Yesterday was a good day. The morning started with me trying again to make stretcher bars out of some crap wood I bought. The saw was dull, the nails too thick, the wood split, and it occurred to me that I don’t have to stay here. I decided I’d call Air France, change my ticket, stop wasting my time, go home and be happy. As I was daydreaming, one of the local guys, Boris, came by. We had played soccer on the beach together last week, so I didn’t mind him hovering around for a bit. He observed my efforts with concern, and politely told me that he was a carpenter. I’ve learned to doubt people here, but I had nothing to lose and long story short, he went home to get a set of real tools and spent the next ten hours, without break, making four great, sturdy canvas stretchers. He planed the rough wood down, even sanded the stretcher bars which was technically unnecessary but absolutely admirable. He was happy to have work on a day without work, and I was thrilled to be moving forward.
While Boris was working I started a portrait of another guy I know here, Matthias, one of the many underemployed guides. There are too-few tourists to give everyone work, but Matthias always has the air of being busy, things to do, deals to arrange. He’s a sharp dresser and an interesting character, and for the first time here I felt myself painting smoothly, at times effortlessly. I got a good start, and he’s coming again tomorrow to model. I’ve also been working on a larger, colourful tropical garden landscape, and another portrait, and now with four new canvasses waiting for action (I spent today stretching and priming them) I feel I’m finally on my way.
While I was painting Matthias, two enormously tall Norwegian reporters came by. They were working on a story about democracy in Benin (intending to write about a successful African democracy, they found the political situation a bit more complicated) and were in Grand Popo for something or other, and decided to stop by Villa Karo. It was fun to speak Norwegian again and meet someone so randomly, and it never hurts to give a reporter your web site.
I also had a talk with Juha yesterday, he’s an old ‘Africa hand’ and the founder of Villa Karo, and he told me that most resident artists here over the years have taken a long time to adjust, and they don’t necessarily make much work at all. Sometimes the work comes later, after leaving Africa and remembering it from a distance. So that was encouraging, and perhaps it’s ok that it takes a good three weeks to adjust, learn the pace and the routine and the landscape. I know from other times in my life when I’ve moved to a new place, or even to a new studio in the same city, that it takes time to learn things and find a new work rhythm. Perhaps a little self-compassion would be in order.
After three weeks here, existing is no longer exhausting. I have figured out many of the little-but-important things, like where to get food and how to plan meals so I’m not hungry, and how the phone and internet systems work (or sometimes work). I’ve learned, like the locals do, to take long siestas and walk slowly (in the States, I routinely pass people like being a pedestrian is some kind of sport). I’ve learned to be less ambitious. I’ve learned more about the culture, and have gotten to know both local people and Villa Karo people better (many in a jovial good-to-see-you kind of way, but also a few deeper connections). My French is better, if still perfectly terrible, so I can understand people I want to talk to, and not understand those I don’t want to talk to. I’ve found places where I feel good painting, and I’ve remembered how to paint again.
Juha went back to Finland today, and there was a formal goodbye dinner for him yesterday evening. As the sun set and the day came to a close, Boris was still hammering in the background while I sat at a long table, eating a rare good meal, drinking too much wine, enjoying good company and a cool breeze, and looking forward to three more weeks in Africa.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Working in Africa, Part I
(From a few days ago)
It’s hot and sticky here, everything is slow and difficult and inefficient, there’s no studio space, there’s no privacy, I have no energy, and just trying to paint here is exhausting. If I return to Africa, it will be to visit and travel and see, and not to work because working here seems impossible.
I met some Peace Corps volunteers at a bar last week – they had worked in neighbouring Burkina Faso for the last 15 months with 9 to go, and they also felt it was impossible to get things done. People show up hours late, the food is unfamiliar and irregular, the heat wears you down, and just nothing really works. Every other “yovo” (white person in Mina, the local language, and a word you hear incessantly) I meet here feels the same way, and maybe that’s ok. Africa isn’t meant for yovos: It’s its own special place with its own schedule and purpose.
