I’m doing storytelling from the beginning Cantos of Dante’s Inferno today. I’ll be on Facebook Live at Saltworkstudio Facebook at 10 AM, 1 PM and 5PM Pacific Time. Join me for some Dante sketches and their stories! I’ll only post one sketch now as a preview.
The masses, waiting and waiting…
We are all waiting now. The ancient is new again. Ancient metaphors bring light to modern vision. Thank you for joining me in my Over Underworld project. Suzanne
This is the fifth Over Underworld release, a online art exhibit of paintings and sketches in March 2020. Featured art: Pages from my Dante’s Inferno sketchbook. Not for sale.
Events in 2020
March 25, Wednesday, is Dante Day in Italy, a new annual national holiday to honor Dante. I will be storytelling from my Dante sketchbook at Saltworkstudio via Facebook Live. See event for more details. FB live times: 10 AM, 1PM and 5 PM Pacific Time.
This is the third installment of the Over Underworld art exhibit, a virtual release of paintings and sketches in March 2020.
Featured art: Pages from my Dante’s Inferno sketchbook, earlier circles of Hell
Dante surveys the Holy Grail. This is not from the Inferno, but I needed a break.
The Underworld is not necessarily Hell. But, sometimes we get lost somewhere Not Good, like a Twilight Zone episode. It happened to Dante. For the past year I have been doing a close reading of Dante and making a sketchbook of visual notes. They are not illustrations, but ways to help me remember what I’ve learned.
Reading Dante is like Shakespeare or the Bible; it endlessly unfolds. But I’ll post a few pages from the notebook with some of my observations.
Virgil, Dante’s guide, from Canto 2. A friend in need.
I’ve made up several lists of rules for going through the Underworld from reading Dante. First, a tour guide is worth paying for. Virgil leads Dante through, but can’t go with him to Paradise, as he is a Heathen, but is a good friend. I discovered that Dante loves his non-Christian geniuses of the ancient days, but has a problem with them, as the Church said they were consigned to hell. What to do, what to do?
From Canto 4. Dante makes a hell that is like a paradise for his buddies!
He makes a beautiful green garden in hell so that these pre-Christian immortals can hang out! The petals of the flower hold the names of his special people. I began to be interested in painting themes from this Canto. I didn’t want to do paintings of the Seven Deadly Sins, but I discovered the Seven Liberal Virtues– top right corner– which are the antidotes for these sins, and am working on an abstract series from them.
Source material for sketchbook project. My favorite is at the top right, a Modern Library edition from 1944.
Last year I went to the Library of Congress and got to see original Blake lithographs of Dante’s Inferno in the rare books reading room. Here is my pencil copy of Blake’s print, made in the Library, and my LOC library card.
Pencil drawing made on location in the Library of Congress of a print made from an original Blake lithographic plate. Amazing that this masterpiece was accessible, on asking.
Plagues were a fact of life in the 13th and 14th century. But Dante saw the worst infection as a moral plague infesting his time, with politics destroying peaceful structure and ripping Florence apart. This next sketch features a wasp from his description of demons flying up like swarms of hornets.
From Canto 3. Swarms of dead people mourn, “We never were fully alive.”
This is the Canto that orders, “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.” I was surprised to find that there was also strong message to live fully when you are alive on earth in the same section! In all that darkness, there is always light somewhere in Dante. Suzanne
Featured work: Pages from my Dante’s Inferno illustrated notes. Not for sale.
Scott and I kept a 5″ x 8″ travel notebook in Italy. We worked it almost daily as we traveled, finding time in cafes or on benches. But we had the most fun with Travel Flow Charts, illustrating certain common travel situations. The first one concerns travel with a partner.
It’s amazing how the other person becomes reasonable, and sulking silence vanishes. The next two charts are pieces we tried to fit in to a larger diagram, but couldn’t. They’re self explanatory.
I know some of you out there have subsisted on strange food during gaps in travel. Scott sucked on hard barley balls while walking around Annapurna. Crackers, the new hard tack. And now on to address exhaustion:
We didn’t spend all our time making charts.
Here’s an Etruscan boar I drew in the Villa Giulia in Rome. I named him Oinkos.
We did get analytical with this Venn diagram. We wanted to do as many things as possible that we couldn’t do at home, and to appreciate the strange world in front of us, like live eels.
But is it art? Probably not, but is certainly is travel.
Saltworkstudio | Suzanne Edminster 