Coalescing of a trip and Back in the States

Well we have returned now back to the states.
We spent the last week in Buenos Aires and the last few days in Lima. Buenos Aires was an amazingly energetic city full of alternative spaces, galleries, and museums. We spent most of our time their visting all these spaces and discovering a few new favorite artists, Berni, Quinyuelas, and Solana. This city was artistic from the antique stores of San Telmo to the craft fairs surrounding the cultural center of Buenos Aires.

Our last few days in Lima I was reminded how sometimes it takes awhile for an art community to appear. Initially we found Lima to be overwhelming. We were looking forward to returning for our flight. Walking around one night we went into a locally desgined clothing store inside we found a mini art show in a hallway. The people running the store also gave us a clue into the grafiti artists known as "fuma kaca". They were a group of artists that chose to see the city of Barranco as a night time circus in their grafiti imagery and through their costumed street performances they turned the city streets into stage and audience.

The next day as we were leaving we stumbled across a university art show by a collaborative called the "gran olla" which roughly translates into potluck. These three artists two chileans and one peruvian exhibited their work and incorporated community interaction. The artists tried to spend most of their time live at the show. One of the printmakers in addition went out into the streets and cooked local food to share with people. The painter known as Lucuma a sign painting reformed prisoner, created all of his works in the streets of the jungle town Iquitos. We shared contact information with these artists and hope to continue a dialogue.

Being back in the states, I am trying to sort through what this trip has meant for me. I am going through a sort of culture shock. I felt sad to leave honestly.

Countries are like relationships you fall a little bit in love with all their eccentricities and you become angered with their injustices and stubborness to change.

On this trip I did meet my initial goals, I connected with presence and opportunity.. We shared with people, i remebered hope.

Now that we have returned I continue to be humbled by these qualtities in people strength, genorosity, and vision.
A friend of my mothers has kindly offered for Cam and I to stay in a cottage on her property. She is an artist as well. As I sit I am surrounded by: books on Burri and Goldsworthy, her collections of feathers leaves and stones, and the woods. Her work is quiet and fragile just like this house. I hope here will give me time to think.