Little things in Africa take a lot of time. For example, it’s a three-mile walk to the internet café. That’s three hot, slow miles, made slower by the constant stop-and-greet (most people don’t work as much here as they do in the States and spend lots of time talking). At this point I’ve met a lot of people, so the stop-and-greet adds a solid half-hour to the day if I’m feeling chatty. (It’s also important to remember people’s names; I can’t tell you how many people I’ve offended by forgetting their names or forgetting that I had previously met them at all, especially in the first week).
At the internet place, the people are grumpy and the connection is slow, so catching up on a few emails can take over an hour. The keyboard is French, which means the a,m,z,q, w, period, comma, and a few other keys are in different places, so typing takes longer. At this point at least four hours have gone by since you left the house, and you realize you’re incredibly hungry. You go to a cheap restaurant to order some food, and it comes an hour later if you’re lucky, two hours later if you’re not, even if you’re the only customer there. People show up to chit-chat, on your way home you stop to buy some things, and when you get home it’s late, you’re hot and exhausted and think that tomorrow, yes tomorrow you’ll get some work done.
Strangely, there’s no studio space at Villa Karo. Before I left I just assumed that an artist residency would have studio space, but not so. Apparently they often host writers and composers and others who need little more than a desk, so the 'studio' is an open-air concrete patio with turquoise walls and a straw mat for a roof. There’s no privacy from curious villagers, and when it rains, as it has for the last two days, there’s no chance of working at all.
It took days to find wood, nails, a hammer and a saw to make stretcher bars for canvasses, and the quality of all the above was abysmal. The laundry lady has had all my clothes except what I’m wearing for the last three days. My mosquito net couldn’t quite tuck under my mattress, which was fine until a few nights ago a plague of mosquitoes appeared and easily breached the gap, and we fought until the net was covered in blood smears (after the one day I forgot to take my malaria meds). Buying groceries can take hours, and yet if you neglect that most basic of chores, you grow hungry and ever-more lethargic. It’s not that I need a perfect set-up to work, just that when I’m already sapped of energy, the little problems seem big, and after a hundred little problems I want to give up.
So, don’t expect to see a whole lot of great paintings when I come home. Just to exist and survive in Africa seems good enough. I’ll write something more positive next time.
It’s hot and sticky here, everything is slow and difficult and inefficient, there’s no studio space, there’s no privacy, I have no energy, and just trying to paint here is exhausting. If I return to Africa, it will be to visit and travel and see, and not to work because working here seems impossible.
I met some Peace Corps volunteers at a bar last week – they had worked in neighbouring Burkina Faso for the last 15 months with 9 to go, and they also felt it was impossible to get things done. People show up hours late, the food is unfamiliar and irregular, the heat wears you down, and just nothing really works. Every other “yovo” (white person in Mina, the local language, and a word you hear incessantly) I meet here feels the same way, and maybe that’s ok. Africa isn’t meant for yovos: It’s its own special place with its own schedule and purpose.
Little things in Africa take a lot of time. For example, it’s a three-mile walk to the internet café. That’s three hot, slow miles, made slower by the constant stop-and-greet (most people don’t work as much here as they do in the States and spend lots of time talking). At this point I’ve met a lot of people, so the stop-and-greet adds a solid half-hour to the day if I’m feeling chatty. (It’s also important to remember people’s names; I can’t tell you how many people I’ve offended by forgetting their names or forgetting that I had previously met them at all, especially in the first week).
At the internet place, the people are grumpy and the connection is slow, so catching up on a few emails can take over an hour. The keyboard is French, which means the a,m,z,q, w, period, comma, and a few other keys are in different places, so typing takes longer. At this point at least four hours have gone by since you left the house, and you realize you’re incredibly hungry. You go to a cheap restaurant to order some food, and it comes an hour later if you’re lucky, two hours later if you’re not, even if you’re the only customer there. People show up to chit-chat, on your way home you stop to buy some things, and when you get home it’s late, you’re hot and exhausted and think that tomorrow, yes tomorrow you’ll get some work done.
