[metamorphosis].... this Thursday!

We're going to be doing body painting, live drawing, installation and DJ's all night long, this Thursday night at Sub Pub, Cochabamba, with Olivia Barron, Camilla Brendon, MeXist, Reflector Tropical ,  Gontech and San Pedro Musik.

...COME!! 

:-) 

(Early) Halloween!!!

The best Halloween party ever!! :-) 

Hosted by us lot at the Sustainable Bolivia main house this Friday there was fancy dress, face-painting and FIRE!! Raymundo and his mate-on-crazy-stilts put on an amazing show.  Plus dancing dancing dancing all night long :-) 

face-painting...Pablo did an amazing UV Mexican day-of-the-dead half skull on me! (back to the old days with a temporary turn on our SB bar!)

post-party-party-inspired drawing 

:-)

Workshops Week 1: CAICC , Infante & Manuel E. Gandarillas

Drawing characters with the Tuesday afternoon group at CAICC.

After a lot of meetings, chat and planing, this has been my first week of a full-on workshop schedule:  

1. CAICC on Tuesday afternoons and Friday mornings 

2. Infante on Wednesday afternoons

3. Manuel E. Gandarillas on Thursday mornings

with studio time for my own project plus workshop prep and editing Mondays and the other four half days.

1. CAICC

My flatmate Kory introduced me to the staff at Centro de Apoyo Integral Carcelario y Comunitario (CAICC) last week and this week we ran our first two workshops at the centre along with volunteer Flori, introducing storytelling through characters, storyboards and animation.  

CAICC works primarily with children and adolescents whose parents are in jail and also with those who have been abandoned by parents migrating for better work opportunities.  Many children whose parents are incarerated live in the jails with their parents, so CAICC has a bus service which picks them up and takes them to school and to CAICC each weekday then drops them off at the end of the day.  CAICC has a day care centre for 1 to 6 year olds and the APRE school where we are working, which is a day centre for school-aged children and adolescents.  As in Brazil children in Bolivia go to school either in the morning or the afternoon so come to the centre for the other half of the day.  We are working with children of around 10 to 15 on Tuesday afternoons and 12 to 18 on the Friday mornings. 

Step 1. Brainstorming storyboards:

With both groups we brainstormed first about stories and here are some of the kids answers: 

1. What are stories?  Fictional or real accounts of events with a beginning middle and end.

2. Where do we come across them? In books, films, schools, friends, family, ourselves, comics, internet...

3. What kind of stories are there? Romance, comedy, history, documentary, biography, horror, sci-fi, fantasy, adventure, terror 

4. Why do we like them? They're entertaining, distracting, informative, fun, make us laugh, cry or smile!

Steps 2 to 4. Drawing characters, writing character profiles and storyboarding:

The kids started by drawing one character and writing a character profile about them.  Those that had time drew a second character and wrote them a profile.  With two characters they then took a 4-panel storyboard and created a story for their two characters.

René drew Bird who was born in Chile and lives on an old farm, studied how to lay eggs and doesn't like any sport and a zombie called Pedro who was born in a hotel and lives in the street, plays football and likes cereal. 

Storyboard Panel 1: [Bird, with many eggs ready to hatch, thinking in killing his enemy Pedro] "I am going to make an army", "Stop please" [holding up a stop sign] / Panel 2: '10 days later [lots of mini-Birds have hatched] "This zombie is going to stop" [Pedro is worried] "Oh no, I'm fried" / Panel 3: [Bird commands his army of mini birds] "Attack" [Pedro worried] "uh-oh" / Panel 4: 1 hour later [no birds visible and Pedro has a hugely extended stomach] "Tasty! I won!"

Deimar drew Emo and Daniel Brayan.  Emo is from a sad world, was born in Bolivia and lives on earth, his special power is not feeling pain or love . Daniel Brayan is from Mexico where he lives with his girlfriend Jhoana and speaks English, he likes doves for their love.  Both like eating salad and hope to live in a world of peace and love. 

Storyboard Panel 1: Emo is attacked by two bullies. / Panel 2: Daniel comes to help out. / Panel 3: Daniel fights the two attackers off. / Panel 4: Emo and Daniel brome friends, both saying "Friends forever"

Leonardo drew Agua Maria, a mermaid who is 15 years old and was born in Australia and lives in a clam with her father, she like to eat fish and swim.