Sarah

Surfing in Spanish

Since we last wrote we have been spending our time on long distance buses and the beaches of Chile. Our first stop was Iquique a beachtown located in the desert. We walked through the city and along the beach. Watching people learn to surf reignited my own desire to learn. Although we needed to move on we talked about trying to find another town to learn.
The next place La Serena was a beautiful green college town but the beach was too rugged to swim or surf in. The first night there instead we went out to an observatory. We saw clearlythe line of the milky way several constellations such as the southern cross, which i could not see in the states red and blue giants. infinite universe feelings. The next day we wandered around the city and then ended up painting and drawing on the beach. That night we watched a free movie at one of the only interesting galleries we had seen in a while. DANTON was a french revolution piece starring gerard depardieu it was a reminder of the struggle for a free state and the dangers of a state powered by few or semidictatorship. there was no intro or discussion at the place, i was hoping for that in chile, in all not many people talk about the past to us travelers.
from la serena we went to valaparaiso. we hung out with other travelers at our hostel. it seemed to be the right combination of people because when we were together we talked about nearly any and everything from politics to soda to bands. the next morning we walked all over valpo. our search for the closed musuem of art led us on a stencil trail to the neruda house. this was also super scenic looking over the city. on our way back from his house we passed the open air musuem of murals but by our judgment the tons of graffiti on the streets and public murals was just as interesting if not more. that night we spent with our hostel friends again. a highlight for me was when cam made a small impromptu tape drawing on the wall.
the next day we went to neruda favorite house at la isla negra. this house he built in honor of ships and the ocean. inside he had collections of shiphead ladies, glass bottles, shells, insects, books, and art. i think cam wants to build a house like this someday.
still i wanted to surf, we had heard about a town perfect for surfing called pichilemu. we werent sure how far it was or how to get there from where we were. but after to talking to a lot of people we decided to try. from isla negra we took a half hour bus to a larger town. then a collective driver told us to go to one station with a taxi, the bus did not leave from there. finally at another station we got on a bus to melipilla. two hours later we arrived in meli with just enogh time to get onthe bus to pichelemu. one catch the bus was standing room only and the entire aisle of the bus was filled. an hour ;into the bus ride i was able to sit down. As soon as we arrived in pichelemu a residencia worker offered to show us a room. which we took at seven dollars. the next morning we ate empanadas and walked on the beach until we found the surf shop. our instructor elvis agreed to teach us as 2 30 until then we watched people surf and sunbathed. by 3 we had our wetsuits on and we were instructed to run on the beach and stretch in order to warm up. then he had us pratice push up \sun salutation like motions that were how we were supposed to get up on the board. once in the freezing water we paddled out into the middle and from there elvis pushed us into the good waves as we struggled to stand up. for the best of me i was able to surf on my knees and with one leg up. as soon as i stod up i would fall over. and by the end of the day i could barely lift my head or push up.. cam stod up 2 times, once he rode the wave for a while. elvis was an awesome enthusiatic teacher and i was envious of his life in the water teaching surfing. three hours later we were exhausted and frozen but it was fantastic to use so much of my body and the moments when i did feel the wave pushing me forward in the water where magnetic. it made me want to live by the water so i could try on a regular basis.
yesterday we came to santiago. we were warned about the dangers of this city robbing etc. beacuse of a national holiday though everything has been closed down and quiet. today we walked around for hours climbing hilll in the middle of the city from where you can see everything and are taller than most buildings. and we walked through a peacefule protest gathering on behalf of the mapuche tribe. music, food, costumes. here instead of columbus day they celebrate che and the mapuche tribe. it was refreshing things look very punk rock and ska influenced lots of two tone, mohawks, we even bought a few cool patches. we ran into some friends from valpo they are leaving for new zealand for 6 months. one said to me he didnt know how to feel . i said it was all exciting ending one adventure and starting another.
sarah

Week 2 and a Half

We spent over a week in Cuzco. We stayed for wuite some time because we had arranged before we left to do a project with a prgram called Aldea Yanape. We weren{t sure at the outset what the project would entail but when we got there Yuri (the director) remembered our images we had sent and asked us if we wanted to do a mural. I think that Sarah is going into much greater detail than I am on this point but it turned out to be both a rewarding and frustrating experience. We happened into the program when there was a lot going on and the initial idea to do a piece that was essentially our own and leave it for the school turned out to be much more like us doing a piece that was in line with what they envisioned they wanted. The beauty of this is that we got to work with a number of other people on a mural and that in the end when we had to leave due to time constraints, it was much easier letting the group carry on without our help.

The program itself was really great. Essentially an all volunteer after school program for disadvantaged kids, they are doing a lot of good. Helping children who have been involved in street crime and witness to violence etc. they provide a healthy and loving atmosphere where the kids learn social skills, have time for art and homework and learn a bit about the rest of the world. The whole thing is funded by a restaurant and donations. We met a number of great people from all over the world who volunteer there and I hope we left them with something of value.

Cuzco as a city otherwise is quite beautiful. There is a wealth of a strange marriage of Inca stonework and Colonial building that makes the whole place look quite magical (at 5am). The real problem for me was that the entire palce felt a bit like Peru, Las Vegas. Everything was specifically geared in the central part of the town for the tourist rade and as such I got sick of being hassled to go into a restaurant or get a massage every thirty steps. There was something really wonderful about the experiences we had in all of the less tourist filled cities. I also got sick in Cuzco which made it a bit of a drag. Sarah thought I had typhoid or mylaria but I got b etter in a couple of days and I have come to believe that I just got a bug that all of the vulunteers at the school were passing around.