Strangely, there’s no studio space at Villa Karo. Before I left I just assumed that an artist residency would have studio space, but not so. Apparently they often host writers and composers and others who need little more than a desk, so the 'studio' is an open-air concrete patio with turquoise walls and a straw mat for a roof. There’s no privacy from curious villagers, and when it rains, as it has for the last two days, there’s no chance of working at all.
It took days to find wood, nails, a hammer and a saw to make stretcher bars for canvasses, and the quality of all the above was abysmal. The laundry lady has had all my clothes except what I’m wearing for the last three days. My mosquito net couldn’t quite tuck under my mattress, which was fine until a few nights ago a plague of mosquitoes appeared and easily breached the gap, and we fought until the net was covered in blood smears (after the one day I forgot to take my malaria meds). Buying groceries can take hours, and yet if you neglect that most basic of chores, you grow hungry and ever-more lethargic. It’s not that I need a perfect set-up to work, just that when I’m already sapped of energy, the little problems seem big, and after a hundred little problems I want to give up.
So, don’t expect to see a whole lot of great paintings when I come home. Just to exist and survive in Africa seems good enough. I’ll write something more positive next time.
Friday, September 12, 2008
I’m in Africa
I’ve been in Benin in West Africa for a bit over a week. It’s a crazy place, bewildering at first and just completely different from the States in every imaginable way. You realize even at the airport that things are different here, as a huge mob rushes the rolling baggage tray, and suitcases roll by alongside taped plastic bags, large rice sacs, broken cardboard boxes, and all kinds of improvised packaging. My own bags would arrive three days later on the next flight from Paris.
Alphonse, the driver for Villa Karo, took me to a hotel in Cotonou (the capital) that first night, and the next morning we drove to Villa Karo in the village of Grand Popo where I'll be staying. The weeks preceding this trip were exhausting, and the trip itself was long, so I spent the first days here just sleeping and taking a few small walks in the village. I was unshaven, wearing the same clothes, it rained a lot, and morale was low.
Since then I’ve had time to explore the village, get to know people a bit, get on my feet as it were and finally start to paint. So, before I post another blog I want to give you a little tour of Benin, and Grand Popo in particular:
In Benin, there are no stores like there are in the US. Instead, just about every household along any main road has a shaded stall -- typically some tree branches covered by a thatched or corrugated steel roof—where they sell anything from a few fruits and vegetables to rice, batteries, toothpaste, paper, and even gasoline, which amazingly comes in recycled glass bottles. This means it takes a really long time to gather ingredients for a meal, and it also means the “highway” and roads are in constant activity, with people coming and going and buying and selling all the time, from morning until late at night. There are few sidewalks, so pedestrians share the streets with run-down and overloaded “mopos,” (mopeds), cars, and burly trucks. Even areas away from the roads seem active, as fishermen ply rivers, farmers tend fields, and people gather coconuts or just stroll about. It's hot like Maryland in August with no air conditioning, so people mostly hang out outside, and walk slowly, you could say it's laid back and active at the same time.
The only traffic “rule” I have discerned is a general preference for the right side of the road. There are no seatbelts for cars or helmets for mopos; there are no speed limit signs and few traffic signals (none in Grand Popo); you make left turns across heavy traffic by inching forward until that traffic is forced to abruptly stop; at night there are few streetlights, and headlights on vehicles are common but apparently optional, so you walk with great care.
People are really colourful here. The women wear dresses and wraps of brightly-patterned fabrics, and wear their hair in any number of fashions, often with braided extensions or headscarves. One of the most beautiful - and common - sights is to see women walking down the street carrying baskets on their heads – surprisingly big baskets and buckets filled with coconuts, bananas, dishes, anything at all. The men also wear colorful and patterned fabrics, sewn into loose pants and shirts, as well as western-style dress. Sandals and flip-flops are the main footwear. Dressing well seems to be important, and only children wear shorts or raggedy t-shirts, and only farmers in the field will go bare-chested.