Storyboard panel 1: "Bye dad" "Bye daughter" [Agua Maria swims off to explore] / Panel 2: [Agua Maria is caught by 2 men on a fishing boat] "Help dad!" "I'm coming daughter!" / Panel 3: [the father manages to rescue the Agua Maria] / Panel 4: [father and daughter talking under water] "Take care daughter" "Thanks for saving me Dad"  

3. Infante is a woman's centre which supports victims of physical, sexual or emotional abuse.  Infante staff offer counselling and therapeutic workshops including theatre, dance and combat.  The centre also acts as a shelter and at the moment five teenage girls are living there, who we are going to run art workshops with on Wednesday afternoons.  I was introduced to the director Maria by Emma Romano, (the ICYE volunteer I bumped into in the queue for the plane at Heathrow) and we started this Wednesday with an (unexpectedly short) introduction to storytelling through colour and symbol.  Referencing Bolivian weavings as I've been doing with my own work, we asked the girls to choose their favourite colours to draw with and think about what they mean for them.  

(left) Jimena: "For me it makes me happy when I see the mountain, all the colours are beautiful" 

(right) [blue] Symbolises peace in oneself 

[purple]symbolises to be in love

3. Manuel E. Gandarillas Rehabilitation Centre for the Blind is a day centre and residential home working with a range of ages from primary school aged children to older adults who are visually impaired.  The centre works on a one-to-one basis, providing support for clients to enable them live more independently, for example using guide sticks and reading and writing in Braille as well as providing home-work support, physical activities, craft workshops and music sessions. 

I'm going in now once a week on a Thursday 8am - 12noon working alongside Profe Maria in her Braille-based classes.  At the moment she is teaching me how to write in Braille and I am copying some texts out for her students.  I am hoping in time we will be able to do some Braille-based art projects too, following a similar storyboard, character design format as at CAICC and Infante.

'El amigo' (The friend) written out in Braille during my second session of working alongside Profe Maria at Manuel E. Gandarillas where I'm currently copying out a book of short stories and sentences designed to teach a new-learner how to read Braille.

Spanish Braille is built from six dots - variations of the pattern of the dot mean that letters, numbers and punctuation marks are coded individually. My first week at Manuel E. Gandarillas I was writting using a plastic 'template' that you clip a sheet of paper into then use a metal spike to code the letters dot-by-dot.  This week I was using this type-writer. Each letter is typed with one hit of the keys.  The central key is the space bar, and points 1, 2, 3 count out from centre to left and 4, 5, 6 from centre to right.

Festividad San Miguel, Tiquipaya

Dancers and costumes from the festival of San Miguel (Saint Michael) in Tiquipaya last Saturday, 19th.

Some fragments of video from the parade:

Millie with some artists we met at the festival: (left to right) ?, Ismael, Millie, Mauricio, Elias.  The lads from La Paz invited us to their art exhibition at Alliance Française in Cochabamba this Thursday where we saw some of their amazing oil paintings.  As a collective they are known as Craneos Rojos - Artes Plasticos and are currently touring in Bolivia with their exhibition Hombre en sociedad.

Body-paint portraits: Camilla Brendon

Millie with one of her installations: 

Our favourite image from the photos shot at the end of the stop-motion session:

Last Sunday did my first experimental stop-motion 'body-paint portrait' with Camilla Brendon aka Millie, my great friend whose art project 34South|61North is taking her the full length of the Americas over a couple of years and means we've now crossed paths in 6 different countries and 3 continents! :-)

Starting with an interview with Camilla about where she is from and where she has lived and what home means for her, I then asked her which colours, shapes and sensations she associates with each country or culture that has influenced her.   Over the course of a few hours I painted these patterns onto her face, shoulders and chest, telling a little of her story through the body-paint (having looked at a lot of Bolivian weavings over the last month or so as reference for storytelling through colour and iconography, I like of think of this way of body-painting as a 'body-painted weave'.)

 (Rotating anti-clockwise from top): 

Our set-up in the garden here at our SB home. My hand and arm as my paint palette and Millie's interview answers:

Born in the USA: red and blue mountains 

From England: green and silent (painted as green strip across the mouth)

Living currently in Cochabamba, Bolivia: noisy, green and yellow spirals

Lived in Spain: Red, warmth, circles

Lived in Japan: Orange, blue and white rectangles 

Lived in Australia: green and yellow triangles

As a  I'm hoping to continue this development from the ONE portrait project with more of the friends and volunteers here in Cochabamba, exploring the stories of this fascinating multi-lingual international community.

Thanks for the collaboration Millie! 

