My friend Claire bought one of my paintings… She has it and likes it then she found this picture online…
Wow, right? Beautiful life thinks of so many ways to be alive. And minds can be alike, too:
This is an awesome New Year’s. It’s been a good year. Thanks for your support.
Happy New Year!
My good friend of many years has come for a visit. His name is Peter Alcock, and he is a talented designer and photographer:
I am loving having so many wonderful creative people around. It inspires my own work, and having two photographers in the house gets my powers of observation tweaked and exercised.
Speaking of house, Peter worked some of his magic to create more space throughout the house. It definitely sped up the process of settling in a little deeper here in Santuario…
Walls came down, y’all. Walls came down.
Peter is very much an international man, having traveled and lived extensively abroad from his native Australia. It has been ‘bacano’ (cool) to chart our directories having known each other for over ten years… artist’s growing up together.
So he’s off tomorrow to Buenas Aires, then home to Sydney.
I was glad to have him and Robert here to spend a traditional Colombian Christmas with… eating and drinking and lighting many fireworks. Aguardiente is… an experience, as is chicharron, buñuelos and hanging out with the coffee workers after a day in the hills.
I’ll see him again one of these days, I’m sure. If only to get him back here and help out with the interiors of my future home with Hector. Peter is good at what he does, rest assured.
And I’ll keep drawing…
One of the Colombian traditions for ringing in the new year is making a doll. They are life size, and all have little signs with witty dialogue on them. I pillaged my Halloween costume to make our doll:
The doll gets stuffed with wood chips and firecrackers (or, ‘pirotecnicos’ in Spanish). It sits around for a few days on the doorstep, and on New Years Eve, it gets lit on fire and things go pop.
You can also stuff the doll with your intentions of what you want to let go of from the previous year, like negative thinking, bad habits or… old clothes.
I colored it. It never occurred to me to do so until the other day, and I like the result much better than the black and white.
Durga is a Hindu deity (click here for more info). Just being a yogi doesn’t mean I subscribe to all Indian philosophy, but that doesn’t mean I’m open to exploring it’s riches and making them mine.
I’ve painted Durga before, she made a huge impression on me. If we are veering into theological discussion here, then I’ll just say that the belief I do subscribe to is that most religions, and definitely the world religions, are talking much about the same thing. Call it God or Brahma, you go deeper into any religion’s philophy and you will find parallels to any other lasting, world though. So there you go. We can get lost in dogma and what we all think the other person should be doing. That never works. We have more in common than we know, and the differences can be awfully pretty.
So, good friend and colleague Robert Cortlandt was the first to take Hector and I up on our offer for staying with us in Colombia. 225/275 dollars (depending on the room situation) covers room and board, laundry and linens for a month. We ask for 20 hours of work per week in exchange. And we love to put talents to use. To wit:
Some great shots of 22 taking place! We got our black granite-top bar in place, and we are shooting a commercial this evening.
Robert did the photography for Sketchy Canvas (check it out here). He is great to work with, and I am grateful to be getting to know him better. He started a blog with his trip to Colombia, and puts me and my little camera to shame:
That’s a coffee farm right down the way from us. Beautiful land here, and beautiful nativity scenes all over the place. This one is at the mayor’s house, and takes up the whole room.
Click on the images to make them larger. That nativity scene is handmade. They are all over the country, in all kinds of styles.
Robert also recorded us dealing with our other visitor that arrived the day he got here… A chucha!!
Or an opossum. I caught it in the middle of the night drinking from my cat’s water bowl. And with no light on, it looked like a very big rat. Needless to say, that freaked me out. But once the light was on, I thought it was kind of cute.
So the next day (we left it in the room overnight to deal with it in the morning) we managed to get it into a trash can…
Colombians tend to talk with their pointer finger, I’ve come to notice. Hector is demonstrating for you.
We walked down the road, out into the woods to set it free. Poor thing was stressed out.
But off it went into the trees. Life in coffee country.
Check out Robert’s blog for more pics! He’s got some great ones, and is updating regularly. Gotta go, film time!!
I know for some it might be hard to read. For different reasons… Maybe you don’t like comics, or maybe the subject matter is un-comfy.
James Baldwin said Artists are here to disturb the peace. I don’t take that as license to go out and mess with your day, but rather, to tell it. To at times delve into the things that are hard to say and look at.
Seemed like there was a reaction to Page 1 (click on the highlighted words for links, like to read the first page of this story). Numbers went down pretty fast after that. I followed up with that with the stuff I usually post about, art and living. Hard stuff happens, and everyday life continues. I hope you stick with me on this story. I’m excited to tell it.
With everything I have going on, it will take time to get the pages done, so be patient. You can click on the new Category ‘Pages‘ (down and to the left) to read them together. Thank you.
Here’s Page 2, click on it to make it larger:
People scoff at that statement. When I gradutated, with honors, with a degree in Computer Animation, I had the obligatory meeting with the job-placement counselor. She asked what I wanted to do, and I said I was interested in getting into comics. She openly laughed at me. After that, I didn’t see much point in answering her calls.
But this guy, breaks it down and builds it up. This book is amazing!
Did you know hieroglyphics are comics? Heck, when I visited the Sistine Chapel, it looked like a big comic about God (as a white man with a beard). Did you know that comics stimulate your brain like no other art form does? Now you do…
He’s smart. He’ll make you think.
Then he’ll make you think some more:
I’m reading the above now, and I’m stoked on it. There is such a subtle inverse attitude towards/in comics. It’s sad. As a kid I felt ashamed going into the comic book store, hoping no one I knew would see me. It was my ‘porn.’
But through the years, I’ve seen that the format can get a point across in a way unlike any other art form.
It’s all different languages we are learning in life. When you get to the heart of the matter, people can hear you better. That’s my philosophy, and comics are a way for me to talk to you. Cheers.
Colombia has some beautiful traditions. With Christmas drawing near, the streets light up. Literally.
With rows and rows of candles in the streets, for two nights. They symbolize the return of Christ’s light to the world.
The tradition has pagan origins, like a lot of the traditions we celebrate today. Candle symbolism has been important and timeless for many a people. Plus it looks pretty.
A lot of the candleholders are home made. Cute and pretty…
So, walking through the streets, through the quiet night the candles inspire,
and you get to the plaza, for a different kind of light show.
Nativity scenes are everywhere throughout the country. The people get inventive with them; one of these days, I tell myself, I’ll take a crack at it. Until then…
And then things got loud!
Fireworks, fireworks, fireworks! They are homemade, loud, and right in your face.
Proof positive below. It’s sideways, sorry. Don’t have the editing program on my computer to rotate it. But you get the idea. Watch the red light travel up and up…
