Dear readers,

ten years of this blog found a new home on paper, 17 volumes, in a wooden box entirely covered with Italian terracotta. A quiet life on paper. The books have been hand-made by the same person who gave life to the blog. Simply me, an Italian writer who built in a blog her own museum of innocence, a home for her favorite artists. My fingers sewing as my mind dreams in words.

Images and words are the blood vessel of the most personal and disputable way of understanding. The infinite variety of art and life might change site, and instrument, and yet still brings up the same quest of meaning.

This month brings a memorable date, at least for me: the box filled with volumes will be one of the artworks at THE BOX gallery, Los Angeles, dressed with a new name: Pink Cloud. Robert Zin Stark’s invitation to Phallus : Fascinum : Fascism turns for me into a heartfelt thanks to him and to artists, galleries and museums giving me collaboration, kindness and feedback. My deep gratitude goes to my husband Peter Kirby who is the gardener of the blog, trimming and polishing each post. To Hannah Kirby, the smiling fun artist who keeps me warm, and last but not least to Alberto Albertini who enriched the blog with so many stories about art and life in our family, and photographs he made in his ninety-eight years of life. To me he gives the precious gift of his friendship.

It is not the end of The Kite. The blog will continue to exist as far as my body allows me. No change with the motto, neither: always about

THINKING as the art of DESIRE, and ART as the desire of THINKING FRESH.

Rosanna Albertini, Nov. 30, 2025

Phallus : Fascinum : Fascism will open at THE BOX Los Angeles

November 15 to January 17, 2026

THE KITE 2014-2023

TEN YEARS OF BLOG IN 17 HAND-MADE VOLUMES edition of 10

I was an Eighteenth-century philosophy scholar who turned into a journalist, a blogger and a maker of hand-sewn books. My hands give the books a body as the secluded princesses of the old tales, making their lovers’ body with flour and water. I was and am a grown up Italian country-girl who grew up through gray days in front of windows often covered with ice. Naked the trees, and black. My cat walking with me on the way to school. But fireflies in May were flying diamonds among the piles of hay.

My grandfather Oreste, painter, was my guide in the mysterious labyrinth of real and imaginary journeys, when there is no distance between art and life. And his son Alberto my companion in THE KITE, connecting the blog to our family history.

There is no beginning nor ending in these blog/books. No rules, no patterns, no separation between images, art, documents, texts, and lives. There is, feeling. 

A long time, and a lot of work learning how to abandon the idea that ‘evaluation’ or ‘judgment’ are the right approach to writing about artists. Such a mechanical device. Which the brain is not. THE BLOG:  as usual, I was attracted by things I did not understand. Over the years, patiently, they started to make sense. I became skeptical of aesthetic theories. I need to meet the artist, to crush objectivity like Fluxus artist used to do, using an axe to destroy the piano. Emptying as much as possible my closet filled with intellectual devices. Every time I am in front of interesting artworks an inner fire lights on.

Never alone, nor isolated. Old and new friends among Los Angeles artists, and others beyond the oceans, gave form to the pleasure of thinking together despite geographical distances.

THE KITE has become, in ten years, the place of friendly collaboration I imagined at the beginning; a fragile carpet supporting the texture of stories that words cannot perfectly translate, and images cannot reproduce. 

What makes artists’ lives and work an irredeemable outer world, unreachable at times, is also what allows such a fragile land to hover over everybody’s lives without touching them, just showing some where else: humans alterations in reality. 

Never cease feeling, don’t give up hoping. Even when reality is painted black, blogging in common with my open tribe of people gave me, and continues to give me the treasure of Joy. That’s the language of these books, a pink spot in the clouds.

ROSANNA ALBERTINI  writer, editor, designer, hand-maker of each volume, publisher

BASED IN LOS ANGELES

THE PINK BOXES edition of 6 are a collaborative result of many hands & brains

Rosanna Albertini – multitasking 

Neil Doshi – designer

Michael C. McMillen – artist 

Robert Einfrank – artist carpenter

Peter Kirby – multitasking

Post Scriptum:

Books are an edition of 10 for each volume, the boxes are an edition of 6. Very few volumes remain out of the boxes. Each volume contains the posts of a year. You can see in the blog what’s in each year of the blog. The layout is obviously different. Trying to transfer to the books the dynamic character of the blog, for every year I changed color and fonts of the cover. Each volume starts with the dedication to an artist, and 6 pages of a small exhibition. This is only in the books; the artists are: Jean-Louis Garnell, Julie Shafer, Bianca Sforni, Mitchell Syrop, Simone Forti, Eileen Cowin, Yves Tremorin, Judy Fiskin, Philippa Blair, Peter Kirby, Dominique Moody, Edgard Honetshläger, Francesca Lalanne, Michael C. McMillen, Kim Abeles, Fiona Connor.

Frankly, I dislike advertisements. If, for some special reason, any of you is interested in purchasing one of the 2 or 3 copies I have for each volume, please send me an e-mail:

rosanna@albertini.ws Thank you.