:-)

Fåglarna at Groove

Detail of Olivia's illustration

Jonathan's brilliant video of the night.

Olivia Barron's drawings, Camilla Brendon's installation and my drawings at Fåglarna at Groove Bar Saturday 12th October.   Shame that Millie's installation and my drawings seem to have disappeared, but hey, it's given us a new mission for the week and in our (so far unsuccessful) search we hung some of these 'wanted' posters at Groove: 

The rest of the week has been filled with missioning it around meeting with local organisations that some of the volunteers here are working with, to chat about ideas for workshops that I'll be starting this coming week.  I also did my first full morning at Manuel E. Gandarillas Rehabilitation Centre for the Blind and another morning went on a school march with them.  Thanks to director Brigitta for welcoming into the centre and educator Maria for teaching me how to write in Braille (in Spanish!). 

Chuño and Piña...

... as tired as I've felt many an evening this week (in that satisfied having-done-a-lot way)! 

:-) 

Drawing September in Bolivia

Uyuni: 14-16/09/2013

salt from the flats 

After couple of days of intensive drawing last week I got this series of drawings finished literally just in time to drop them into the Fåglarna exhibition with Olivia Barron and Camilla Brendon at Groove Bar here in Cochabamaba - thanks Olivia :-)

Potosí: 17-19/09/2013 

using coca leaves chewed by the miners

 Oruro: 20/09/2013

using api powder

La Paz: 08-10, 21-24/09/2013, Coroíco: 11-13/09/2013, Tiwanaku 23/09/2013 

using torn up museum tickets

Santiago de Okola: 25-26/09/2013, Copacabana: 27-28/09/2013, Isla del Sol: 29/09/2013

using island entry ticket.

:-)

Drawing Oruro

Starting to do some drawing this week based on this last month's travels here in Bolivia.  Going back to my drawn-diary approach to responding to journeying, I've been taking a more planned approach and have been using reference images to create the drawings.

This drawing 'Oruro 20-09-2013' was made in response to my single day and night in the town, where the thing that struck me most strongly was how intertwined Catholicism and pre-colonial religion was, so the overall image is a mixture Oruro's Virgin statue with the carnival diablo masks.  (At Dan Moriarty's talk here at the SB house last night I learned that this intertwining is the result of Catholicism having been assimilated into the Andean cosmovision, which is a world-view rather than a religion, a way of understanding the world.)

The baby Jesus she holds is modelled on a statue commemorating miners, and all the little events and observations of my time in the town are 'woven' into the detail of her skirts, referencing the iconography of weaving (though here there is more detail and the line is less squared than in weaving).

The colours and iconography in the corners of the drawing are taken from the reference image in the photo above left, a weaving from the Qaqachaga community in Oruro, found at the Museo de Textiles Andinos Bolivianos in La Paz.

This is a bit of a warm-up drawing (maybe in being more deliberate it's a bit stiff?!) but the positive is that its the first step along the way to exploring narrative through drawn 'weaves' and, even better, it's led to the invitation to participate in an experimental art night Fåglarna this Saturday at Groove Bar and Club here in Cochabamba, organised by the lovely Olivia Barrón.. wicked!

(so now to get off the computer and get back to the studio and some intense drawing sessions!)

:-)

Arriving at Sustainable Bolivia :-)

So a month into this leg of my South American journey and I arrived at the Casa Principal of Sustainable Bolivia where I'll be based for the artist residency for the next three months.  And being back at lower altitude (about 2000m above sea level) the sun is no longer deceptive but WARM, yay!

These are the two lovely dogs in the home - Piña (above) and Chuña (below) who's striking in her almost complete-hairlessness (this is ok, she's healthy, she's just a Peruvian hairless dog!)

So these first few days have been ones of settling into the space and starting to get to know my housemates and the volunteers  - there are so many fascinating folk passing through the house, it's brilliant (it really reminds me of Omega, I feel like I've landed in a sunnier more open-air version of Unit D!).  

Unpacking properly for the first time since I left London back in February has felt BRILLIANT! (Even back home in July & August I was living out of bags!)  And I've been organising the studio, sorting through reference images and materials and getting itchy fingers for starting on some drawing and experimenting this coming week.  After chatting with director Ryan about how the residency works I'm happy to be patient on the workshop front, so I'll proabbly be working on my own stuff for a couple of weeks as I get to know SB's volunteers and hear about the NGO's where they're working to see where collaborations might come up.  Exciting!

