A TIEPOLO SKY IN CALIFORNIA

The clouds seem to pile up against the mountains on the East Side of our valley from the winds pushing the weather across the Pacific. Often the clouds form over the Ukiah valley where they seem to get stuck. Today, however, there are openings between the clouds in the sky above us where their color is the most perfect, non-threatening pastel powder blue.

The colors of the clouds range from dark steel gray to cotton white. The taller clouds are white, with yellow highlights, where the sun, shining above the Coastal Range, reflects the late afternoon sun off their billowing bodies.

I have named the blue sky after the painter Tiepolo because it brings back the memory of being in the Doge’s Palace museum in Venice where I first saw paintings by the Italian master. It is wonderful to think that the skies above Ukiah, California hold the same majesty of those painted by the great Italian.

There are many similarities between this part of the world and that. I am familiar with both places, having spent happy days hiking through the Italian hills in the Abruzzo where my sister runs an artist’s workshop each summer in a town of about a thousand people where the skies have many of the same characteristics as they do here.

And then there are my relatives on my father’s side—the Barberas—who emigrated to Northern California and brought their grape vines with them. Maybe it is this connection that ties me to both places at once—and offers me a reason for the connection I feel when I look up at the sky above this place.

I just like the sound of "Tiepolo Sky." As I said, it’s pastel powder blue and non-threatening—a color truly as soft and calm as can be.