Fragments of Italy

In my senior year of college I had the privilege of going to Italy with other select classmates for a cultural exchange between students of UMD and Sicily. We went to Palermo for two weeks, helped to put up an art show and were given a choice to go to Rome for five days for an additional fee. I was very happy to have my Parent’s scrape up the extra charge for me to go to Rome for the little extra stretch.

The entire experience just blew my mind! I was back in Europe for the first time since I left Poland in 1991 and all of a sudden I felt so at home. We were in Sicily and something about it felt so much like Poland, I think it was the fact that Sicily is less well-to-do and maybe a little dirtier than the rest of Italy that made it so similar to the Poland I remembered.

I brought my SLR camera to document the whole experience, but I so wish I had a digital camera, because I would have been able to capture so much more…

After the trip the graphic design students that were selected to go were required to present their experience in a book format. Fragments of Italy is my representation. I tried to be very experimental typographically and to incorporate some of the best images I captured along with some of my journal entries from the trip. These are some of the select pages.

The above page represents some of the poster art I encountered in various parts of Sicily.

Since we were free to do whatever we wanted on the weekends, a group of us went to Agrigento, a beautiful town with ancient ruins…

We went to see some great art and galleries while in Sicily.

… The architecture… What can I say?!

And the ridiculously beautiful and amazing pasties and cafes… With the best cappuccinos I’ve had ever.

I LOVED the marketplace in Palermo. It was so full of sights, smells, colors, textures, characters…

On our track from Sicily to Rome we took a ferry to Napoli and made a stop at Pompeii. Yes another mind-blowing experience…

In Rome I saw some of the most gorgeous store fronts.

One of the weekends in Sicily the Dean of the School of Arts sprung for a trip for all the attending students to go to Siracusa. To me it was an amazingly magical place…

This is it… The last page… There’s so much more in between…