During a sememster abroad in Rome I spent nearly all of my time exploring the city on foot,
documenting and collecting my experience of the streets, piazzas, palazzos, churches and obelisks. I was
also exploring my own drawing skills and techniques, from 30 second blind contour sketches to
laboriously illustrative compostions. My intent with this series of drawings was to explore the way that church facades, or just monumental facades of important buildings, present themselves in the street. I was interested in how the urban plan set up frames for these facades. I also became quite obsessed with the placement of obelisks, what monuments they mark, how they can be used to navigate the city, and how they both emphasize and interrupt the axes of the urban plan and the architecture that shapes it.
documenting and collecting my experience of the streets, piazzas, palazzos, churches and obelisks. I was
also exploring my own drawing skills and techniques, from 30 second blind contour sketches to
laboriously illustrative compostions. My intent with this series of drawings was to explore the way that church facades, or just monumental facades of important buildings, present themselves in the street. I was interested in how the urban plan set up frames for these facades. I also became quite obsessed with the placement of obelisks, what monuments they mark, how they can be used to navigate the city, and how they both emphasize and interrupt the axes of the urban plan and the architecture that shapes it.
The included map shows where in the city of Rome I walked and drew. The darkened edges mark a path, building or space that I drew.
After completing a series of singular drawings documenting the streets of Rome, I realized that a more narrative format would be more effective, so I created these books. Each book is accordion in format, about 25 pages long, and each shows a sort of frame-by-frame experience of walking down a street in Rome. Each is about reaching a particular monument or destination in the city. There are fifteen books in total, all drawn on site, in the streets, many in the rain.
