Artists and Patrons

What I remember the most of the streets of Florence it is not the architecture, but the illuminated windows of the small antique shops.
In a city-museum the variety of exhibitions ranges from lazer sculpture shows to precious little collectibles displayed in store front windows with the same care they set up the shows at the Uffizi and the Palazzo Pitti.
These windows contain the remnants of past lives of wealthy patrons who loved to collect the useless and excessive, the special and the custom made, the decorative, the sublime.
The city carries gracefully the tradition of the artifact made for the privileged lover of the arts who, like a Pope gives his materialistic benediction to the talented artist who then creates the commissioned piece.
Artists and patrons have long been gone but the commissions survived.
Now they are displayed in glass cases, on rich fabrics, on a prominent spot. The objects lie there, seemingly inert, arousing desire to the window shoppers and the collectors.

Window shopping in Italy

Suitcase Suite #14

Kitchen, stove, table, bed, sink, shower...

Life dances around them

peacefully

while

elsewhere,

people scream and shout and fight.

In protest

of

change that 

sweeps away

a life style.

And 

I,

who live

here, 

in a peaceful bubble,

am saving

perfume bottles

and

scraps of lace

that may be used 

for
elegant explosives,

should 

necessity strike.

Mother's Day

Sometimes I feel like a motherless child....

TLSR#5

The weeks are running away from me in a repetition of closet cleaning, looking at pictures and coming across objects that I had thought lost for ever. Instead of greaving my loss I celebrate the clearing of my own space and the creation of my very own home.

TLSR#4

On Monday I arrived in a splendid Cologne that was much warmer than SKG. Walked in the old city looking for stores I like and enjoyed the sunny spring day. I came upon the 4711 store. I smelled the fresh scents that always remind me of my dad, and kept walking around the sunny city, window shopping. I spent the evening with K and L and went to bed late. 
I woke up early by a phone call ringing in the news of my mom's death.
At 2pm I was on a plane going back to SKG to find mom in her coffin surrounded by her dearest friends, covered under a blanket of beautiful flowers. Finally the end of an era has arrived.

Suitcase Suite# 13

The phone rung

the news 

of her demise.

with trembling 

limbs,

out of breath,

I saluted the 

end of an 

era.

The Queen is 

dead.

Long live

the 

Queen!