Night at the Alhambra

I know it sounds like a title for a bad horror movie, but it will be quite the opposite. I hope. One never knows what will happen when one has made the best of plans, and emailed people in multiple languages. My Mom turns 85 in October ("pu pu pu" - said with a slight spitting action - so the gods don't notice. Or in Greek it's "po po po").


And she is going to spend the night of her birthday sleeping inside the walls of the Alhambra!


Quite a bit older than my Mom (but not more beautiful), the Alhambra is a palace, garden and fortress complex built by the Moors. The site was first mentioned in the 9th century, with the royal residence added during the mid 14th century by the Moorish rulers of the city of Granada. They held on to power for about 150 more years, until the Reconquista by the Catholic Monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella, in 1492. 

 

For nearly three months, in the 1800's, Washington Irving lived in the palace while gathering material for his Tales of the Alhambra. And now we would, too. Well, not exactly in the Palace. Nor in the "most Expensive Parador in all Spain"- the Parador of Granada, which resides in a fifteenth century convent, also on the grounds. We have rooms at the only other abode up there, the Hotel América Granada. And I was amazed to find it, and to find it affordable. The plan was coming together.

Mom's birthday wish was to go to Spain, and I was up to the challenge of creating this family sojourn for participants who needed varying degrees of comfort. And even though my Mom could probably out-walk us all, I put together all the jigsaw puzzle parts of hotels, transportation, touring  and events, with "conservation of energy" in mind. So what better way to see the Alhambra than to stay there!

A train ride down from Madrid, we will arrive on that hilltop in time to see the art exhibit Matisse and the Alhambra (1910–2010). Serendipitously, it will have just opened in the Carlos V palace. Birthday dinner that night will be at our neighbor, the afore-mentioned "most Expensive Parador in all Spain". If not sleep, we can at least eat there. And at night, when the gates are closed to the tourist hoards, we can walk the whole area inside the walls, enjoying the illuminated view of the palace and city beneath us. Next day, I'll pick up our tickets and we'll go inside, with our own personal tour guide. Afterwards, the trip continues into Andalucia...

Well, at least, that's the plan.

Shhhhhh...don't tell Mom the details....

ADDED November 1st: It worked! All the months of planning delivered a great problem-free trip and perfect weather. That last bit was quite a feat. As you know (March blog), I don't mess with the weather gods.
I'm already preparing for the next travel adventure...

Provincetown, Massachusetts

When we arrived, the Film Festival had just ended. When we left, the Portuguese Festival was just beginning. But while we were there, it was just perfect. Aside from the 90-100° temperatures, and high humidity. The art galleries and Museum were inspiring. The main street, Commercial Street, was mobbed with people. But if you got off it and walked along the wide beach, it was peaceful. Serene. Still. The soft white diffused light of the Cape is so different from the brilliance of the Mediterranean light, or the golden tones of California. I sat on the edge and painted the stillness. The color of the water blended into the sky. Small boats were wedged in the sand one moment, then lifted by the tide in the next. I named the series of boat paintings after that sense of stillness and quiet. Here are 3 of them.

  

"Stillness 1"                                  "Stillness 2"                                 "Stillness 3"

Watercolor Paintings by Amy Stark

Picasso at MoMA

I just came back from New York. It was incredibly hot and humid there. We waited for thunderstorms to break the heat spell. It didn't happen. I took refuge in the coolness of the Museum of Modern Art. There was an exhibit called Picasso: Themes and Variations. I've seen a lot of Picasso's work, all around the world, so I wasn't expecting much new. Surprise! This explored Picasso’s creative process through the medium of printmaking. I was wowed by his linoleum block prints, which I could not remember ever seeing. For example:

Man with Ruffled Collar  1963            The Vintagers 1959                         Bacchanal with Acrobat  1959 

Did he suffer from a lull in inspiration (hard to believe) when he turned to the past?  From the late 1940s to the early 1960s he focused on works by the Masters, making them clearly his own creation:

Portrait of a Young Girl, after Cranach the Younger, II

Luncheon on the Grass, After Manet

Picasso was a bullfighting aficionado from his youth and portrayed the bullring at various points in his career. In his Neoclassical period, he devised bullfight scenes that suggest the ballet. In the 1930s, under the influence of Surrealism, Picasso emphasized the violence of the subject. Returning to the bullfighting motif in the late 1950s, he focused on strong colors and decorative elements inherent in the unfolding drama. The one on the left looks like a circus, while you can feel the violence with the one on the right, though both identical images from the same block.

The Bullfight                                          The Picador

Even if you prefer more realism in your art, it's hard to deny this man's creative brilliance.

