Whitespace artist, Tommy Taylor, guest blogs about his recent artist-in-residency experience at Artestudio Ginestrelle, which offers a residency program to literary, visual and performing artists worldwide and is located outside the beautiful town of Assisi in Italy.

In March I traveled to the Artestudio Ginestrelle on Mount Sabassio in Umbria, Italy. The residency was for 24 days in a 250 year old farm house in a nature preserve outside of the amazingly preserved town of Assisi. Other artist in attendance included a photographer from Paris, a video artist from Colombia, S. America, an architect and children’s book illustrator from S Korea, a composer from Japan, a poet from Finland, and other painters from Switzerland and Singapore.

Each day started with an casual family style breakfast consisting of fried eggs with local truffle and toast with honey from the neighbors farm, as well as many great and new cheeses. From there the residents were free to work, hike the surrounding hills, or drive into Assisi for the day. On one of the day trips into the city, we witnessed the finish of that day’s leg of the Giro d’Italia (Italy’s famous cross country bike race). After crossing the finish line the winner of that day stopped right in front of us. Soon we were all surrounded by cameramen. It was surreal to see ourselves on the Eurosport television coverage that evening. That day we also visited the St. Frances Basilica….a church I had studied extensively at UGA many many years ago. It was as if I had walked into the dusty old Mid-Evil Art History book that sits on my shelf today.