Catching Up With Ann and Alan

Donna with the award

After a selection of pages were shown with Quilt International at Ohio Art Council’s Riffe Gallery at the end of 2002, The Public Book -- the project of over 150 fabric pages made by Columbus residents that Ann created and shepherded to completion to mark the quincentenniel of Columbus's 1492 voyage -- enjoyed major exhibits in commemoration of Ohio’s bicentennary in 2003, at the Ohio Department of Insurance and the Franklin County Courthouse.

here are some of the pages at the Courthouse

In July it was honored with a Resolution from the Franklin County Commissioners in a formal ceremony at their offices.

The project’s oral history archive continues. July also took Ann, later joined by Alan, to St. Louis for the Calligraphy Conference followed by the Lewis & Clark Bicentennial Exhibit: classes with Julian Waters and Stan Knight were unabashedly exhilarating; the exhibit, stunning--in large part because of the perspective that what followed in the expedition’s immediate wake gives to all that went before. In August, Zaner-Bloser (the handwriting folks) approached Ann to write two books on calligraphy for middle-schoolers, one on Bookhand, another on a hand not yet stipulated. Alan went on reading plays, chopping wood, and making more fabulous bread. Amid all this we found ourselves compelled to take up two preservation causes: saving a 1920’s movie theatre and a 1912 historic school building in our Clintonville neighborhood -- at least for the time being. Reuse is another struggle. And the garden grew apace -- we canned umpteen quarts of tomato sauce --

marigolds and basil around the plants really kept the rabbits at bay!
Ann, meanwhile, began tutoring reading once a week at that school. Then, a proposal submitted in June to the city‘s CORN project (you know -- Chicago has cows, Cincinnati has pigs -- Columbus has corn) came back to haunt her: what she thought she would be done with by late August, became reality in November -- just as it turned very cold and windy. She ended up hand lettering (with sign painter’s enamels) the names of hundreds of renowned Ohioans (starting with early native Americans) on this 6+-foot monstrosity in the basement of her studio, a respirator pulling at her face -- or so it felt!
The CORN stood with many others for a month downtown, outside the Statehouse and

across from The Columbus Dispatch, its sponsor.

Alan, meanwhile, researched Mae West for a production of Dirty Blonde at Columbus’ Contemporary American Theatre Company, the professional theatre company he helped found in 1984.

At this point, we both needed a break. So at year’s end, on a lark really, inspired by Ross King’s delightful history of Brunelleschi’s Dome, we flew to Florence to “relive” the place (and actually found the pensione where Ann had lived as a student 40 years before): climbing between the double dome of the cathedral and up Giotto’s campanile (while we still could, gracefully) and generally absorbing as much as possible. Here's the dome from the campanile:

With so few other tourists around, we were allowed to spend as much time as we wanted everywhere: with Masaccio and Masolino’s frescos in the Brancacci Chapel and Giotto’s in Santa Croce, with Fra Angelico‘s at the Convento di San Marco, even on a special viewing, molto privato, of fresco cartoons attributed to Paolo Uccello. And, among so much else, a truly heavenly a capella mass at the Badia in the glow of a Filippino Lippi painting, and the off-the-tourist-trail Museum of the History of Science -- Italian contributions to science to be sure, but still fascinating: navigation, physics, medicine, astronomy -- including a case containing Gallileo’s finger and recantation, along with the words of his ringing retort to the its signature, “ma ancora si muova,” “But still it moves.” For the rest, while Ann spent mornings absorbing Poggio Bracciolini’s fine hand(writing) at the Biblioteca Laurentiana, Alan went in search of live theatre. The Florentine theatre scene is strange--we won’t bore you with the disasters (but ask sometime about Edith Piaf descending a staircase--repeatedly), only share our enjoyment of an hilarious Dario Fo tour-de-force based on a manuscript about St. Francis of Assisi and an ingeniously fresh production of Romeo & Juliet set in Israel/Palestine.

a friendly German couple took us on the cupola

Ann’s quest for data on a 16th-century writing and ‘rithmatic professor took us to Siena for a day, where, to our surprise, after the morning’s research and an exhilarating afternoon at the museum and walking Siena’s medieval streets, we ran into Marcel Marceau giving a public talk and master class, much as he has here at OSU. Then it was home again, home again....