Faculty Ken Ueno

SIX MEMOS FROM A YEAR IN ROME
First Memo: COMMUNITY
By Dr. Ken Ueno

Wake up. Get out of bed. Go downstairs to the bar. Buy a cup of double espresso. Go outside to the gardens. Walk fifty yards to my studio. Check e-mail. Compose.

Such is my schedule in the morning at the Academy until lunch at 1pm. But today, December 8, is the Festival of the Immaculate Conception, an Italian National holiday; and all the bells of all the churches are ringing. This makes me think that not only is my daily schedule different from my life back home, but there are also different markers of time. Classes must be getting near the end of the semester. Final exams. Then Christmas. Being in Italy, I missed out on the mad migration back to ancestral homes for Thanksgiving. Here, it was just another day. I say "just" another day, but I don't mean it that way. Everyday has been magical here. Rome is one of the culturally richest cities in the world. Being here is life changing. There is so much to see it really does take an extended period of time to experience them. The cultural richness is not concentrated, as it is in many places around the world, into one or two central museums. Rather, one has to go to a church here to see a sculpture, a palazzo there to see a fresco, and a fountain elsewhere to see how an aqueduct two thousand years old still feeds the public display of water: the richness is thoroughly integrated into the fabric of the city. This sensibility that living here expands one's life is well known and countries have been sending their best and brightest artists and scholars on extended pilgrimages here for ages. There are thirty academies here. The French, the Germans, the Spanish, the Finnish, the English, and even the Egyptians are all here.

Being here has been a threefold blessing. One: to have a year to concentrate on composing my music. Two: to experience the cultural richness of Rome. Three, the greatest blessing of all: experiencing life here with a great community of scholars and artists (there are thirty fellows in residence at the Academy, fifteen scholars and fifteen artists). Which brings us to lunch at 1pm. Lunch and dinner is provided by the Academy six days a week. Meals are the greatest binders of our community, for it is the most consistent opportunity we have to see each other. Everyone comes in from their respective studios energized from their work. Over meals (and we have a whole year to do this) we share our ideas, the fruits of our research, and the progress of our creative work. What is amazing is that because we are mostly specialists in different fields (see www.aarome.org/2006_RPwinners.html for a list of fellows and their fields), we complement and augment each other. Let me explain with some examples.

The Academy organizes some group excursions to historical sites. On such occasions, the scholars are great resources. Once, when looking at an ancient Roman mosaic mural depicting the Nile, I was able to depend on a historian colleague to read and translate the ancient Greek text (he also added commentary about the significance of the Roman representation of the Nile). On another excursion to an Etruscan (an ancient non-Roman civilization in central Italy) temple in Tarquinia, I found myself walking on debris that looked liked broken shards of pottery. Pamela Hatchfield, who is the head conservator at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, was able to confirm for me that these shards were broken bits of ancient pottery. (She was also able to tell me whether or not the book I purchased at an open-air flea market was, indeed, printed in 1741. Luckily, it was!)

Artists experience sites differently. Sometimes it's technical. Over the course of the year, a number of senior scholars and artists are invited to be in residence at the Academy. Recently, we were privileged to have in residence one of America's most important senior architects. Towards the end of his time here, last week, he came along on one of our excursions to see the new museum building housing the Ara Pacis (a peace monument built by Augustus, the first emperor of Rome) built by one of America's most visible architects, Richard Meier. The building has complex grids of windows, which blanket the marble monument with shadows. The senior resident architect pointed out that there is "too much architecture" here, that the complex grid work is too distracting. There was also a platform with a sharp drop, where one lady visiting the museum had already become a casualty. The senior resident architect pointed out that, were he to have designed the building, he would have made a lip, raising the marble floor, to kind of act as a border before the sharp drop, thereby creating a building that is aesthetically pleasing as well as being safe.

More often, an artist's experience of space is more personal. There is a remarkable landscape architect here, Willet Moss, who has talked to me at length, often during our meals, about how his experience of spaces affects his sense of temporality, that different spaces make him feel as if time is slowing or speeding up. Another fellow, Thomas Tsang, an architect, has talked to me about how he feels that the quality of light is an essential element in creating a sense of spirituality in spaces.

Each of these perspectives, the scholarly, the technical, personal, and the spiritual augments my experience here. It is the sense of community that is nurtured here that allows for it. In part, the mission of the Academy might be summed as that of collecting a multi-disciplinary group of talented people to come together to influence each other, in order that, a year later, they might go back to their places of working, places of teaching, to then share their experiences with a larger community. During a recent open studio show, another fellow, the landscape architect Jose Parral, had a group show with his family. Each of the walls of his studio was dedicated to exhibit the work of a different member of his family - his twin toddler sons, his wife, and he all exhibited together. What I found to be amazing, and a testament of their talent and mutual influence, was that sometimes, it was hard to tell what work was whose. Jose and his family is a wonderful new standard to define "community" for me now.

Two days ago, I looked out my studio window and noticed a flock of parrots had alighted on a tree in the garden. Parrots in Rome in December. It's magical here.