We went to Maccu Piccu on Friday. Its true that Aguas Calientes is a place that you would have no reason to go to other than to get to Maccu Piccu. The entire little town was awash with vendors and restaurants. We hiked up the mountain to the site. A hike that we had no idea would be as hard as it was. We walked 8km in an hour and a half about two of which were straight up the mountain. It was literally a stone staircase that gained about 2000 feet in 2km. The site itself was really amazing. I was surprised how little I felt the presence of the hundreds of other people who were there. Not sure what else to say. Im sure most of you have at least seen pictures and other than describe the way it lo0ks Im afraid anthing else would in one way or another fall short.

We left for Puno and Lake Titicaca on Saturday Morning and went out onto the lake Sunday. We visited the floating islands whish was a place like nothing I have ever seen. Essentially they are giant rafts made of reeds with houses built on them that are anchored in the middle of a sea of reeds. As this is a kind of standard pitstop on the lake, there is a sense here too that there is an unfortunate overabundance of commercialization. There is esentially a talk and them the rest of the time there someone is trying to get you to buy something. At least here you can see them making most of the things they are selling. It was really a strange place to see. literally surroundsed by reeds, it felt like walking on a mattress, with these strange reed boats lazily floating about. We also visited Taquile Island. Aside from the look of the people there was something about the scenery that Sarah and I both felt was somehow what we thought the mediterranean should be like. The men there make these really nice hats. They apparently learn from a young age to knit them themselves. They are like a very long stocking cap that flops over in the back so that they get some protection from the sun. The length also provides a storage area for their coca.

Today we left Puno for La Paz. We pulled in tonight and it already feels like a real city. There are stores everywhere that arent necessariy for people from out of town, Hardware stores, tire shops and everthing. I like it already.

Camf

coming to terms with the celestine prophecy through A Mural in Cusco

So I admit it, i read the Celestine Prophecy and I was hoping that some of my trip to South America would entail that sort of adventure energy and Cusco seemed like a place I might find this connection with people. But My initial take on Cusco was not so glowing. It seemed to mainly be about getting tourist money through restaurants, clubs, massages, and trip packages. I was tired of walking down the street and saying no thank you to all the people who approached us in sale.

In fact We stayed in Cusco for a week mainly to make a mural.
Aldea Yanapay was a space we wrote to while we were still in the states. They wrote us back and said that we could come do a short project. A project conceived in a short period of time while traveling proved to be a difficult but rewarding endeavor.

Aldea Yanapay is many things: an after school program offering homework help and art classes for street kids and orphans, a restaurant with funds going to its programs, an international volunteer project, and soon to be a hostel. The teachers are all volunteers and they come for any time period, though longer than a week is preferred. They live in a house with the director Yuri. I think soon they will also have the option of staying at the hostel. We first learned about Yuri the charismatic director, through his mother, she invited us into her house, also a sort of meeting point for volunteers. After meeting many people, Yuri instructed us to return that afternoon. Cam and I helped students make pinatas in the art class. We stayed after the art class for the weekly Friday theater performance, which was a recap of lessons taught that week. After talking with Yuri we agreed to make a mural for the new school. We spent that night working on designs and also volunteered to help paint murals for a jail. ( a program they had teaching kids at the jail.)
On Sunday we went to meet to paint the murals, Cam and I showed up two hours early due to my misinterprating Pablos accent, he said dos y media instead of doce y media. At dos y media we met with other tutors. They were very tied to each other but included us in a dinner invitation. Before dinner we went to Pablo house and designed and painted murals in the the narrow courtyard of his apartment. It was hilarious because it began to rain and so we pushed our 4x8 ft masonite under as much of an awning as we could. One of Pablo{s roomates was an artist as well so he provided supplies, music, and conversation.
There were a lot of people working with this program so it took awhile for us to get on the same page as everyone for the mural. on monday we met with Yuri and he approved our ideas and showed us the space in his new school. Cam worked on a chalk drawing while I taught an art class on mask making. Everything seemed to finally be going smoothly, until that night when we got home and it turned out Cam had a 1oo degree temperature. (everyone at aldea yanapay was also passing along a sickeness)
The next morning I woke up and went to get the painting supplies without Cam. I began to paint and fill in the shapes and designs, improvising as I went. This mural wall was large and we wanted to finish it in a few days. Luckily two volunteers, Mas and Linda from Denmark, showed up to help me. They brought music, food, and a good spirit. By the time 3 rolled around we had blocked in most of the mural and the kids began to help by drawing flowers. I think it inspired Yuri because he then began to think of other areas where we could work on murals and help spruce up some older drawings he had on the wall.
That night Cam was still sick, I was tired, but then I became paranoid thinking Cam had thyphoid or malaria. I made him drink a bunch of ginger tea. his fever went from 100 to 94 to 100.
The next morning he was well enough and we went and finished the mural once again with the help of Linda and Mas. Two other volunteers Emily and Marcel pitched in to paint the murals. All the kids kept running in saying que lindo, que bonita. When we left Yuri seemed sad and he said perhaps we could come again and volunteer for a longer time. That night we had dinner with Linda, Mas, Emily, and Marcel, and the Aldea Yanapay restaurant. We talked about how we had come to be in Cusco what we had left behind (jobs, houses, dead ends). Earlier that week in Cusco I was a little disappointed with the sort of marketing of spirituality and experience I thought I saw happening in all the things for a tourist to buy., heck they liked to call cusco the father for world culture and the sprirutal navel. But that night all of us tired over our coffees soaking in the crazy kid space of the restaurant,I have to say that was the exact collaborative ennergy I was searching for and it was all free.

