THE HAIR

It always begins with the hair.

Well perhaps that is not entirely true. Often it begins with me asking one of my friends to pose in somewhat ridiculous positions, “um lauren do you think you could walk around on the tips of your toes, while simultaneously bending your legs, as if you could not just walk around but more like take huge lounges and as you do it twist your torso from side to side?” This mind you is one of my less ridiculous directions... Thankfully I have generous friends who are used to a certain amount of strange requests from me and are gracious enough to act as if my request is not that strange.

But ultimately there come out of this, strange but beautiful images, full of tension and movement, and an energy that is not put on for the camera but truly there in the amount of strain the poses cause my models, even if in the image the poses seem unexpected but oddly natural. Currently my muse is Lauren Brantley, who I have to admit brought her usual cheery and easy-going attitude to set only to surprise me with intense poses that balanced the awkwardness of the pose with a confidence and embracing of it.



I took this picture this past spring as I worked on this composite- Between Heaven and Hell There is Limbo,

(thanks again to my models, Matt Wollin, Lauren Brantley, Darran Moore, Jennifer Monge, Gabriela Hernandez, Burge Abiral, Hari Ramesh)

But as always there were about 100 shots of each model and I ended up only using 1 or 2 for each person which leaves many pictures that could be good enough to use for reference material, including Lauren's picture that is the starting point for the piece I have been working on for the past 3 weeks. The piece is an evolution of my recent works on paper, Residue



and a series Burst,




And as always it is an attempt to make the everyday individual larger than life, this time not only metaphorically but physically, while still capturing all the specificity and minute details that always seems to represent to me the breadth of our experience, memories, dreams and fears, limitations, and especially of our possibilities.

I've begun working on a large scale piece and after sketching and transferring the image of the body,









I was ready to really begin.

And thus came the hair. I never feel like I have started to work on a piece, I never feel fully committed to it until I start to add color and patterns to it; making the jump from a non-specific body to a body with a history and imagination that exists in a world carefully crafted by me. And the hair is where I always begin, creating an extension of the head that expands into space, full of movement and taking over the paper and creating a type of netting that seems to support the image and body, almost as if making the march through space became easier when the body is being partly lifted by this system of little objects that connect to make the hair.

Usually I like to think of my patterns as things contained within the body that start to seep through our pores, but with the hair goes beyond that. It bursts through holding each body up in its movement, could it be our dreams contained in our brain that escaped and decided to infiltrate the space taking over everything? Our brain unraveling? Each little pattern being a neuron firing out making a connection recording a momentary experience, the smell of gasoline while the car is getting filled up or the feeling of the wooden handle on your hands as you roll some cookie dough, perhaps the color of the liquid being injected in you as you are given a shot. They move around growing expanding creating an overwhelming mass exuberant and unapologetic.

The hair sets the tone for the whole piece. It reminds me to be bold in my choices. After 3 weeks of work though, I've come to realize that doing small detailed work on a large piece of paper with several layers is quite a lot of work. It takes much longer to proportionally cover the same amount of paper so that the work becomes that much slower, and my arm that much more tired. And still as I work and realize that after so many hours of work there are still so many more to come I am excited to discover and create.

The piece is far from finished but I thought I might share with you the beginnings of this piece and have you experience its conception along with me as it mutates and grows.

if you look at the outlet on the wall you can get an idea of the size of the piece

This should give you an idea of the general direction of the piece

THE CHILDREN OF THE FISHERMAN

As always, as the morning comes, the sea sits still with its mysterious quietness, and the fishermen walk off into the deep blue water.



I enjoy knowing where my food comes from. I like seeing the fisherman coming out of the water carrying fish in their hands. I take pleasure in walking by the shore and seeing fish and crabs moving about.



About a week ago, coming back from our usual lunch place,



there seemed to be special commotion at the beach. It was a weekend so there was more people than there usually are at the beach, especially children, and one could hear them screaming in a mixture of excitement and fear.

Before long we realized the sky was covered with huge birds that flew up and down diving into the water hunting for fish.



The children were playing in the water, alternating between jumping up in excitement and going into the water as birds approached.

As we reached the end of the beach we saw that a group of fishermen returning with some fresh fish and understood the reason for the birds.



The fishermen were standing at the edge of the water cleaning the fish



and preparing to take them to the nearby restaurants to sell them.





