Taking all of Firenze home to Cape Cod

It was a daunting task to pack for three months; what to wear and what to take for making art. There were additional electronic needs; cameras, both video and still, computer and all of the assorted batteries, chargers, adapters and connectors.  In this regard, I had a lot of technical assistance from my children and husband.  In addition I asked Alyssa to label all the power cords so I would not get them mixed up.  This turned out to me a very helpful idea.

Along with packing clothes for all possible weather, I needed art some art supplies.  I did not take many art supplies, because I was looking forward to trying new inks and printmaking papers.  I was able to get pretty much anything I wanted at the two art supplie stores near my studio.  Salvini and Raggaci provided great choices in paper for book arts and printmaking.  In addtion there were many other specialized stores for book cloth , marbleized paper and what ever else I needed.  SRISA provided me with all the tools, inks and equipment that I needed.  I am in love with Mingani paper, and I am wondering how much it will cost me here.

I basically took a totally empty studio and completely filled it up.  That takes me to last week when I looked around trying to figure out how to get all of this stuff home.  I ended up building two large portfolios for my prints and purchasing a tube which was cut in half.  I bought  a lot of bubble wrap and tape and three large suitcases.  We borrowed a scale to stay within the alloted weight of 23 kilograms.

And then I made good friends with the shipper down the street.  Everthing arrived safely on the plane with us.  We were happy we paid the extra 18 euros for the shrink wrapping of two of the duffles.  Two more boxes are on their way.  Some things got left behind.

I wanted to take all of Italy back with me……..maybe we did.