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BUSY MARCH

 

Mrs. T did not end her outdoor art activities with the chalk walk.  She had a couple more opportunities to demonstrate her skills which you will read about below.  And we have had several other items on our plates.  We have been watching the NCAA basketball tournament rooting for OSU of course, but also for Xavier and OU.  And before that we watched the Vancouver Olympics; remember we are surrounded by Canadians.

 

We also managed to fit in a trip to the Vallarta Botanical Gardens.  This is a jewel of a spot not far south of Vallarta proper.  We went with several of the aforementioned Canadian friends and had a wonderful time.  We left early in the morning to avoid the heat and made all the buses perfectly.  The weather was just right and we finished with a great lunch back in PV at the Pancake House.

 

And there was yet another trip, this one to Tonala, essentially a suburb of Guadalajara.  We went on a tour advertised as 'Shop 'til you Drop.'  Tonala is known for its craft market on Thursdays and Sundays.  Indeed, the city is full of studios and factories that churn out items that are retailed throughout Mexico.  Thus it is possible to sometimes obtain better deals right at the source.  As dilettante glassblowers we were intrigued by the prospect of seeing the 'Glass Factory' mentioned in the itinerary.  Actually we saw two of them, the advertised one and another we earlier discovered ourselves.  They really were factories, no pretentions to making works of art.  The workers were fine craftsmen – and a couple of women as well – who turned out objects in a very assembly line fashion.  Technical note:  they melted cullet, in this case bags of bottles recently emptied.  They were using crucibles in the furnaces, which sometimes doubled as glory holes.  The cullet was barely melted before it was gathered, hence a lot of bubbles and seeds.

 

Mrs. T describes her further art adventures:

 

 

I like to paint.  I revel in the colors.  It is magical how things appear and change.  I love the feeling of mastery when a sense of light and shade creep onto the canvas teased and coaxed by the brush.  There are hours and days of hard labor: shoving blocks of color into place; pulling them together into forms; wrenching time and space into a new reality; calling light to give the moment meaning. There is a moment of suspense - I hold my breath - and then IT IS.  This thing I have created has its own existence.  What could be more wonderful?

 

As much as I enjoy painting it is both physically and emotionally exhausting.  Sometimes I just can't seem to get myself started.  When we came South this year I just could not find the inspiration.  Finally In January I began working on a painting I started last year.  It features three angels and the Holy Parakeet.  (My little joke!) 

 

After finishing that painting, one of my friends, Sandra, asked me to help her with starting the repainting of the Kissing Bridge.  So one Saturday, Sandra, her daughter Cindy, and I set out.  We got a lot of encouragement and some people decided they would like to paint a section.  Sandra had already repainted the walls of the bridge and marked them off in sections.  Sandra, Cindy, and I picked our sections near the stairs.  I was happy to encourage some of the young Indian girls who spend all day hawking embroidered bags a chance to do something different.  I wondered if their parents would object but they did not.  All kinds of people painted on the bridge:  indigenous Indians, children, expatriates from the United Sates and Canada, tourists, and of course Mexicans.  One panel was done by a tattoo artist from Canada; the different medium seemed to work very well for her.  Arturo, a sculptor and painter who lives next to the bridge has taken charge of the paints and brushes.  He loans them out to people who want to paint a section.  There are still a few unclaimed sections if you hurry down. Every time we pass over the bridge another section or two is finished.  I enjoyed helping to get the thing started.  Sometimes when I walk to the market I get a shy smile from one of the young artists.  You will see pictures of many of the panels.  (Also check out Cindy's website:  www.cidtalk.com )

 

As I was working on the wall Lucy, who is the director of a public primary school in Nuevo Vallarta, asked if Cindy, Sandra or I would help her children do a painting on a wall at their school.  Sandra and Cindy were unable to but I agreed to give it a shot.  (Even a fish won't get caught if it keeps its mouth shut.)  Well I went out and looked the situation over and told the assistant director what I would need.  The school contains approximately ten million first, second, and third graders.  Well, there were really only two classes of each grade but they bounced around so much it was hard to get an accurate estimate except to say there were a lot more of them than there is of me!.

 

So I had this wall which I divided with masking tape into 36 squares.  The teachers selected the lucky students who got to help. I brought my nature books so that the children could copy a picture of Mexican plants, animals, fish, birds, seashells and butterflies.  When a child selected a subject they drew it on their "Quadra."  After I inspected the drawings and made suggestions for improvements the children were ready to paint the amended drawings.   I worked with nine students at a time (this represented one row of squares).  Additionally one eight year old girl who was bilingual was my assistant as a translator. The fact is that the children had no difficulty at all understanding me.  I spoke loudly and clearly and SLOWLY.  On the other hand I was totally clueless as to what the kids were saying.  They started speaking Spanish at a mile a minute and speeded up. Also a lot of them spoke very softly.  The notable exception was that they had studied English and tended to shout out triumphantly any English word they remembered that they thought was appropriate.  For example a conversation might run something like this:

 

Rebecca: "?Listo pintar?"  (Are you ready to paint?)

 

Student : "GREEN!"  (GREEN!) 

 

Rebecca:  "?Quiere verde?" (Do you want green?)

 

Student : "Si, GREEN!"   (Yes GREEN!)

 

(Editor's note:  I forgot how to make the beginning Spanish '?'.  dt)

 

Although most of the students knew the colors in English I always had to double check because sometimes they forgot and asked for the wrong color.

 

I had only six colors of paint and spent most of the day mixing different colors.  This was new to a lot of the children and they loved watching me make new colors.  It took two days but we got the wall finished to everyone's enthusiastic approval.

 

Since then I have been working on a painting of a wave.  Mexican paint I bought turned out to be a rather alarming shade of green.  But I have managed to tone it down quite a bit with blue and black so that now it is merely astonishing.

 

Pictures of all these happenings:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/9151458@N07/sets/72157623671069406/

 

 

This will probably be our last posting from our southern residence.  We return north on Good Friday.  After we get that house up and running there may be another newsletter.  We invite you to come and visit; the spring flowers should be up and colorful!

 

Dan and Rebecca

www.casa-de-terrible.blogspot.com

 

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