The children of the fishermen oscillated between the calm knowledge and understanding of the sea, that comes from growing up in the ocean,




and fear of the huge birds that kept swooping down trying to steal their fish.





The general sense of elation was contagious and before I knew it I too was overwhelmed by the amount of birds in the sky and wanted to jump in the water and play.

It is nice when a flock of hungry birds is reason enough for laughter and joy on a saturday afternoon.

TO FLY A KITE

It is kite-flying season in Providencia.

I have been in providencia for almost three weeks now. I apologize for taking so long to write about Providencia, but I really wanted to share my thoughts on Bogota and Medellin before they evaporated into the mist of instances that inhabit my memory.

I had been to Providencia when I was younger; 10 or 11 perhaps, and the island stood out in my mind as larger than life. As a matter of fact the island is quite small.

this photo was taken by Matt Wollin

And it is hard to understand what the island is really like, because it is unlike any other place I have known. Of course, this is to an extent, true of all places, but with globalization and transnationalism it seems as if places start to take on characteristics and qualities of other places, so that to come to a place like Providencia where everything is so distinctly different-in its colors, its smells, its rhythm, its people-from that which I have experienced, makes this quite a unique experience.



Last spring at some point, Bill and I thought it would be fun to fly a kite. We thought of buying one, but instead we decided to make one. So we went to Stop and Shop and bought all the things we needed to build and fly a kite and then never got around to doing it.

Coming from such a different environment settling into the island was quite difficult. This was in part because communicating with people in the island is hard from so far away, and because expectations of things were based on my experiences. My experiences, which are quite different than the experiences of people here, which then leads them to have different expectations. So that while no one was lying, their truths were utterly different from mine.

After a week of hell (you can read my friend and fellow traveler matt's blog for a much more detailed description of our first week here mhwollin.blogspot.com) where we carried 90 kilos of luggage up a mountain through a non-existent trail, just to find a shack (a shack with a very nice view,

photo taken by Matt Wollin

but nonetheless a shack),

photos taken by Matt Wollin

we spent a night there, lost my cat, had to go all around the island until we found a place to spend the night and finally were able to shower, brush our teeth and eat something. We were ready to leave this island.

But I'm glad we gave ourselves some time, because it seems that, that is a major thing that the island both provides and takes away. By this I mean that here there is nothing but time, no need to rush, no need to go run errand after errand, no need to do a million things, there is just empty time, but it also takes very long to do most things. We slowly started to settle in, and found appropriate housing and food options.


I put special emphasis on slowly because that's the way things get done here. Well that's not true, sometimes they happen spur of the moment too, but in general things get done when they get done. I finally understand what going with the flow means, and it seems as if time sometimes ceased to exist until you realize you are hungry and it's lunchtime and you should go get food. But lunch time is a different time everyday, and with the quiet rhythm of the island one day merges with the next until you realize you don't mind not carrying a watch, and that you can't even check the time on your cell phone because you forgot it in your room.

One summer, when my brother and I were young, we built a kite. We even put a face on it, and went out to fly it. After ten minutes the wind blew it towards a power line and we lost our colorful kite forever.

There is, by most standards, a lot of poverty in this island. But, because the islanders have consciously stopped big corporations from coming into the island, there is also a certain amount of self-sufficiency. As I've discovered a lot of fruit grows in the island, however, there are no orchards, the fruit is there and it doesn't belong to anyone it belongs to the island, so that for me, as a tourist, it is hard to get access to it because it is not sold at the market. But children know where the trees are in the mountain and go there and climb and eat this fruit that it is there for free; that seems to be there just for them.

There is poverty but there is no hunger. There are crabs everywhere, and I mean everywhere.



There are so many crabs, that if you walk at night on the road, the movement of the crabs in the mountain will surprise you. It is as if hundreds of ghosts were roaming around the island walking, shuffling all around you, invisible to you except for that sound. But of course, it is only the crabs. There are fish in the sea, so that a father never has to see his children hungry, he just has to go out and fish, and because there is only artisan fishing in the island, there are enough fish for everyone and no need to fight with anyone over them.



There is poverty. But there are also about six schools in the island. And you don't see children begging on the streets. You see them running up and down the streets. Yelling at you hello, hanging out. There is poverty, but there is no fear. I have never felt unsafe here. There is poverty, but there is also a wealth in the quality of its people, who are friendly and who, in their own time as they see fit, will do everything they can to help you out and to help each other.

