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)