Another family member-  the cat Eva Sanchez that the dogs seem to enjoy affectionaltey sitting on top of.  She'll tolerate it for a while then squeee herself out and away.

My good friend Camilla (who I've crossed paths with now in Chile, Argentina, Brazil & now here in Bolivia as she travels with her art project 34 South/ 61 north) and her Mum's been around for the weekend too, celebrating Camilla's birthday as well as birthdays of a couple of other volunteers and friends, so there's been a lot of chat, laughter, good food and drinks.

So here's keeping fingers crossed for some productive and happy weeks ahead as I get to know folk here and get started on some project work.

Big love to you all back home.

:-)

Copocobana y la Isla del Sol

My final few days on the road before arriving here to Cochabamba last Tuesday were spent again by Lake Titicaca, at a spot much more touristic than Okola: Copacabana and from there the Isla del Sol (Sun Island where Incan legend has it the sun was born), where I shared my hostel room with Stella, a lovely Argentinian biologist I met from the boat trip that took us to this island via the Isla de la Luna (Moon Island where Incan legend has it the moon was born).  Both islands are considered sacred in Incan and Aymaran tradition, and have a lot of legend attached to them, and the waters of Lake Titicaca are siad to be infused with male and female energies.  At this point, the Spring Equinox weekend, locals said the energy was particularly feminine and so we women should bathe in it (my freezing dip in at the Okola beach was worth it then!) 

Stella was most curious about the local subsitence farming methods, and was keen to ask everyone we ran into interesting questions about local life and customs.  Our hosts Julia and her husband at the hostel said they needed about 40 bolivianos a day (about £4) to live comfortably, and that they make that from the hostel and its attached pizzeria (where we ate delicious local trout), plus selling their hand-made weavings (see the photo above) and using their donkeys to deliver water to neighbours.

The issue of water is a key one for the island.  They have a source of spring water that is considered sacred and runs freely down the steep drop from the height of the island to the level of the lake.  Rather than interfere in the sacred source with infrastructure to make their lives easier, locals gather from the natural source in containers that are then strapped to donkeys who carry the heavy load up the steep steps to the community at the top of the hill.  

Lago Titicaca is 3812m above sea level, so these communities are above 4000m which means we foreigners with our small lungs were wheezing our way up these steep steps without even carry anything so for local people their animals are essential.   As well as donkeys they use llamas and in the time we were there we saw many individuals with their groups of four or five donkeys and llamas carrying various loads up from the harbour. 

(Above and below) In these two photos of the harbour above and below you can see cargo brought in from the boats.  There had apparently been a Sunday market in Copacabana and islanders had gone to buy supplies, which the animals carry up the steep steps to the community at the top of the hill.  The donkeys are waiting to be loaded with the crates of drinks, sacks of food and packages of snacks, sweets and toilet paper. 

On the way from La Paz to Copocobana I'd met with a lovely Peruvian lad Pepe who's living in the town with his Paceña wife Patti, their wee boy Matteo and lovely great dane-esque dog Luna.  Had a fun couple of days with them and their mates before heading to the islands - playing pool with a mate Mickey, pedalling and bobbing in one of these duck boats on the lake, and drinking with their neighbours at their home with its amazing lakeside view.  The family has plans to set up a hostel with a campsite , so perhaps we'll run into each other again around a bonfire in the future!

A happy relaxed last weekend before arriving to Cochabamaba! 

:-)

Santiago de Okola

Santiago de Okola... a beautiful and incredibly peaceful farming and fishing village where I stayed a couple of nights with the family of Victoria and Sebastian.  What a massively welcome contrast from the noise and busyness of La Paz...   :-)

The community is a farming and fishing village dotted along part of the shore of Lake Titicaca and sheltered along one side by the rocky mountain El Dragon Durmiendo and marked on the other by La Isla Tortuga.  The family's youngest daughter, 14-year old Yola was my guide for the two days and we walked for hours on the Dragon one day and along the shore the next.  

Along the shore we saw local folk flicking ispi fish from their nets (tiny fish that when I had them fried in batter for lucnh one day reminded me of whitebait). There are many crops grown on the land: quinoa, peas, fava beans, corn, oca, papliza, barley, wheat, oats, vegetables, and of course potatoes, of which there are apparently 2398 varieties in Bolivia, and which can be cultivated in the sandy soil right up to the edge of the water.

The gauntlet of neighbour J's sheep on the way to the beach!