And during this time of year, kite-flying season, you don't see colorful kites everywhere. You see kids sitting on the street with plastic bags and twigs building kites,


Carefully putting them together into hexagonal shapes tying it to string and running up and down with them.

And when they are ready, the children of Providencia go up the mountain to a clearing. And then you don't see much of them; you hear them yelling and laughing. Or you see their faces looking up, and while you can't see the kite because it is too high up, you see them holding a string, looking up concentrated, cheering each other on.

THE CITY OF THE ETERNAL SPRING BLOSSOMS

Medellin feels like a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I spent a week in Medellin, and that was enough time to fall in love with a city that surpassed all my expectations for it. The city is endowed by a lot of natural beauty. It is not without reason that Medellin is called, “la ciudad de la eterna primavera,” the city of the eternal spring. Like Bogota, it is nestled in beautiful mountains; but because it is much lower in altitude the weather is much nicer, a sort of perfect spring weather, with flowers blooming all around; from orchids to birds of paradise.
Medellin has a strange feeling of old colonial town mixed with a very modern city. The city itself is much more manageable than Bogota, partly because of its size and partly because of the Metro, so that the center of town remain a vital part of the city with its colonial town squares, but updated by museums and Botero's sculpture square, as well as malls, bars and restaurants.





But while all of this makes Medellin beautiful, what really makes it wonderful and very unique, is its civic culture.

Medellin reminded me of my friend Omar. Last year as we prepared our senior art show, we were hanging out with Jurgen Partenheimer, an artist our professor had brought to meet and talk with us. Jurgen asked what we wanted to do and after a very long drawn out pause, sprinkled with a few “urban planning” and full of very unique Omar faces, he answered “I want to fix things.” I have read about the importance of architecture, mostly about its negative effects (like the way suburbia draws people away from each other by its conception), but I have never experienced it, in a way that has made me really know the positive effect it can have.

I had been told that Medellin was a public city. Everywhere you go there are tons of parks and gardens, with fountains and benches, and tables with grand open spaces for people to just hang out, work and really live in the public sphere of the city rather than in their apartments separated from one another. The streets have no potholes (which for a Colombian city is strange), and there is great access to beautiful libraries. Not to mention the fact that everyone in Medellin is so nice and friendly; while I rode the Metro, every time a senior, pregnant woman, or woman with a baby entered the car, someone would stand up and give up their seat immediately. All of these spaces are available to everybody and if you live in poor neighborhood (termed strato 1, 2 or 3 (out of 6)) the entrance to all museums is free.

And it was really the comunas, the poorest neighborhoods in Medellin, and what the city has done to change them that I really fell in love with. The comunas are equivalent to the Brazilian favelas, they are neighborhoods built up on the hills that surround the city. During Pablo Escobar's reign over Medellin, this is where one would find all of the hit-men. The houses are build of bricks and tin roofs and separated from the main city by the geography.


But within the last 10 years the Metro has expanded to the comunas through a series of Metrocable that connect the rail with a cable car that brings one up to the top of the mountains deep into the comunas making it accessible for its residents to access what the city has to offer.


At each comuna there is also a library-park. Huge buildings that serve as a mixture of community center and libraries. Beautifully built and extremely modern, these buildings house computers and laptops available for anyone's use, books, a huge game room for children, an auditorium where cultural and educational talks happen, as well as free movies every weekend, and classrooms for workshops open to the community. On the day I went there there was an accountant helping people prepare their taxes. And on the outside there is a park, with playgrounds and communal spaces.


And, just like in the downtown of medellin, there were no potholes and clean sidewalks; and it was a wonderful surprise to see that despite the houses being constructed on top of each other with tin roofs and whatever was available,


and the fact that few tourists go to this part of town, the government was providing the necessary elements for this community to flourish and for its children to have better access to education and a more positive growing space. And it was lovely to see children running around and playing, people hanging out and talking and finding ways to make their neighborhood more beautiful in any way they could.


I am sure there is violence still in Medellin, there certainly is poverty, but at the same time there is a sense of hope all around. There is a great sense of pride in Medellin, a sense of ownership of the city. People want to make it better whether by being courteous to each other in the Metro, or, simply, by painting their roofs and adding color to their lives.



It seems as if the people of Medellin ,when they were at their darkest time, decided they were going to figure out a way to get out of that darkness, and little by little they are achieving it.