The Apicius Campus Welcomes Its Newest Addition:

FEDORA Pastry Shop and Academic Facility for Apicius Baking & Pastry Department

The Spring Semester always has novelties in store for the culinary areas of Palazzi, whether it's a new dining experience at Ganzo or an exciting changeup in the Italian wine producers who open up the fall harvest to Wine Studies students or present at department activities. Spring 2012's most significant change is Fedora, a project of fresh and fragrant perspectives for the Apicius Baking and Pastry department.

Fedora is both a pastry shop open to the public and the new facility of the Baking and Pastry department. The pastry shop is a part of the Apicius campus facilities where pastry students complete the practical component of their academic studies and is open to the public during daily hours of operation. The selection of products available to the public, decided and prepared by the students under the supervision of the Pastry Faculty, features baked goods, pastries, and desserts prepared freshly and locally. Traditional and contemporary Italian pastries and desserts, as well as international items, are featured daily and express the unique curriculum of the department.

Fedora will be open from the beginning of the Spring 2012 academic semester.

Fedora can be tasted directly on-site at the shop in via Guelfa 116 or at Ganzo where the dessert menu is managed by Fedora students and staff. Students and individuals with a passion for baking and pastry may volunteer at Fedora to get a taste of a professional pastry environment.

Via Guelfa 116

50129 Firenze Italia

 
FAST Is the Fit For Florence

FAST, the school of Fashion and Accessories Studies and Technologies is in Palazzo della Giostra (Borgo Pinti 20r). This is where the school of fashion connects with the city of Florence: a retail store (FLY Fashion Loves You) with the student’s production is present besides a fashion media lab, a tailoring lab with sewing machines and ironing stations, a knitwear lab with knitwear machines, a leather lab. A footwear lab and a straw lab are also present and showcase renowned artisanal techniques produced in Florence for centuries.

What’s really special about the FAST campus is how its facilities and learning spaces feature the fashion and accessories departments’ vision: offer the world of fashion to explore by hand with the support of contemporary approaches and technologies. Department Co-Coordinator Valera LaSalvia proudly indicates the leather lab that allows for shoes and purses to be constructed from point zero, a rare find in fashion schools. The professors stand out not only for their knowledge but their active involvement in the industry. 

Bringing together solid facilities and a creatively challenging faculty, the main question that FAST seeks to bring to light is how contemporary artigianato (what’s artisanal) is being practiced today. The campus’s position on Borgo Pinti, a burgeoning petite fashion district in Florence with its vintage and small designer shops, is an everyday reminder of how to connect to the community by sharing the concept of the artisanal at the retail store FLY or through the fashion seminars open to the general public. The manual, hands on classroom approach offers unique experiential learning and acquaints students with technique and material, the faculty provides interaction with individuals who apply artisanal work to their careers, participation at the 2012 Mostra dell’Artigianato – an artisanal craftsmanship expo in Florence – poses an exciting challenge for the campus.

 
Platypus Workshop Concludes an Intensive Session in Florence and Gets Ready for 2012 Edition

The second edition of the Florence Platypus workshop sponsored by Apple, BeachTek and Sennheiser, will be held at DIVA from March 17-25, 2012. The workshop has offered an award-winning standard of HD video storytelling and editing and photojournalism for the past 12 years.

Time Magazine photographer Dirck Halstead led an intensive, Apple sponsored workshop on Digital Journalism in Florence, Italy from August 28 to 30, 2011. Final Cut Pro author Tom Wolsky, longtime ABC camerawoman Beth corwin, and veteran photojournalist Gary Kieffer, who is also interviewed on the Apicius website , rounded out the faculty team of experts who shared their knowledge and shaped the field projects of the program participants.

The 2011 team of faculty supported by DIVA staff and students met daily to work on media training and reporting on the field with interesting results. Student participant Elizabeth Nakahara is former newspaper reporter and fundraiser for a legal aid society in San Francisco who shares in-depth details on the program, objectives, and outcomes in an online story on the Platypus website. Elizabeth graduated from the Florence Italy Platypus workshop and journeyed on to Perpignan, France where she reported on the 2011 Visa Pour L'Image photo festival.

Platypus faculty member Gary Kieffer also shares his thoughts on his involvement and the positive outcomes of the Florentine Platybus experience: “Dirck Halstead is the inventor and creator of Platypus Workshop. Dirck had envisioned digital video through the use of digital still cameras long before anyone else. When he started to look around for a place to hold a workshop in Europe he contacted me, as we have worked together nearly 40 years, and have a good relationship. He told me what requirements he needed to put on the Workshop and asked if I knew of any place that could accommodate this. I immediately thought of DIVA.  I had toured the facilities in May when I cam to Florence to look over the school and talk to the admission people. I was right, everything we needed to put on the Workshop, from computers, to studio, to grad assistants was already in place. It was a seamless transition. One of the things I want to do here in school is to go through the food journalism course after the certificate program at Apicius.”

Find out more about the 2012 Platypus Workshops and professional photojournalism at the Digital Reporter.

 
FUA Creative Writing Course Contributes Literary Supplement to Blending Magazine

The release of the latest issue of Blending, the semesterly magazine produced by FUA students, staff and faculty, heralds the opening of an unprecedented literary supplement. The Fall 2011 Creative Writing course taught by Professor Baret Magarian contributed a selection of student-produced short stories that were narrowed down to two final selections published in their entirety in Blending magazine.

