INVISIBLE CITIES: Esmeralda

The 31st of Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities and my eleventh overall, Esmeralda, the city of many ways. You can see the entire series so far, which includes work from my friends Joe Kuth and Leighton Connor, at our Seeing Calvino tumblr which is updated every Wednesday.

"In Esmeralda, city of water, a network of canals and a network of streets span and intersect each other. To go from one place to another you have always the choice between land and boat: and since the shortest distance between two points in Esmeralda is not a straight line but a zigzag that ramifies in tortuous optional routes, the ways that open to each passerby are never two, but many, and they increase further for those who alternate a stretch by boat with one on dry land."

10 inches by 8 inches
acrylic paint and ink on watercolor paper
October 21, 2014

INVISIBLE CITIES: Baucis

The 28th of Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities and my tenth overall, Baucis, the city in the clouds. You can see the entire series so far, which includes work from my fine friends Leighton Connor and Joe Kuth, at our Seeing Calvino tumblr which is updated every Wednesday.

"After a seven days’ march through woodland, the traveler directed toward Baucis cannot see the city and yet he has arrived. The slender stilts that rise from the ground at a great distance from one another and are lost above the clouds support the city. You climb them with ladders. On the ground the inhabitants rarely show themselves: having already everything they need up there, they prefer not to come down. Nothing of the city touches the earth except those long flamingo legs on which it rests and, when the days are sunny, a pierced, angular shadow that falls on the foliage."

10 inches by 8 inches
acrylic paint and ink on watercolor paper
October 7, 2014