PINK LEMON 

Padua, Italy, 1996

Spiral-bound notebook, mixed media

Design by Erik Flatmo and Jeanna Lucci Canapari

Text by Jeanna Lucci Canapari

We first started making things together in Padua as students in 1996. The “kitsch” that we found everywhere drove us to it: it blew apart our idea of Italy as this restrained place baked in history, stone and parchment, flecked with gold. There was certainly plenty of old, solemn stone everywhere, but through the cracks, Italy was brash, bright, unapologetic. 

We filled envelopes with this "kitsch" - postcards, ticket stubs, business cards, photographs, and bits of paper we found that surprised us in some way, and challenged our presumptions about Italy. But we didn’t know what to do with any of it. It seemed wrong to throw it away, or stick it in a drawer, so we put it in a graph-paper notebook. We photographed the book in Connecticut in 2016. 

Much of it is juvenalia, 25 years later. But in the notebook can be found the story of a city we lived in and came to love, as well as the beginnings of creative partnership. Here are a few of the pages - the rest are best left in a drawer.