The lead-off story written by Brianna Bond, "Il Mare," sweeps with a crescendo of memories and the power of the sea swirling within the mind of an old man, at an unnamed Italian port village off of the Mediterranean. The second published story submitted by Samuel Cho, "The House," is also teeming with memory but from a mystery and tension-infused perspective in which a boy makes a horrific discovery about his past.

Professor Magarian reveals his perspective on the resulting work:

"In our index-linked, wired and wireless, radioactive, spun-dry and moisturized world, I worry that the Imagination is slowly but surely being pushed into the wings and marginalized. Thus I always try to get my students to stack the shelves of their minds with that precious, ever rarer commodity, try and get them to battle with the world by saying no to conformity, uniformity, fear, and by refusing to be cloned and replicated. Writing is an act of defiance that confirms one's humanity. We tell stories to children so that they can more readily sleep, and we tell stories to adults so that they can more easily awaken. The two pieces that are printed below represent a testament to the talent and creativity of my writing students this semester, and I am proud to be able to introduce them."

To read the new literary supplement of Blending, download the latest copy of the magazine.

 
The Lens of Language: Palazzi and UNIFI Students Expand Cultural Perspectives

What cultural aspects have surprised you about your partner?

Carla: Learning about her lifestyle. For example, Laura has taught me how to get to Fiesole by bus. I've met her children, who are the same age as my cousins, and I've truly seen the difference of living in a city where you can walk or bike everywhere

Jessy: From a study abroad point of view, I’ve realized the difference between us foreign students who travel often in order to take advantage of the proximity of other cities and countries, whereas the locals carry on their daily lives.
Rebecca: I'm surprised by the number of young Italians who go to other countries to gain work experiences!
Antonio: I was convinced that Americans, for example, are excessive in certain behaviors, but this is definitely a stereotype after having gotten closer to real Americans.

What new knowledge imparted by your partner will remain with you?

Antonio: The diversity of people from a foreign country! We tend to group them together in the same category but getting to know students here has made me realize how much diversity there is.
Alberto: How different the educational system of another country is. It makes me reflect on the nature and characteristics of my own university.
Jessy: The open-mindedness of my partner and his approach to life and plans.
Rebecca: The advice to look for real Italian cuisine not always in restaurants but also in the homes of Italians!

 
F_AIR’s Artist in Residence Maria Raponi

Maria Raponi concluded the Fall 2011 Artist in Residence program at F_AIR by presenting her personal show entitled The Reading Room. Her residency program involved a teaching experience at FUA while working on her final exhibition.

Maria, tell us about yourself and your experiences in the art world.

I was born in Toronto, but have moved quite frequently. I fell in love with photography and film at a young age, and while I tend to work across a variety of mediums, photography and film to this day still inform much of my practice. I am a graduate of the Photographic Studies BFA program at the School of Image Arts at Ryerson University in Toronto, which also allowed me to work in film, video and various media. I received my MFA from the joint program between the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and Tufts University where my work started taking on sculptural and architectural relations.

I frequently become involved in what may appear to be rather distinct roles, as an artist, as an educator and as a cultural facilitator, but in my mind, they are almost inseparable although it is rare for me to work on each simultaneously. Consequently, I tend to oscillate between my involvement with community or cultural programs and my own artistic practice. Over the years, I have had the opportunity to work with artist’s books through SculptureCenter (Long Island City) and Printed Matter (NYC); with community programming through LIFT (the Liaison of Independent Filmmakers of Toronto); and directly in the art community through my own artistic practice, which has been exhibited in various cities in North America, Europe and Asia. I spent the summer of 2010 in Germany working on a site-specific project at Künstlerhaus Dortmund and will return to Toronto sometime before March to work on a photographic project for Gallery 44.

How was your experience teaching at FUA?

I taught Introduction to Classic Photography, which in a sense is the perfect place for me to teach from, as it was my own starting point. Through this course, my students are given what is now the unique experience to work in the darkroom using mostly black and white film, but are also challenged to think critically about photography through our discussions and group critiques as well as discuss ideas of responsibility inherent in all forms of image making.

In slowing down to work with chemicals, watching an image appear and learning how to print, a more methodical and ideally a more self-reflexive or critical relation to image making will ensue. As a teacher, assisting my students to learn the skills involved in the actual craft of photography along with developing their criticality of photographic practices are simultaneously integral to the experience. Seeing their work continue to develop throughout the course has been a stimulating experience for myself as well.

How was the experience of working on your personal show at F_AIR?

The process of working on my show, The Reading Room, from within F_AIR’s studios, which was exhibited at F_AIR’s public gallery on December 1st. It has been a rewarding experience. My work often deals with relations between architecture and its use, which consequently also heightens my interest in seeing how F_AIR’s space functions. There is a particular dynamic that happens in walking by the site of the exhibition on a daily basis. The various uses of the space, the people who come across it, the students who walk through it and the multitude of interactions available within it are each highlighted and become an integral part of the architecture. Having students working and taking classes nearby provides a sense of community for me to work within as well as a mutual sharing as students freely ask me about my work, my process and my intentions and share their work with me as well.