Greetings from Venice Part 2!
Dear friends, students, and fellow dreamers,
It’s been a week of costume changes here in Venice—a swirl of colors, characters, and the kind of magic that only Carnival can conjure. I find myself asking, Why am I here, doing this, while the world spins with so many urgent problems?
The simplest answer I can find is this: art, culture, and loving time with family are the reasons we struggle for everything else. For me, they are the life of life, the heartbeat beneath it all. Being here feels, in a way, like an act of defiance—a refusal to let anything reprioritize those values.
Venice Carnival is, at its core, a celebration of imagination, a vivid reminder that our creativity can shape the world we want to live in. It’s an unapologetic display of joy, a transgressive leap into possibility, and that, too, feels like a form of resistance.
With that spirit, I have a little optional homework assignment for you. Today, I’m packing my lightweight art kit and heading to San Marco Square to paint. If you’re able, I encourage you to do the same—take your art kit on a small outing, even if it’s just to the kitchen table. Paint something small but take liberties. Capture a moment of your own world of possibility through color, line, and a sense of adventure.
I can’t wait to see where your creativity takes you.
With warmth and imagination from Venice,
Karima
Join Our Community Project: Submission Deadline March 24th!
As artists and makers, we have the unique gift of creating meaning from nothing, and I invite you to join me in a community project supporting World Central Kitchen, which provides nourishment in times of crisis. The submission deadline is March 24th, and you can find more details on the website here: Knights of the Kitchen Table Charity Shoppe. This is a chance to use your creativity to make a small difference. I can't wait to see what you create!
Looking ahead, our next FREE Sunday class is on March 30th at 10 AM Pacific on Zoom, where we’ll have a Venice-inspired show-and-tell and dive into costume design and fashion sketching. As always, these classes are open to everyone, and you can find more details and enroll on the Cammellot website HERE.
There will not be a magic day when we wake up and it’s now okay to express ourselves publicly. We make that day by doing things publicly until it’s simply the way things are. – Tammy Baldwin