interested in tremendously detailed drawings.  There are a couple artists who campaign for the longer poses, so at the end of the evening I just leave early.  This time I rather liked my pencil drawing of the model, though one hand never was resolved in the time allowed.  Still - I enjoyed the session.

Not So Big

So, I swore I'd work larger, and I lied.

This afternoon, after some chores were out of the way I sat down in the upstairs studio and looked at the bigger-than-usual abstract on the wall, looked at a pile of 5x7 inch pieces of "old dog" watercolors that were torn up and gessoed, and decided I wasn't in the mood for abstraction. I wanted to see what I could do with an old photo I bought at the consignment shop last spring.  A new dog from an old one.

I enjoy working from old photographs, like the chance to really examine them, find the parts that speak to me, and see if I can make an interesting composition.  What I found most touching in the photo was the joy I imagined I saw in the dog, standing on his hind legs, his head inclined toward the man.  I did a little study on tracing paper, and taped it into my notebook, making an effort to simplify and combine shapes.  I wanted the finished painting to be more abstracted than it ended up being, but unlike some of my recent efforts, it didn't hurt my eyes.

Maybe I'll try it again later, only larger.

Or not.

Thinking Big - Er

It's funny how circumstances can conspire to point a person in a new direction.  I have always liked abstract art, admired the ambiguity, the boldness, and the grand scale of paintings by people like Mark Rothko, Richard Diebenkorn, Franz Kline, or Helen Frankenthaler.  Last winter and early spring I found myself reading books about Abstract Expressionists, and my fascination increased.  So, I decided to take a chance and sign up for a class in abstract painting taught by Emmett Johns, at the Peninsula Art School in Fish Creek, Wisconsin, two hundred miles north of my home.

I had admired Johns' paintings for years, and over Memorial Day weekend I dropped in to his studio to look at his work again, chat with him, and get a feeling for what a class with him might be like.  I felt optimistic after that, and went home to read, gather together materials and make arrangements for the four day class.  It was last week, and I am recovering nicely, thank you.

Emmett Johns is a fine painter, and an amiable man.  Peninsula Art School is a well appointed facility, conveniently located 10 minutes from my brother and sister-in-law's house, where I get to stay and socialize.  The class was comprised of a good mix of men and women, a range of ages, and as far as I could tell, all people of good will.  However, at the end of four days I had a pitifully small pile of pitifully small nonrepresentational abstract work - far less than anyone else.  This is not me being self-deprecating. I speak truth.

What happened?  I am still mulling it over, and have lots of questions.  Am I just too timid?  Are the physical movements too unfamiliar to me, working on a much larger scale?  Am I too parsimonious, too cheap with my materials?  Am I disoriented by an unfamiliar environment with people talking around me, my paints and brushes hiding in new places?  Is it a combination of all these factors?

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. And yes.

I should know by now that I process and implement ideas incrementally, often over months and even years after a workshop.  It has happened before, and probably will again. But still, I felt bad, like I made a bad showing.  Gotta get over that, and gotta play more with working larger, even if it means working on the basement floor sometimes.

These are a few photos of Emmett going to work on a demonstration piece, painted with acrylic, on a large piece of rag board (mat board).  The final piece looked nothing like what I thought it might, and was more attractive than my photo indicates.

Silly Chickens

I recently was feeling the need to re-purpose some wimpy old watercolors, so I dug into the "recycle" stash and covered a couple with gesso, then felt free to play.  This started out with lots of layers of yellow ochre, nickle gold, some blue stenciling and I don't know what all. Then I used vine charcoal to draw the birds, fixed that, then layered some thin veils of white over the top, and added some splashes of red.

Fun.

11x14 inches, acrylic on paper

Photos from Italy - Much Later

What has come over me? I seem unable to do anything except work outdoors, all messy, sweaty, hard things like digging out creeping bellflower from the perennial beds, or scrubbing, scraping and repainting the deck, or hauling around bags of mulch.  Thing is, here in beautiful southern Wisconsin the summer season isn't all that long, and if these things do not get done fairly soon, there is really no point in doing them at all.

I'm looking at all of this as good healthy exercise, then swallowing some ibuprofen.

Anyway, these are some of my nicest photos from our April cruise.  I'm not even bothering to identify them, since all these lovely stops have run together in my memory. We visited Sardinia, Sicily, Rome and the Vatican, and Camogli and some other villages on the Italian Rivera.  It was sunny and warm, and already seems like a dream.