Ian MacLellan

my two photo booths for the affair:

I was lucky enough to spend last week on a tiny farm in the tiny Italian town of Sassoleone, near Balogna working a little bit outside and playing, cooking, baking, and chatting a lot with the lovely and welcoming family that hosted us. It was a wild and fun mix of visitors, animals, and children and I highly recommend that everyone visits the area at some point in their life for some relaxation and friendship or at least WWOOFs at some point in their lives. It’s free and you could hypothetically do it forever.

This was more vacation and adventure for me so I spent more time and energy writing, reading, and talking thanphotographing sooo I never really worked hard to wake up at sunrise or any of that real photography stuff.

Kris was the mother of the house and is originally from Germany and came to settle in Italy by way of at least Ukraine, Croatia, and France. She was our helpful translator and great teacher. Matteo works most of the day, but when he is around he warms the hearts of everyone.

After a long day of baking and picking cherries the family  all gets together to jar cherries before they start to go bad.

One of the highlights of the trip was a potluck dinner celebration at the farm full of music and jokes Emma and I couldn’t understand. Luckily about half of the songs were in English so it was easy for us to sing along and help out with the lyrics. MacLellan family gatherings prepared me well for these sorts of parties.

The farm functions as a great meeting point and people will even drive through the farm to shave some mileage off the twisting valley road.

There was constantly some sort of food preparation or clean up going on and it was great to learn Kris’s(our host mother) style of baking and cooking. Even for bread or cakes she’ll essentially make it up as goes following the spirit of the recipes more than the letter. I fell in love with the mess of making fresh Gnocchi and was reminded of my own chickens with the ease of getting fresh eggs and plucking the salad and herbs right before you need them.

We got to help out in some funny little ways too, like drawing funny little signs to help identify the motley crew of plants on the farm.

We were taken up into “town” one of our first nights for a surprise bell ringing practice. You stand inches from the huge swingin bells, your ears filled with cotton. In between songs they all drank beer out of little cups and brought baked goods to snack on. It seemed like a friendly little gentleman’s club up in the bell tower.

I know I shouldn’t post cute pictures of cats, but their new kitten August was constantly full of antics, getting in hats, under boxes, and sleeping in the strangest corners. It was also sadly their youngest daughter Jora’s plaything and bore some cruel punishment like a champ.

One evening we wandered upon this ancient church in the mountains and were welcomed to sit down and drink some wine and eat some sweet breads as they passed the dusk with light chatter.

The view of the town from the bell tower.

They live in an ancient home with walls that are more than a foot thick in some places.

Jora picking feasting on cherries.

The woman on the far left is Matteo’s (the father) sister and was nearly crowned Miss Italia.

I’m still not sure if the guard dog was named Toby or Dobby or something in between, regardless it was very cute.

Giorgio is the owner of the land and farm’s most of the fields himself with apricot trees, figs, and honey. He also has a collection of chickens, geese, and rabbit for his bar in town and while we were there he slaughtered 21 cocks and one hen. Here his wife and another friend clean and prepare the animals in his workshop. The smell reminded me of the grinding and burning of teeth at the dentist… Giorgio is essentially a father and grandfather to the family and constantly stops his own work to take care of the kids or guide in gardening technique.

Jora with her favorite toy.

Our guide and mentor on how to properly pick, eat, and sit on cherries.

The geese and chickens pre-slaughter.

Emma with her watering can.

The huge rainstorm on the final day, though it pales in comparison to the one that hit Western Mass the same day…

Up in the belltower. I’m still rather delusional from the all consuming noise…

Overall it was an inspiring and fun little adventure. My favorite way to travel is to spend all day getting to one place and then staying there till it’s time to leave, so this was perfect. I’m absolutely terrible at using Italian trains and first off took us to San Pietro di Casale instead of Castale di San Pietro and then on my way home to Milan boarded the completely wrong train by accident, luckily it was the super fast train instead of the slow train to Milan and I had an assigned seat in the last row of the last car so the conductor only came to my car as we were arriving at the station and never made it to check my tickets.

If you do travel around Italy, I highly recommend the Bounty bars and staying farm away from the train tracks because Italian trains are very startling and will knock you off your seat. Their yellow line is not a joke like the MBTA’s. I also read One Hundred Years of Solitude during the trip, which is an epic that should be required reading for everyone in the Americas.

Finally finishing off this series as promised.

I started this project on the eve of finishing up my final GIS poster with my head swimming with visions of graphic design and mapping and swirling with the youthful excitement over the coming summer. It all came together to reignite my simple creative passions.

I’ve had a creative melancholy since returning home from 10 days of intense photo work in Iraq in January though. I needed a mission and I needed some structure.

Lately I organize my whole life on a chalk board and in photoshop and I therefore needed a similarly ordered project. I turned back to my GIS project and the Tron music blaring in the geology lab and thought up a grid.

I love Somerville, but so much of its history and culture lay hidden under a dense complex of one way streets and unwelcoming suburban enclaves that after three years living here, I still barely know my Broadway from my Somerville Ave. It was time to start exploring and learning and I needed to construct my grid, some rules, some lists, some cells, some integers.

I quickly fired up my old friends Illustrator, Earth, Chrome, and Photoshop and set to work building a “randomized” grid of Somerville as a guide. I was just missing checkboxes and this project would be the same as my other chalkboard tasks like “clean self”, “ride bike”, and “eat candy” (this whole project actually came out of a to-do list item called “create: new”, but I was embarassed to put that in the first paragraph). The numbering and lines really are pretty random, except for the fact that my house rests in polygon 100.

Hopefully this crazy game of color by number continues to grow past just me and a few friends into a community garden of photos, stories, art, and poetry over the summer.

So here is the pitch: share your community with us. Whether you live in block 67, work in block 23, or just like sitting in block 99, I want to hear about the nicest corners, roofs, and magical trees so I can further document and share this city with the world. I know it’s more than just Tufts, Davis, and Winter Hill, but without you I don’t have the visual evidence.

This project is still very much in its infancy, so for now this is just to let everyone know what I’m planning. I will release a full map and start releasing full stories and accompanying art works after I return from Italy in 10 days. Either way, feel free to e-mail me at ian@maclellanimages.com with your thoughts.

Some recent Somerville photographs from my wandering: