INVISIBLE CITIES: Leonia

The 40th of Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities and my fourteenth overall, Leonia. You can see the entire series of illustrations so far, which includes work from my collaborators Leighton Connor and Joe Kuth, at our tumblr Seeing Calvino.

"Nobody wonders where, each day, they carry their load of refuse. Outside the city, surely; but each year the city expands, and the street cleaners have to fall farther back. The bulk of the outflow increases and the piles rise higher, become stratified, extend over a wider perimeter. Besides, the more Leonia’s talent for making new materials excels, the more the rubbish improves in quality, resists time, the elements, fermentations, combustions. A fortress of indestructible leftovers surrounds Leonia, dominating it on every side, like a chain of mountains."

10 inches by 8 inches
acrylic paint and ink on watercolor paper
December 29, 2014

INVISIBLE CITIES: Clarice

(I have been so extraordinarily busy that forgot to post this here, even though it was posted on our Seeing Calvino tumblr almost a week ago. Apologies.)

The 37th of Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities and my thirteenth overall, Clarice. You can see the entire series of 37 illustrations so far, which includes work from fellow artists Leighton Connor and Joe Kuth, at our group art tumblr Seeing Calvino which is updated every Wednesday.

"And yet, almost nothing was lost of Clarice’s former splendor; it was all there, merely arranged in a different order, no less appropriate to the inhabitants’ needs than it had been before."

10 inches by 8 inches
ink and marker on watercolor paper
December 9, 2014

INVISIBLE CITIES: Adelma

The 34th of Calvino's Invisible Cities and my twelfth overall, Adelma, the city of the dead. You can see the entire series of 34 cities so far, which includes work from my peers Leighton Connor and Joe Kuth, at our tumblr Seeing Calvino, which is updated every Wednesday.

"I thought: 'If Adelma is a city I am seeing in a dream, where you encounter only the dead, the dream frightens me. If Adelma is a real city, inhabited by living people, I need only continue looking at them and the resemblances will dissolve, alien faces appear, bearing anguish. In either case, it is best for me not to insist on staring at them.'"

10 inches by 8 inches
acrylic paint, charcoal and ink on watercolor paper
November 18, 2014

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

A BESTIARY: Leviathan

14 inches by 11 inches
ink on watercolor paper
September 28, 2014

A BESTIARY: Karasu

14 inches by 11 inches
ink on watercolor paper
September 23, 2014

A BESTIARY: Judex

14 inches by 11 inches
ink and marker on watercolor paper
September 23, 2014

INVISIBLE CITIES: Aglaura

The 25th of Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities and my ninth overall, the colorless city Aglaura. You can see the entire series so far, along with work by my fellow artists Joe Kuth and Leighton Connor, at our group art tumblr Seeing Calvino which is updated every Wednesday with new art.

"So if I wished to describe Aglaura to you, sticking to what I personally saw and experienced, I should have to tell you that it is a colorless city, without character, planted there at random. But this would not be true, either: at certain hours, in certain places along the street, you see opening before you the hint of something unmistakable, rare, perhaps magnificent; you would like to say what it is, but everything previously said of Aglaura imprisons your words and obliges you to repeat rather than say."

10 inches by 8 inches
acrylic paint and ink on watercolor paper
September 16, 2014

INVISIBLE CITIES: Sophronia

The 22nd of Calvino's Invisible Cities and my eighth illustration for the project, the dual city known as Sophronia. You can see the entire series so far, along with amazing work from my fellow travelers Leighton Connor and Joe Kuth, at our group art tumblr Seeing Calvino, which is updated every Wednesday with new art.

"The city of Sophronia is made up of two half-cities. In one there is the great roller coaster with its steep humps, the carousel with its chain spokes, the Ferris wheel of spinning cages, the death-ride with crouching motorcyclists, the big top with the clump of trapezes hanging in the middle. The other half-city is of stone and marble and cement, with the bank, the factories, the palaces, the slaughterhouse, the school, and all the rest. One of the half-cities is permanent, the other is temporary, and when the period of its sojourn is over, they uproot it, dismantle it, and take it off, transplanting it to the vacant lots of another half city."

10 inches by 8 inches
ink on watercolor paper
August 27, 2014

INVISIBLE CITIES: Chloe

The nineteenth of Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities and my seventh illustration for the project, the city named Chloe. This was by far the most difficult piece to complete so far, but I am pleased with the final image. You can see the entire series so far, which includes works from my fellow travelers Leighton Connor and Joe Kuth, at our shared tumblr Seeing Calvino which is updated every Wednesday with a new City.

"A voluptuous vibration constantly stirs Chloe, the most chaste of cities. If men and women began to live their ephemeral dreams, every phantom would become a person with whom to begin a story of pursuits, pretenses, misunderstandings, clashes, oppressions, and the carousel of fantasies would stop."

10 inches by 8 inches
ink on watercolor paper
August 5, 2014