Closeup of George Bellows depicted in his painting, “Dempsey and Firpo.” 1924.

Years ago, when I lived in Venice and lived humbly in a rotting beach shack, I noticed that most of my friends lived 4 blocks away from me. This was in the mid 00’s. I wasn’t in my 20s by then, but a generation older. None of us were married or had children. We lived as if we were in our 20s, carefree, optimistic and ready to experience art and the world. A group of my friends would go on design trips for inspiration. While I was never invited on these trips, I enjoyed going to their post-mortem gatherings where inevitably we’d eat and drink the local fare and one of them would moderate a slide show. I don’t remember much about these slideshows, except they gave me this energy at a time in my life where I felt very resource constrained to travel. Home felt safe, but the beach life existence wasn’t as inspiring as I wanted it to be. One day, a friend of a friend circulated an email that her company was looking for travel writers. I responded. At this time in the world, responding to an email could change your life and it did mine. But while I can argue about the best of things that anyone can find with a quick search, actually what I like most about travel is finding stories that I can’t find in Los Angeles and bringing these tales home as part of my own collection. Most of the time the stories aren’t captured in the most straightforward way. But there usually are pictures or videos that accompany them, visual prompts to make me remember the story I want to tell.

It was my birthday recently and I invited a group of friends, a number of them my former writers on various projects I’ve produced over the years, to meet me in Venice to see the Biennale. By this time no one lived four blocks away from me. Most people were thousands of miles from Los Angeles. This other Venice felt like home though.

I could probably argue that I started wanting to go to the Biennale because of both these slide shows and the cultural calendar I edited for many years highlighting the best events in the world. At some point in 2010, I promised myself that I would start attending more of these events I thought were worth highlighting. And while I have checked a number of them off the list, I keep returning to the Venice Biennale, because every time I go, I learn something new not just about art, but about myself, as a writer, as a producer, as a human, as an artist.

I’ve been home several weeks now and in trying to make sense of this last trip, decided I needed to put together a skeleton version of a slideshow to mark this moment in time.

Why did I add the George Bellows painting in this piece? You could say I’ve always admired that he figured out a way to insert himself into his own work. No one ever could question if he was really there. I often have the opposite problem. I still don’t know how to separate myself, but maybe that’s the pride or perhaps the power.

October 2024