Tales from Tuscany

workshop travel

Oct 1

On the left and right are images from my window where we stayed in Tuscany. In the middle are the Aperol Spritzes that are so much a part of the Italian cocktail hour.

I can only give you a glimpse of our time in Tuscany, and that is how it is for all of us. The greatest things cannot be told. And the photos don’t convey the people, the laughter, or how they take such good care of you. Or the full moon rising on our first evening.

When we arrived at the villa the immense full moon was rising. (Left, photo © Mari Bohley) I took the photo of the Tuscan countryside from a trip to a nearby town, San Gimignano. It is much like the setting of Villa Palagione where we stay. (right)

I am on the plane home now, and everything is fresh, and so I want to give you a picture. I was with my dear friends Birgit Nass, Mari Bohley and Massimo Polello. And Massimo’s husband, Domenico Quaranta joined us, with the hope and miracle of keeping us organized.

We worked with a couple poems for the week, which Birgit had designed and ready for screen printing. The first one, Prayer, by Galway Kinnell, became a favorite:

Whatever happens. Whatever
what is is is what
I want. Only that. But that.

Such a short poem that keeps working on you like a Zen koan. Perhaps he titled it “Prayer” because it’s a perfect aim and such a far reach, to pray for what happens. It’s a vision that can change the way we respond to our work, and to whatever crosses our path. This is my grail too, my knight-seeking thing. Whatever what is is is what I want. As William Stafford once said, everything is practice.

There were 32 students — I have discovered that this is too many to have each photo I took properly labeled, or to have enough room for all the work I wanted to post. I wish I had photos from everyone, but you will have a feeling for their work with what you see here. With four teachers we could have small classes of eight students at a time and the sense of collaboration between bookmaking, calligraphy, composition, collage, landscape and line.

Mari designed the book, tall and elegant, bound with elastic so that pages are easily taken in and out.

I am delighted that she is planning to come teach with me in March 2026 in Taos.

Mari's workshop space at our villa (left) A close-up of the elastic bookbinding she taught (right) Photos © Mari Bohley

Here are a few examples of the students’ book covers:

Birgit brought everything for silk screen printing, which you can see on the book cover at the left, and Massimo designed the logo *Here and Now,* which you can see screen printed on the right.

What a wonderful time we had silk screen printing on paper, book covers, shirts and pants in the middle of the week when we had a break from our classes. It gave us another way to return to our poems:

Birgit designed our poems and we printed them with Massimo's logo for "Here & Now". Below is an example of silk screen printing of the logo over watercolor and ink (left) and an example of working with line & the Etruscan alphabet (right):

"Or like the sea" Book pages | ink & letterpress printing (left) pastel, crayon & ink (right)

In class, Birgit focused on composition and collage and Massimo on calligraphy. You can see how they worked together:

Silk screen printing, writing & collage on paper (left) opening page, ink & collage (right)

In my class I focused on line, landscape and my “Etruscan” alphabet, which I continue to develop. By the time I am back in Taos in March I will have a “wide pen” version of the alphabet.
Below are some examples from class:

Book pages with Etruscan alphabet. ink on paper.

I enjoyed seeing how crayons and pastels worked as writing tools in combination with ink and watercolor.

Explorations of the "Etruscan" alphabet with line (left) and as continuous line (right)

More experiments with alphabet, line, collage and watercolor

Sometimes the collage with Birgit had the feeling of landscape and line:

We are planning to teach again in Tuscany in Fall 2026.

What inspires you? I’d love to hear from you.

Featured Artist | Marcia Hocevar

Our Featured Artists section is a vault of creative ideas. This month’s artist is featuring her work from our class in Taos last March, Winter Seed’s Promise. Check out Marcia Hocevar’s work here.

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Laurie Doctor https://lauriedoctor.com