Grand Popo, where I will stay for the next several weeks, is a village of a few thousand people on the coast of Benin. It’s two hours west of Cotonou and an hour east of the border with Togo, and squeezed between the Atlantic to the south and a river and wetlands to the north. It’s about three miles long and maybe half a mile wide, with most of the commerce and activity along a mostly-paved road that leads to the highway. Grand Popo is on a coastal plain, so it’s sandy and in some places marshy, with lots of coconut trees, banana trees, papaya trees, and other short-but-lush vegetation. People live in small cinderblock houses, mud huts, and improvised structures, often with thatched or corrugated roofs and fenced-off gardens and courtyards. Instead of glass windows, they use wooden shutters. Colorful lizards scamper about and you see small, colorful songbirds, but there are no big animals, only lots of really small goats, some really small pigs, chickens, and sad-looking and also very small and often-pregnant dogs.
People here are really friendly, sometimes just to sell you something, but often genuinely so. It’s a relatively poor place, with fishing, subsistence farming, commerce, and some tourism making up the economy.
I’m staying in Villa Karo, a “Finnish-African Cultural Center” in a large house on the main road. I’m here as one of six resident artists, all of them Finnish except me, their annual international artist. A Finnish intern, a Columbian spouse, and a large African staff make up the rest of this place. We get along well in a cacophony of languages: Finnish, Swedish, English, French, Spanish, Mina (the local African language), and when that fails, hand-gestures usually work.
Besides hosting artists, Villa Karo has classes and cultural events for the village, things like dance performances, movie night, and an annual boat race I saw which was just absolutely fantastic: fishermen from four villages competed to launch their 8-man dugout canoes into the ocean in a terrible surf, then around a buoy a kilometre offshore and back again through the surf. Three flipped over either on the launch or return, while a beautiful, colorful, roaring crowd of at least a thousand cheered wildly from the beach.
That’s all for now, I’ll write more about life in Grand Popo soon, but I hope this gives you a rough image of what things are like here. Unfortunately there’s no chance of uploading photos (including video of the boat race), as just connecting to the internet can take 20 minutes if it works at all, and then it’s painstakingly slow. But when I get back to the States I’ll get some pictures up.
Alphonse, the driver for Villa Karo, took me to a hotel in Cotonou (the capital) that first night, and the next morning we drove to Villa Karo in the village of Grand Popo where I'll be staying. The weeks preceding this trip were exhausting, and the trip itself was long, so I spent the first days here just sleeping and taking a few small walks in the village. I was unshaven, wearing the same clothes, it rained a lot, and morale was low.
Since then I’ve had time to explore the village, get to know people a bit, get on my feet as it were and finally start to paint. So, before I post another blog I want to give you a little tour of Benin, and Grand Popo in particular:
In Benin, there are no stores like there are in the US. Instead, just about every household along any main road has a shaded stall -- typically some tree branches covered by a thatched or corrugated steel roof—where they sell anything from a few fruits and vegetables to rice, batteries, toothpaste, paper, and even gasoline, which amazingly comes in recycled glass bottles. This means it takes a really long time to gather ingredients for a meal, and it also means the “highway” and roads are in constant activity, with people coming and going and buying and selling all the time, from morning until late at night. There are few sidewalks, so pedestrians share the streets with run-down and overloaded “mopos,” (mopeds), cars, and burly trucks. Even areas away from the roads seem active, as fishermen ply rivers, farmers tend fields, and people gather coconuts or just stroll about. It's hot like Maryland in August with no air conditioning, so people mostly hang out outside, and walk slowly, you could say it's laid back and active at the same time.
The only traffic “rule” I have discerned is a general preference for the right side of the road. There are no seatbelts for cars or helmets for mopos; there are no speed limit signs and few traffic signals (none in Grand Popo); you make left turns across heavy traffic by inching forward until that traffic is forced to abruptly stop; at night there are few streetlights, and headlights on vehicles are common but apparently optional, so you walk with great care.
People are really colourful here. The women wear dresses and wraps of brightly-patterned fabrics, and wear their hair in any number of fashions, often with braided extensions or headscarves. One of the most beautiful - and common - sights is to see women walking down the street carrying baskets on their heads – surprisingly big baskets and buckets filled with coconuts, bananas, dishes, anything at all. The men also wear colorful and patterned fabrics, sewn into loose pants and shirts, as well as western-style dress. Sandals and flip-flops are the main footwear. Dressing well seems to be important, and only children wear shorts or raggedy t-shirts, and only farmers in the field will go bare-chested.