Don't Mess with the Weather Gods

It was a normal, beautiful sunny June day in Greece. The clear and incredibly blue sky a constant, the air clear, and very hot. I was on the tiny island of Schinoussa, setting out in the morning with my watercolors to find a fishing boat to paint. And there, on the beach was a perfect specimen. It's so much easier to draw a fishing boat when it is out of the water, instead of constantly bobbing around. Those angles are tough.

When I got to the sky, instead of the solid blue I'd been painting all month, I decided to create some nice puffy clouds. When I was finished, tired and quite happy with my painting, I headed home.

"Beached Blue Boat" watercolor by Amy Stark

As I walked, an odd thing occurred. Slowly clouds started to form and drift across the sky. By the time I arrived back at my room, the wind had picked up and the sky, now filled with clouds, was darkening. "It never rains in the summer", the Greeks always say. But as night came on, I sat on my balcony watching the rain pour down amidst a fantastic lightening show flashing over the island and the sea beyond. I had goosebumps, and not just from the drop in temperature. I felt that I personally had conjured up this rain storm by putting clouds into the clear sky of my painting. And you can't convince me otherwise. 

3 Cups of Tea Redux

In 1993, Greg Mortenson barely survived a failed attempt to ascend the infamously dangerous K2 in the Himalayas. He was found near death, and nursed back to health, by the people of an impoverished Pakistani village. When he left them, Mortenson promised to return one day and build them a school. 16 years and 131 schools later, Mortenson has dedicated his life to promote education, especially for girls, in remote regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan. "If you educate a boy, you educate an individual. But if you educate a girl, you educate a community."

This incredible phenomenon has spurred fundraising events around the world to help Greg continue his work. Here in Santa Cruz, an art auction took place online, and culminated Feb. 11, with an event at the Rio Theatre. 

My encaustic painting "1 Lump or 2?"

Sets of teacups, paintings, sculptures, all relating to 3 Cups of Tea were included. This event was able to send $19,223.62 to Greg's Central Asia Institute.

Bravo to all who have been a part of this endeavor!

In The Beginning

Did you know there are 6000 islands and islets in Greece? Only 277 are inhabited, and of those, you can visit about 80. They are clustered into 7 groups, each with its own landscape characteristics and architecture. Even after 20+ years of exploring, I haven't been to them all. Though I am getting close! And those are just the islands. It is an amazingly diverse country.

I spent this November in the Mani. Rugged and rocky, it's on the southern-most outcrop of the Peloponnese (Greek pron.: pelo-PON-nee-sos), which is a hand-shaped peninsula, stretching into the Mediterranean Sea. As if to keep from floating away, it holds onto the mainland by a thumb, crossing the Corinthian canal. 

The Peloponnese. Remember Pelops? The son of Tantalus and father of Atreus. He was killed by his father and served up as food to the gods, but only one shoulder was eaten, and he was restored to life with an ivory shoulder replacing the one that was missing. This was his island ("nissos" in Greek). Only, of course it's not really an island.

The tip of the Mani in the Peloponnese

And if you jumped off the tip, swam south, you'd surface in Africa. Libya to be exact. Susah, to be more exact. Susah, also known as Apollonia - yes, after the Greek god Apollo. Now there's something to think about...

But I digress...the Mani.

Patrick Lee Fermor, Sir Patrick 'Paddy' Michael Leigh Fermor, born in England in 1915, author, scholar and soldier, he played a prominent role behind the lines in the Battle of Crete during World War II. And lived to write about it. But earlier, in 1933, at age 18, he set out to WALK across Europe to Constantinople. And if that wasn't enough, in 1935 he then proceeded to walk throughout Greece, and finally, down into, and across the Mani. I suppose if he was able to deal with the Alps, the Mani wouldn't be so hard. But I was there - and it's rough! But beautiful, especially in November.

Driving over the mountains from Kosmas...

Yes, we drove that road, through rocky landscapes and villages of stone towers.

South to the port of Gytheion (also: Gythio), the most important town of the Mani...

and Octopus (Greek: oktapodi) Capitol of the Peloponnese.

Once out of Gythio, it's rocks and towers again. When the Ottomans conquered Constantinople, and the Byzantine empire fell, the Maniots were never subdued. Their fierceness, and the towers, helped protect from enemies.

 

Back to Sir Patrick, who's walking all over this place... years later, after many other adventures, he wrote about the experience. The book is aptly titled: Mani, Travels in the Southern Peloponnese, and is required reading for anyone interested in this area. He is widely regarded as Britain's greatest living travel writer. Yes, living... near the Maniot village of Kardamyli...

After many adventures of our own, climbing back up the west side of that 'finger' of the Mani, we settled in the beach town of Stoupa, blissfully empty in the off-season. Nearby Kalogria was home to another writer with a bit of reknown, Nikos Kazantzakis, who lived and wrote there in 1917 and 1918.

"A man needs a little madness, or else he never dares cut the rope and be free."

From Zorba the Greek, by Nikos Kazantzakis