It is difficult to talk about my residency at the American Academy in Rome because I can only write good things about the place and the time that I spent there and it is possible that I become pompous and I wouldn't want to.

I am very happy to have had the opportunity to spend three months at the AAR. The place is gorgeous, the studio for the Italian fellow has two huge windows from where it is possible to have a fantastic view of the city. From the skylight above the bed, it is possible to follow the movements of the clouds or the stars and the moon in the night, or to dream of being in a Conrad novel during a typhoon.

The garden is beautiful with its trees and plants that gave us fruits and vegetables for our meals, bowling and the benches for reading quietly.

The indoor rooms where one can spend time reading the newspapers in the morning, chatting with the other fellows, drinking tea in the afternoon or playing pool under the beautiful portrait of Alex Katz by Chuck Close.

The dining room where the team directed by Mona Talbott served us fantastic food everyday.

Outdoor: Rome. It means cultural attractions and leisure.

All the above does not help one to concentrate on a project. Stimulated but distracted..

Anyway, I was invited to stay at the AAR thanks to a project concerning a book that I wanted to do with Emilio Prini. He is an artist of the generation of Arte Povera, very ill and with a difficult character. The idea was a conversation between two artists from Genoa on the art world. Even though we decided to do the book a couple of years before, thanks to his personality and the idea of disappearance of his work, after a couple of weeks I understood that I was in a storm and the book was wrecking. An artist always has a lifeboat and I decided to change the project from a collaboration with him to a book dedicated to him. I've finished the book during my time at the academy. Now I have a French publisher, Christophe Daviet-Thery from Paris, who decided to print it, and it will come out next fall.

I forgot to write something about all the fantastic people that work there, beginning from the director, the marvelous Carmela Vircillo Franklin to Luca Zamponi the attentive gatekeeper.

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