Cinque Terre preview

here are a couple of images I got off Google of Cinque Terre. Im headed there now with a guy I met at the hostel who is also an artist. Should be pretty gorgeous as you can see.

and I'm off!...

Italy so far...

Right now Im in florence. i was in rome for the weekend, and made it to the hostel in florence last night. ive met a bunch of..interesting people at the hostel in florence. i feel like im staying in a frat. tonight, in the spirit of halloween we're having a dinner party at the hostel and going out later..well they are. I need to rest up for Cinque Terre tomorrow. explained later. Rome was great. I almost got pickpocketed, but caught the kid in the act. my wallet with my credit card was in that pocket that he had opened though so thank God i caught him in time. I didn't really realize what had happened until about 30 seconds after the fact...the kid tried to play it off like he was pointing to something when he was really reaching into my bag. and then i ran into another odd situation which involved a guy from spain stoppint me on the street to ask me directions, who claimed to be the owner of these huge fashion names like Christian Dior, and he struck up conversation with me about america and fashion and crap, and offered me $2500 worth of free samples of designer clothes for free...then asked me for gas money right after telling me he was a very rich man. i didn't give him the money of course, and he took the samples back. i gladly returned them and walked away.

so cinque terre is this area of italy on the coast which consists of 5 villages that you can hike from one to another on a 5 hour long hike along the coast. apparantly its where pesto originated and they have great wine. i'm pretty excited about it. i'm sure it will be amazing.

today i took a train into Pisa with a girl i met at the hostel. we saw the leaning tower and the duomo...and the massive amounts of asian tourists taking pictures of each other "holding up the tower". i took pictures of them taking pictures of each other, and it made for a great time. though Pisa isn't all that exciting aside from the tower.

that's all for now. bottom line - i'm still alive.

Fall Break!

I'm off to Italy for the week. I'll be in Rome until monday, then Florence until thursday, and I'll be home friday.

I'm planning on checking out the local art scene as much as I can, go to some museums, and hopefully catch a tour of the Christian Catacombs.

I've got about 15 hours of travel ahead of me. Good thing I paid a little extra to book a bed on the train.

see ya!

"The Birthing" and the "Journey" project..

The finished product. I appreciate all criticisms, so let's get on that.


This was the product of my week-long project of documenting my journies. Around Thursday I started forgetting to document a lot. I missed about 7 or 8 trips, though not on purpose. And on one occasion, the bus ride to marseille was documented but the bus ride back accidentaly got documented on the back of another journey. oops. I am full of human error. I realized during this project that there was so much of my hand involved and that in order to be truely honest in documenting these journeys I would have to build some some of contraption that would hold the pencil for me. But even in doign that it wouldn't be able to accurately catch the journey because it wouldn't capture the swing of my arms, or the bobbing of my head. It would be extremely difficult to accurately document every occurence during these journies and still have it be spontanious. This would require me to construct some sore of full body suit which seems pretty ridiculous, and would totally defeat the purpose of it being a spontanious journey. I think it would be an extremely difficult task and I might suggest, an impossible one, to get away from the element of the hand in the drawing. The fact that I'm aware that I'm making drawing as I'm walking, whether conciously or subconciously will cause me to guide the drawing in a manner that is dishonest. For example, if the pencil were to fall off the paper, I would no longer be documenting anything, so I'd have to put the pencil back on the paper, thus entering back into the reality that I'm creating a drawing.

Anyway, thoughts on this are also encouraged. honesty folks. let's hear it.

For the fam....my musical endevours in France..

Along with my art, I have also been keeping up with my passion for music. This is a video of a portion of last night's service at ICCP. I lead worship from time to time. This was my second time on stage. It went really well this week. Tonight we are meeting at my friend Dom's house to sing worship and just hang out. I'm excited, it should be fun. I love any chance I get to play music.




My buddy Titus and I were jamming some blues in the studio when we decided to take it outside. We didn't make any money..probably because we look too american, and not needy enough. We probably need to get a couple of mangy looking dogs, and not shower for a couple weeks. Maybe grow out my beard which, by the way, only grows on my neck, below the jaw line. It would look even more pathetic. But it was still fun. People were coming out of their shops to listen to us, and we noticed a few people watching from the windows of their apartments.

I really wish I had my guitar here. That's Dom's guitar that he was letting me borrow to practice for worship last night. My host mom has a clunky piano that is out of tune. I mess around on that sometimes. If I ever play when she's home she gets all excited and sort of hovers around and then I feel like I have to play something good, which..I'm still working on. My piano skills are definitely suffering in comparison to guitar.

That's about all I have for today.

The past couple weeks: a brief overview.

This is my latest piece which is still in progress. Materials: found mattress, paper airplanes, yarn.

Here I am installing a piece in the studio that may or may not get finished. Another paper airplane installation.

This is Andi and the dog she is dogsitting Bo. This was at our weekly Thursday night gatherings which consist of watching the new Lost episode followed by the new episode of The Office, which is probably my favorite show in the whole world.

We had somewhat of a game night this week because we couldn't get Lost to download on Dom's computer. Dom=curly hair with the hat on. He heads up worship and arts at ICCP, and lives in this really cool apartment overlooking the square where lots of people sit and eat or drink coffee. It's quite a nice location.

Joanlie was in Aix last weekend. We went to Cassis for a few hours on the coast and sat on the beach. Weird how that is still possible in the middle of october. It's still pretty warm here for october, compared to Michigan. it usually gets up around 70 at the peak of the afternoon.