Grand Popo, where I will stay for the next several weeks, is a village of a few thousand people on the coast of Benin. It’s two hours west of Cotonou and an hour east of the border with Togo, and squeezed between the Atlantic to the south and a river and wetlands to the north. It’s about three miles long and maybe half a mile wide, with most of the commerce and activity along a mostly-paved road that leads to the highway. Grand Popo is on a coastal plain, so it’s sandy and in some places marshy, with lots of coconut trees, banana trees, papaya trees, and other short-but-lush vegetation. People live in small cinderblock houses, mud huts, and improvised structures, often with thatched or corrugated roofs and fenced-off gardens and courtyards. Instead of glass windows, they use wooden shutters. Colorful lizards scamper about and you see small, colorful songbirds, but there are no big animals, only lots of really small goats, some really small pigs, chickens, and sad-looking and also very small and often-pregnant dogs.
People here are really friendly, sometimes just to sell you something, but often genuinely so. It’s a relatively poor place, with fishing, subsistence farming, commerce, and some tourism making up the economy.
I’m staying in Villa Karo, a “Finnish-African Cultural Center” in a large house on the main road. I’m here as one of six resident artists, all of them Finnish except me, their annual international artist. A Finnish intern, a Columbian spouse, and a large African staff make up the rest of this place. We get along well in a cacophony of languages: Finnish, Swedish, English, French, Spanish, Mina (the local African language), and when that fails, hand-gestures usually work.
Besides hosting artists, Villa Karo has classes and cultural events for the village, things like dance performances, movie night, and an annual boat race I saw which was just absolutely fantastic: fishermen from four villages competed to launch their 8-man dugout canoes into the ocean in a terrible surf, then around a buoy a kilometre offshore and back again through the surf. Three flipped over either on the launch or return, while a beautiful, colorful, roaring crowd of at least a thousand cheered wildly from the beach.
That’s all for now, I’ll write more about life in Grand Popo soon, but I hope this gives you a rough image of what things are like here. Unfortunately there’s no chance of uploading photos (including video of the boat race), as just connecting to the internet can take 20 minutes if it works at all, and then it’s painstakingly slow. But when I get back to the States I’ll get some pictures up.
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
Solo show at Geras Tousignant Gallery, SF
My solo show "Lost at Sea" opens this Friday evening at Geras Tousignant Gallery in San Francisco. Lost at Sea will be on view, along with eighteen other paintings I've been working on since last spring -- alternately turbulent and peaceful views of the shoreline and open sea in fog, snow, and sunlight, of birds and rolling waves. I've updated some of the paintings to my site.
Lost at Sea through the gallery window, with my beautiful truck parked in front.
Opening is Friday February 8 from 5-8pm; show runs through March 15th. Geras Tousignant Gallery, 437 Pacific Av. in SF, between Sansome and Montgomery near Columbus, M-F 12-5 or by appointment, 415.986.1647.
Lost at Sea
.JPG)
Sea Star
.JPG)
Cormorant at Twilight
Lost at Sea through the gallery window, with my beautiful truck parked in front.
Opening is Friday February 8 from 5-8pm; show runs through March 15th. Geras Tousignant Gallery, 437 Pacific Av. in SF, between Sansome and Montgomery near Columbus, M-F 12-5 or by appointment, 415.986.1647.
Lost at Sea
.JPG)
Sea Star
.JPG)
Cormorant at Twilight
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Art opening at Terrence Rogers Fine Art, Santa Monica, CA
Last Thursday, after a sleepless night of last-minute preparations, I drove down to Santa Monica in a u-haul loaded with five paintings (including one very large one), three watercolours, and two large charcoal drawings. It's been a hectic few weeks of finishing up my work, building frames, and attending to all the details that accompany an opening, but the work is finally on the wall at Terrence Rogers Fine Art. The show is called Equinox and includes my own work alongside paintings by my longtime friend David Molesky.
