Brother Rich came to Italy at the very beginning of September for two roiling, boiling weeks. Unprecedented heat this year. Memories of drawing with a towel over my head to catch the sweat drops. The school was closed all month and L. and I had a blast, just bumbling around the Vicolo, discussing our big conceptual art project for Tomaso Cinti's associazione culturale, hitting the gym, watching purloined TV, and petting Mary the Dog. Dreamy.

We spent a week in Rome with Richie-boy, seeing all the possible sights; we were sun-baked on the ancient ways of the Forum, moved along by sweaty crowds in the shaded sanctuary of the Pantheon, jostled on B.O. buses to the jangling, multi-lingual soundtrack of the tourist city. Stayed in a one week rental with windows on the air shaft, just off main drag, Trastevere. One piazza overflows and spills into the next, everyone with bladders full of booze and pissing in the streets. It's a real urban jungle, like Alphabet City back in the 80's. I loved Trastevere, though.

We walked Mary on the Janiculum Hill, with its jewel of hidden Bramante. Rich carried his massive new camera, phallic lens preceding him by nearly a foot. Have I ever sweat so much? Final night was the full moon. Rich and I got into a brother spat in the Medieval alley, reminded me of back when we were younger and wilder. The pizza guy had to come out of the restaurant and urge us to eat up, our pizzas were getting cold. L. got sympathetic looks for being stuck with these bozos. All in all, a great week.

Back in Verona, L. and I got to work on a sculpture for Tomaso Cinti's Associazione Culturale, FuoriScala. They were holding a week-long event, called Onirica, to raise awareness about recycling and sustainability and we were invited to provide some art. L. had the idea of creating a giant piece of crumpled paper out of cardboard.

We settled on the thin but tough cardboard used in pizza take-out boxes. Rich was mostly left to fend for himself while L. and I sweated over the massive project. Four hundred boxes, bisected and cut into triangles, each triangle attached to the other at the edges with strips of linen and rabbit-skin glue to create foldable elements, hours and hours of unrelenting labor, cutting and gluing in the steamy Vicolo. It was great, inspired fun. In the end we had a sheet of cardboard 3 meters wide by 4 meters long (roughly 10' x 13') which we folded up into the sculpture.

The show was fantastic. They had somehow secured a fine space, the galleries of the old Pallazzo della Ragione near Piazza dei Signori. We had four walls to scribble on and a great chunk of floor space. On Saturday night, the opening weekend, we sat out on the Renaissance steps of the Palazzo and drank beer 'til after midnight, watching as waves of people came and went.

There were Fede, Phoebe, Rebecca and Mick, Fabbiana and Luca from ArciKroen in Villafanca di Verona, assorted cats from ScalaColore, Stafan the mad conductor, Elena and Valentina, Matteo and all the dudes from FuoriScala, Gaelle and Geoffroy, Livinia and Federico and their kids, who scampered around and even under our sculpture, Heidi and Roberto, Audrey and Josh, Giampaola Bonente (my student) and her exquisitely dressed husband, Michele the writer….who else? In the end, hundreds of people saw what we did, so it's a good thing we were pleased with the results. A 100% recyclable sculpture which, at the end of the show, we were able to toss in the cardboard bin near Parco delle Poste.

Rich was an A+ guest. Must have taken a million pictures. We spent a good deal of time in the hot, heaving streets of Rome, waiting for him to frame the shot, but we wouldn't have had it any other way. I loved the fact that he wanted to lean into the language, wanted to participate somehow. I told him about Vespasian and "pecunia non olet" and he got great kicks out of the idea of Italian oldsters calling a public toilet "un vespasiano." Rich really gets Italy. Next we'll do the cathedrals of France.