sarah

a day at the park

Why travel? I am traveling in search of new art experiences, something different than grad school. I want to reconnect with being present in a place that keeps changing. I amlooking for the art is being made around us as we travel. We left on sept 11th which got a laugh out of a lot of people. i like the idea of changing the context of that date. my friend gina got married on that day a few years ago. This sept 11th i left with the intention of travel and connection with people. 1story today´: The Park The ParkOn Saturday I met three groups of people in three very different places; the curiosity of children, the energy of teens, and the wisdom of age. Our last day in Barranco I decided I wanted to finish my painting of a church relic that lay next to the puente de los suspiros (bridge of sighs) I´d had a dream the night before that I was unprepared for an art show. this dream propelled me to paint and draw. Cam and I had been exploring Lima for awhile but we were a bit apprehensive about talking with strangers because of the amout of teens that we´d met trying to befriend us only later really wanting to sell us pot. Ive been doing on site painting for awhile in part because i like how painting in public somehow opens up a dialogue with people that does not occur ordinarily. it was a saturday in the park people were ambling around the sidewalks, the artesans had their jewelry laid out ,and i even saw alec, one of the pot kids, hiding out behind some bushes. I had been painting for awhile when a group of children ran up. They were fascinated by the painting and materials. I gave them a sort of mini lesson on the materials i had. One girl took a picture of my painting with her camera because she thought it was ¨so real¨. While they we were talking two teens walked up and sat down besides us. The children left with their family and we began to talk with the teens, they were either novios or cousins. The girl, Nuria, was an aspiring artists about to take her high school test for art school. She asked me alot of questions about myself and these questions led to an exchange about our experience in peru, descriptions of the US, and her advice on what else we should check out. they left after an hour. Not more than five minutes later an older man sat down next to us. To Aldo- everything was beautiful the church, the animals, the people. the way he said things made me think he was a philospher or poet. he revealed himself in bits and i was surprised to find out ,among all his optimism, he had just lost his job working security. he was afraid of how to find a job after 50. I didn´t feel worried for him though -the way he talked about books, movies, and art -i thought it would be impossible for him to not find something. An hour later I finished my painting and he walked us to the bathroom. When i came out of the bathroom he pointed to ¨the street he loved¨, were he lived, gave me a chocolate ring filled with carmel, a kiss on the cheek, and walked home. It´s easy to be optimistic and curious when you are young because the world is ahead of you, talking with Aldo was powerful for me because I could see he´d chosen not to let his fear of looking for a job on Sunday interrupt his appreciation of being in conversation with us that Saturday at the park.Sarahp.s. I am learning to use the south american keyboard with rubbed off keys pardon the errors.

