OCTAVIA
Pencil/Felt Pen sketches and Watercolor adaptation of Italo Calvino’s Invisible City, Octavia
As part of a series focused on graphic interpretations of Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, I was drawn to the tension between strength and fragility. How Octavia balances lightness in their infrastructure with solidity in its natural surroundings. This piece explores that delicate equilibrium: the airy, almost ephemeral scaffolding of the built environment held in contrast with the grounded permanence of peaks and valleys that contain it.
”If you choose to believe me, good. Now I will tell how Octavia, the spider-web city, is made. There is a precipice between two steep mountains: the city is over the void, bound to the two crests with ropes and chains and catwalks. You walk on the little wooden ties, careful not to set your foot in the open spaces, or you cling to the hempen strands. Below there is nothing for hundreds and hundreds of feet: a few clouds glide past; farther down you can glimpse the chasm’s bed.
This is the foundation of the city: a net which serves as passage and a support. All the rest, instead of riding up, is hung below: rope ladders, hammocks, houses made like sacks, clothes hangers, terraces like gondolas, skins of water, gas jets, spits, baskets on strings, dumb-waiters, showers, trapezes and rings for children’s games, cable cars, chandeliers, pots with trailing plants.
Suspended over the abyss, the life of Octavia’s inhabitants is less uncertain than in other cities. They know the net will last only so long.”
(Invisible Cities: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Co, page 75)
BARNS
On a morning walk with Hudson last year, a local, weathered barn caught my eye — its sun-bleached siding, rusted metal roof, and the way the evening light played off its surface made it impossible to ignore. It wasn’t just a structure; it was a layered artifact of use, memory, and age. I snapped a photo and couldn’t stop thinking about it.
I looked forward to passing by each day, finding new details on each visit. This barn became the focus for a creative exploration, a process of observing, abstracting, and interpreting through drawing and watercolor.
I began by loosening up with small observational studies. Quick, gestural sketches helped me understand the barn’s proportions, rooflines, and surface textures. Some drawings were accurate; others intentionally veered toward abstraction. I let go of any actual barn and focused instead on rhythm, structure, and feeling. Through repetition, I discovered how the barn could be broken down into essential lines and silhouettes.
This sketching phase wasn’t just preparation for painting; it was a way of thinking through the building, learning its language of form and material.
With that visual vocabulary in place, I shifted to watercolor. I wasn’t interested in rendering the barn as-is. Instead, I used washes of color to evoke what the barn felt like: its warmth, weathered history, its simple, harmonic order, and rural calmness. The palette shifted from literal to expressive: rusty reds, faded grays, golden ochres, and soft sky blues.
Each piece became less about replication and more about essence. Through color and composition, I let the barn transform into something emotional and personal.
This barn sparked a whole series — a meditation on rural vernacular architecture, memory, and place. What began as a single structure turned into a visual language I now return to again and again.
On a morning walk with Hudson last year, a local, weathered barn caught my eye — its sun-bleached siding, rusted metal roof, and the way the evening light played off its surface made it impossible to ignore. It wasn’t just a structure; it was a layered artifact of use, memory, and age. I snapped a photo and couldn’t stop thinking about it.
I looked forward to passing by each day, finding new details on each visit. This barn became the focus for a creative exploration, a process of observing, abstracting, and interpreting through drawing and watercolor.
I began by loosening up with small observational studies. Quick, gestural sketches helped me understand the barn’s proportions, rooflines, and surface textures. Some drawings were accurate; others intentionally veered toward abstraction. I let go of any actual barn and focused instead on rhythm, structure, and feeling. Through repetition, I discovered how the barn could be broken down into essential lines and silhouettes.
This sketching phase wasn’t just preparation for painting; it was a way of thinking through the building, learning its language of form and material.
With that visual vocabulary in place, I shifted to watercolor. I wasn’t interested in rendering the barn as-is. Instead, I used washes of color to evoke what the barn felt like: its warmth, weathered history, its simple, harmonic order, and rural calmness. The palette shifted from literal to expressive: rusty reds, faded grays, golden ochres, and soft sky blues.
Each piece became less about replication and more about essence. Through color and composition, I let the barn transform into something emotional and personal.
This barn sparked a whole series — a meditation on rural vernacular architecture, memory, and place. What began as a single structure turned into a visual language I now return to again and again.