More importantly though, is that you go on artfaceoff.com and vote on my art. johnazoni.artfaceoff.com
If you've already voted, vote again.

and don't forget to vote on these other talented detroit artists as well:

elizabethisakson.artfaceoff.com
anngordon.artfaceoff.com

In other news, New York artist Dana Schutz spoke at CCS this week and I'm really bummed I missed it. For those that have never heard of Dana Schutz, she recieved her MFA from Columbia in 2002 and was instantly snatched up by galleries and now sells her paintings for ridiculous amounts of money. She's only 27.

mattress art

This video is of my in the beginning stages of creating this piece of a mattress birthing red paper airplanes. I'm trying to document my processes as much as I can via video and pictures. The girl videotaping is a my friend and studio neighbor Leslie. yes, that is a vagina. No I'm not a feminist. I'll post pics of the piece as it stands now... soon, but for now I will leave you all confused...

Hey Everyone! Guess what!!

I uploaded images onto a site called artfaceoff.com.
It's a site that allows emerging artists to get noticed and voted on. It works like a tournament basicly...artists "face off" and one is determined to be the "better artist" based on the number of votes, and then they move on the the next round...yada yada yada. after a year's span of this, one artist is determined the winner and wins $1000. Now...I'm sure I'm not going to win this and that's not the point. The point is for people to see my work. So tell your friends, your family, your collectors, and what have you to go on this site and vote on my page, even if you hate my work. give me a terrible rating. I would appreciate it.

okay so the site is johnazoni.artfaceoff.com

you can then vote for other artists that you like as well, add yourself to my mailing list or other artists mailing lists...purchase artwork...it's a pretty cool and versitile site.

readysetgo.


France is good. I'm starting a new series of work that I'm sure my family and friends will hate. for 7 consecutive days I will be documenting my "journey's" whether it be to the corner store and back, or from my house to the studio, anytime I go anywhere at all. Basicly what I do is I walk with a sketchbook and pencil in my hand, and relax my body so that the only marks made are those that are induced by my footsteps and movements of my body. so the drawings end up being a bunch of scribbles, but based on the density, and the dark/lightness of line the viewer can sort of get a sense for how long the journey was and what happened on that journey. for example if someone bumps into me, or if I trip, or something like that. pictures soon to come of me in this process.

New Work.

I got my wireless fixed today!! I'm so excited. I don't have to take my laptop into the computer lab anymore. Let's just hope this stays working.

Speaking of working, here's the latest work I've been doing here in Aix. ..

The above images are from an installation I did. It's sort of a rough draft. I'd like to do it on a larger scale and obviously in a cleaner environment. It definitely would come across better in a space other than my cluttered studio. It's made out of a bunch of paper airplanes. If you look at the very top of the above picture there's a golden airplane that is also part of the installation. It's kind of hard to see in this picture though. This was my first serious step away from painting and I am very pleased with the result. The rest of my studio mates really responded well to it, so for me at least, it was succesful. I think I might be doing more work aside from painting. It gets me in a different mindset and is a real challenge for me.

Sorry for the crappy image on this piece. I'll post better ones as I sort of weed out the work that I don't like. This was the piece that we spent the most time talking about during my critique. The class really responded well to this one. The general consensus was that this drawing is "truly raw" where as the paintings below are "an attempt at being raw". It's kind of a tough thing to work around because I don't think one can ever be truly raw having been trained in the formal aspects of art like composition, proportions, color theory, etc. So that statement is sticking with me and I guess it's just something to keep in the back of my mind while I'm working.

My work has been becoming more spiritual lately. The above piece is sort of hinting at finding Christ in everyone and everything.

Yet another bad image, but these were the paintings and drawing that was contrasted to the drawing I talked about above.

So that's some new work. I'll post more in a few weeks.

Bonjour!

Let's see...what's new...

My french is improving. I am actually almost able to have a very easy conversation with my host mom. It's still difficult to talk without pausing between words to think of what word goes next. It's even more difficult to be able to translate what she is saying in response, or when she asks me something. I catch just bits and pieces, sometimes just barely enough to figure out what she's saying, but most often I look to Roman to translate. But I'm learning fast.

My Dad and Lauren (step mom) were here this past weekend. It was really great to see them. They're pretty cool. We went to this really good creole restaurant friday night, which was very good. The house wine there was quite exceptional. Saturday we went to Marseilles and ate lunch alonside the port, which was also very good, and sat by the water and watched people fish.

My studio friends and I met these 2 french boys our age that live directly across the street from the studio building. It's kind of cool to know them because the streets are very narrow so we can literally open the window and talk to them while they're eating dinner or just hanging out in their apartment. They invited some of us over for tea and wine last night. They're pretty cool. They love America, and inisited that if we ever needed anything while in Aix to stop by, since they were treated so well during their stay in America...and that they want to return the favor. So I'm happy to say that yes I have met some real french people.

Next sunday I will be co-leading worship at ICCP (international christian community of provence). It's the english speaking church I've been attending. They're going to have me playing guitar, piano, and probably singing as well. That should be fun. I really miss my guitar. My friend Titus and I are thinking of trying our hand at being street musicians for a few hours. See how much money we can make.

I'm feeling better about my art. I'm venturing into installation work. It's definitely not up my alley, but it'll be a good challenge. pictures soon.


ce tout. (that's all)