The land around the houses is all hand turned and hand sown.   Families have donkeys to carry heavy loads of potatoes, cattle for milk and occasionally meat and chickens for eggs.  Sheep are used for their wool for weaving, which the women  do by hand as they sit all day long in the fields with the animals as they graze, and also to sell for meat.  The ispi fish caught in the lake are both eaten within the community and sold daily in La Paz.  The mini bus (trufi) that I caught back to La Paz had a half dozen buckets of ispi on its roof rack that the driver sold to expectant cholitas with food stalls in El Alto on the edge of the city.   Living in such a land-to-mouth community it is immediately and starkly clear that it is not sustainable to eat meat every day (definitely something I've know in my logical mind for a long time, and unpleasantly felt in my guts on the occasions where my diets got meat heavy - but it is just so glaringly obvious in the context of a subsist acne farming home.  A family has a limited amount of animals producing at their natural rate.  There would be no way the family could the meat of their own animals every day.) Saying this, we did eat beef one day and when I asked it turns out it had been bought in from La Paz.  Other than that all the food we ate was produced by the family, with each luch and dinner starting with a delicious soup of home-grown potatoes, vegetables and either quinoa, barley or wheat.... so so tasty!!

A mandala of stones made at the Dragon's beach, a tiny wee bay amongst the rocks where I dared going in the water and lasted a few minutes before the scarpering from the cold! :-) (sunshine here in Bolivia is deceptive, at these altitudes things are COLD, most of the day I'd be wandering in long sleeves!)Having had the urge to be playing music again, it was also here I worked out (just about I think!) the tune to the Skye Boat Song on the recorder I picked up in La Paz for £2.50! :-)

(Been doing a lot of thinking about Scotland in these last few weeks and my connection with the country and identity with my 'Scottishness'  [or lack of it as my mates at 12 foot6 would rib me!] and I've been reflecting a lot about the parallels in family and community identity between Scottish tartans and Bolivian weavings and wondering how I might integrate the colours and patterns into my work at the Sustainable Bolivia residency.)

View from the window of my 'casita' (tiny home)... in the calm sunny days there was no sign of how intensely windy it would get at night, the casita rattling as the cold winds buffeted it and I huddled inside under blankets drawing.

Local weavings seen at the museum - some had been made by Tomas's late grandmother. It seems the elderly in these parts commonly live to over 100.  Yola's late granny died at 125!! Surely that's  a sign of a healthy lifestyle!

Details from Kallawaya costumes in the local museum. Tomas, the community elder responsible for founding Okola's tourism, explained that as a youth he'd made costumes like this by hand.  Tomas had been my contact to organise the trip to Okola and had met me in La Paz to bring me on the slightly complicated route to the community.

 (Left) 14-year old Yola who was my guide for the long walks for the two days.  (Right) Victoria with 16-year old daughter Adrianna.  Victoria is a lovely lady with a beautiful smile and laugh, who gifted me a handful of hava beans "to plant in my country" (though I explained because of controls I wouldn't be able to take them there I have them in the studio here in Cochabamba, wondering how I might best use them.:-) The clothes Victoria wears here are typical 'cholita' clothing - a heavy 'pollera' skirt, cardigan and bowler hat. This is what Victoria wears as she works in the fields under the direct sunlight. 

My turn at the loom and as a cholita!: 72-year-old Regina who delighted in my attempts at weaving, slapping me on the back and chuckling and who then eagerly brought out a pile of local clothing, dressed me up and got Adriana to take photos of us.  

 72-year-old Regina was a real character, chuckling away as she worked, laughing that dogs easily mistake set aside weaving tools for toys to be played with and buried (the tool is used to secure she weave and is made of the llama's foreleg thigh bone).  Regina and I communicated through Adriana who translated from Aymara to Spanish, and she said that she had learned the technique as a 14 year old from her mother.  A blanket for the bed such as this one would typically take her up to a month, though her favourite weaves include figures of horses, llamas and birds, which are more complicated and take longer.  The dyes used are all natural.  The bright oranges apparently come from a mineral in local earth.  Regina's husband P also proudly donned woven pieces which he explained he had worn as the communities 'authority'.  It seems there is a custom of couples being selected to being leaders for a year during which they wear clothing whose weave indicates their status.

What a beautifully calm couple of days.  Plenty of time to think, day-dream and draw.  Here's a couple of drawings from stones and leaves collected on the beach:

Thanks to Tomas, Victoria, Yola and Adriana for being such great hosts! 

:-)