photograph courtesy Manfredi Bellati
HAPPY HOLIDAYS

photograph by moris moreno courtesy Aponwao Design Inc.
FLORIDA/VENETO

"ART" # 4. Am I seeing double was my first thought when I opened the NY Times the other day? As I live "right around the corner" from the real La Rotonda by Palladio near Vicenza, my second thought was, what is it doing in the center of Biscayne Bay! This Fabulous Floating Villa was a five days only, inflatable installation, during Art Basel Miami Beach week. Designed by Luis Pons the Miami-based, Venezuelan-born architect in response to the current real estate boom in Miami where architectural fantasy has given way to non-style architecture. "The culture of Miami , the architecture, the people tends to be superficial. I've made my objects inflatable and plastic in order to reflect this idea of non-substance," Pons says. May I suggest to Architetto Pons that he follows in the "footsteps" of Simon Starling, the 2005 winner of the prestigious British Arts Turner Prize, whose work Shedboatshed: He dismantled a wooden shack, transformed it into a boat, sailed it down the Rhine and rebuilt it into a shack in Basel! That, Pons should transport to Italy The Fabulous Floating Villa and re-inflate it next September in the basin of San Marco during the Venice Architectural Biennale and hopefully win the Leone d'Oro for best model in the classical style of architecture after Palladio!!!

www.aponswaodesign.com

MILANO/NEW YORK
or when NYC comes to Milano.

Maily Zegna hosted a trunk show of Laudomia Piccolomini's jewelry in her beautiful apartment in the center of Milan. Maily has as much style as the surname she bears and is often called upon by her friends to decorate their Christmas trees, arrange flowers or help with anything that is creative. Laudomia's story begins about four or five Christmases ago when she wanted to give her mother a very, very special present. She found some magnificent stones and made a necklace, but when her mother put the necklace on all the stones fell to the floor. Discouraged, she puts them away for six months and then had the idea of stringing them back together with copper wire, replaced today by 18 karat gold wire. This is the beginning of her one of a kind, precious and semi-precious stone jewelry collection which is sold at all the Barney stores as well as to celebrities like Nicole Kidman and Mary Jane Blige. It is her love for color and her good eye for taste and proportion that makes her jewelry unique.

laudomia.piccolomini@verizon.net - www.barneys.com

MILANO

Art # 3 - Galleria Salvatore+Caroline Ala. This spetacular retrospective show of eighty six year old artist, Emilo Vedova (till February 25th, 2006) at the Salvatore and Caroline Ala Gallery in Brera must not be missed. The exhibition includes fifty historic pieces including sculpture, paintings on canvas, paper and steel. The pieces de resistance are surely these three tondi (photographed above) realized in the 1980's as well as the "Plurimo Binario" a stunning freestanding sculpture/painting made in the 1970's of wood and metal. A catalogue will be published by Charta early next year, it will illustrate works from all four one-man shows held at the Galleria Salvatore Ala since 1986. I can't wait to have one!

Galleria Salvatore+Caroline Ala - via Monte di Pieta 1 - tel: +39028900901 -galleria.ala@iol.it

MILANO
ART # 2. Watercolorist, Francesca Brandolini d'Adda showed her work last week in a "pop-up space" in Palazzo Saporiti on the elegant Corso Venezia of Milan. Though she is Venetian and has lived in Tuscany, she now resides in the beautiful countryside of the Prosecco grapes in Follina. Fascinated by the technique of the English and Neapolitan schools of watercolorists she has taught herself the art, at the beginning, more as a challenge to overcome the difficulty of the execution "If you go wrong, you have to throw it all away, you can't erase anything when you paint with water colors." she explains. Today she has her own personal style, which differs from most classic watercolors, because it is more "precise" and detailed. She is much in demand for all sorts of commissions, like the wine labels photographed above or postcards of private residences, plates for restaurants as well as interiors, landscapes, portraits of children and dogs. La Contessa's most famous collector was Pope John Paul II, who owned a beautiful watercolor of the church of Santa Maria del Carmine.
Francesca Brandolini d'Adda - Via Pallade - Follina (Treviso) - Italy