first week

Its hard to believe we´ve been her only a week. Lots has happened. We just got into Cuzco yesterday and it is really different from most of the places we have been so far. Here is the rundown in short order:We started in Lima. Stayed in a small area called Barranco. Lima is pretty smoky, but the area we were in was really beautiful. Everything there was low buildings and it was very towny feeling. I realized how bad my spanish was when everone was friendly enough to want to stop and talk to us on the street. There was some really nice graffiti in spots and some amazing old buildings that were in perfect disrepair. The way they were crumbling, you could see exactly how they were constructed which was really interesting. The sad part is that just like st luois, there is a lot of really amazing stuff that is expensive enough to fix that it just fall deeper into disrepair - not to mention the thick layer of smog dust settling onto every ledge. Alot of kids in Barranco wanted to sell us weed.We took the bus to Ayacucho at night. We ended up in the very front of a double decker bus with a giant windshield in front of us. It was like flying around mountain roads on the roof of the passenger side of the car. Slept a bit but woke up when we entered the hairpin turns because we were swinging back and forth like crazy. Went through Pisco - where the earthquake was. Lots of tent and everything is pretty demolished but it was nice to see that the people seem very determined to get things put back together again. All of the rubble has been cleared out of most of the buildings and is sitting on the side of the road. People seemed to still be going about their business to some extent.Ayacucho was a bit of a whirlwind. We got there and somehow the first day stumbled into a religious festival. We wnded up dancing through the streets of the town (some very steep) with a giant group of people and a brass band. They fed us and we drank beer and chicha with them. For those who don´t know, chicha is a kind of corn beer, I saw where they were fermenting it in big open tanks like a cow trough. Apparently the process starts with people chewing the corn. It tasted pretty all right and we were all drinking out of the same cup anyway. The festival culminated in people throwing items out into a crowd- everything from underware to tupperware.We met a lot of really cool people at the festival. A guy named Willy who was a lawyer and told us about the devistation of the Incan Empire by the Spanish and got teary when he talked about surviving the crazy years of the Sendero Luminoso when something like 40,000 were killed. We also met Betty (Benigna) and her husband Donato who were artisans who made retablos. We ended up going to their house the next day to see how they made their work and meeting their son Arturo and their cousins who have a workshop behind their. We talked a lot with all of them and they fed us a snack and lunch which we totally weren´t expecting. We went to dinner with them (and two french couple who had also gotten swept up into the celebration) that night and had a great time. They gave us all gifts and were really gracious and amazing people.We actually ended up meeting Betty the next day and she took us to meet a ceramicist whe was also very gracious.From there we checked out the market and left that night for Andahuaylas.We got to Andahuylas at 5:00 in the morning. The road there was a 10 hour dirt trail winding through the Andes. I woke up at one point to see abridge that looked like some total Indiana Jones shit. I am pretty sure I heard pieces of the wooded deck falling to the rocks below. We slept late and took a cab to Laguna de Pacucha about 10 miles from town. We got stuck in a cab for probably an hour and a half because there was a rally race going on that had shut the road from Ayacucho to Cuzco down for most of the day. The lake was huge and we say some guys catching carp with their bare hands wading in the lake. They must have had 20 of them there so it seemed like they really knew what they were doing. We ate a fried trout in a tiny restaurant and fed the head and the skin to a dog that was hanging out by our table.Rode the bus to Cuzco fron 6am to 5pm. It smelled like some major BO inside and everyone had on blankets even though it was 80 degrees in there. We were freaking out because there was no breeze and it was another windy one through the mountains. The last bus smelled like the bathroom because the door kept opening so our only saving grace was that this bathroom seemed to stay closed.Our place in Cuzco is nice. We havent had a chance to check things out oo much yet but it looks a bit like a Peru theme park. We´ve seen a tenfold increase in the number of whiteys around and even got called gueros last night. Even the dirt hippies have popped up here. Had a good talk with a guy ogn the street. We´ll see how it goes.
Camf