Equinox opened on the fall equinox, after a torrential thunderstorm that broke a two-year drought, and a day after the Jewish New Year. It marks the end of a cycle of work for me, and otherwise seems a fitting and portentious marker to end an old cycle and welcome in a new one.
My work for the show -- mostly narratives in settings of oceans, wetlands, and other waterways -- comes from a combination of dream imagery and re-imaginings of stories I remember from Genesis. In these works I'm interested in emotions and gestures and in the subtle tensions and interactions that occur between characters; the water itself ranges from oppressive to rejuvenating. Molesky just got back from a year working with the painter Odd Nerdrum, and his paintings, also narratives of a personal nature, have grown more subtle and refined, and have taken on the sunset-palette of the big man.
Here are some pictures from this weekend's opening (some of my paintings can be seen here):
Installing Floodplain. Gallery assistants David and Cathy, with me in the middle.
Nicole and I in front of Encounter in the Garden and Molesky's Landscape with Girl Falling off Bicycle.
Gallery owner Terry Martin with an Oscar winner (for costume design; this is LA after all) in front of my painting New World.
Nicole and Reiner in front of Lady of the Lake, a study for Floodplain.
A happy red dot next to my painting Pelican Flight.
Equinox opened on the fall equinox, after a torrential thunderstorm that broke a two-year drought, and a day after the Jewish New Year. It marks the end of a cycle of work for me, and otherwise seems a fitting and portentious marker to end an old cycle and welcome in a new one.
My work for the show -- mostly narratives in settings of oceans, wetlands, and other waterways -- comes from a combination of dream imagery and re-imaginings of stories I remember from Genesis. In these works I'm interested in emotions and gestures and in the subtle tensions and interactions that occur between characters; the water itself ranges from oppressive to rejuvenating. Molesky just got back from a year working with the painter Odd Nerdrum, and his paintings, also narratives of a personal nature, have grown more subtle and refined, and have taken on the sunset-palette of the big man.
Here are some pictures from this weekend's opening (some of my paintings can be seen here):
Installing Floodplain. Gallery assistants David and Cathy, with me in the middle.
Nicole and I in front of Encounter in the Garden and Molesky's Landscape with Girl Falling off Bicycle.
Gallery owner Terry Martin with an Oscar winner (for costume design; this is LA after all) in front of my painting New World.
Nicole and Reiner in front of Lady of the Lake, a study for Floodplain.
A happy red dot next to my painting Pelican Flight.
Sunday, July 15, 2007
My New Easel
For the last year or so I've gotten by using an old rickety easel, the single-mast triangle profile you might have used in your elementary school art class. It was free but perfectly awful: adjusting the shelf required enormous physical effort, and once adjusted the shelf sagged precariously, leaving me perpetually ill at ease. It was hopeless for larger paintings, so I often worked on the wall, propping paintings on 5-gallon buckets and straining my neck in 180 degrees turns when painting from models.
Good easels are extraordinarily expensive -- and I needed a large good easel, something that would retail for well over $1000. I donate most of my income to my art studio and apartment landlords, so there's never been much left over for equipment like this. I looked in the art supply stores and admired other artist's easels, but made do without.
Last week, as I started work on a big canvas, I decided there is a third option besides doing without an easel and spending a fortune on one. With $50 invested in 2x4's, hinges, and bolts -- and three plus days of work -- I built an enormous, fully-adjustable, wonderful working easel. It's not the prettiest thing in the world, but who needs stained oak when you'll be splashing paint all over it anyway? The mast rises ten feet off the floor and the shelf is over four feet wide, big enough to handle almost any sized painting. It glides around effortlessly on four sturdy wheels, and is heavy enough to stay put where I leave it. It's professional. I love it. I hope to show you some new paintings on it soon.
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
I'm an art critic :)
I wrote an article that was published in the contemporary art journal White Hot Magazine. The article reviews the Belgian photographer Carl De Keyzer's phohtographs of Siberian prison camps, which is currently on view at the Robert Koch gallery in San Francisco.
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