Via Cariona, Carrara


Janos' House, Torano
 
Nine Months In Italy With Sculpture and Drawing
By Gordon Punt, MFA

July 11, 1984
Arrival by Train in Carrara, Italy


The Train finally arrived in Carrara but my ordeal was not at an end,
for by the time I had collected all my luggage and opened the door to get out the train started moving! I couldn't believe it and I was just about to throw myself and luggage out anyway when someone yelled for me to stop. So I ended up going to the next stop ten minutes away, then quickly hopping on another train going back.
Going back was actually very special because this time I had an excellence view of the white marble capped mountains I would be working beneath. The sound of the train suddenly sounded at first like a choir of a hundred voices, and then a thousand voices cheering me on. I was very inspired and tears wanted to flow from my eyes, but I held them back as usual.

It was about eight o'clock, 20:00 European, when I quickly got out of the train at Carrara, but it took me one hour to figure out how to use the phone to call Janos (yanosh), my tutor. I finally had to have a bar tender call the number for me. At nine o'clock Janos said he would arrange to pick me up at eleven o'clock with some friends and we all went to his house by a marble quarry. It was kind
of like a movie. The night was warm and clear, and the moon lit the stone steps leading up to his rustic old house. There were more friends of his and sculptors waiting. By the small outdoor table light, dim so not to attract flying creatures, I met Janos' daughter Russlana, who was fifteen years old. Then I met an Austrian, a Hungarian, the Dutchman Antonius and his girlfriend Andrea, with her two year old girl. We then had some fruit, bread and plenty of wine. I was very tired and stale from traveling for two days from Holland, so I went to sleep outside and got a glimpse of my first firefly streaking through the night as I quickly dropped off to sleep.



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