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Hi Ketli, that is a nice start, as I grew up we wore little garnets on our cloths to keep us save. And like this there are many more little things we in on to our clothing to keep us from certain tragedy. I will make a picture of it and put it on the blog. hi Ketli, just got married and was not aware of how much work this required! what will we be working on? Thank you for the comment, it sounds really interesting! I am looking forward to see the pictures too. Where and how big were these little garnets you used to have on your clothes to protect you? Could you please also write posts directly here Best wishes, Ketli Dear Luzia, Long time no see! The algae are very strange living things. They are detached (Are they? They travel a lot! And they are eatable! And can be sticky and can be beautiful!). At the same time they carry their home environment in their cells. So many materials resemble them. If they were jewellery pieces they could be made of leather. Instead of lost beings found somewhere, they would be part of a shared culture and then they could float in the medium we create with our energy (effort, communication, work, words). And this medium would be part of them too. Finally they could be made of what they are. Still on the picture finding fun I found this one. It was taken last February and shows one of Olinda’s carnival high points: The midnight man (O homem da meia noite). The midnight man is a giant doll that goes out on a particular day and is said to have enchanted many people with his charms. I admit I was quite fascinated by him and impressed with how much people love this guy. Every year he wears a special outfit and dresses up under the blessings of his Orixás, African-Brazilian deities, hence his seductive power. This night was really scary because of the heavy rain and of so many people, all soaked. It felt as if the rain washed up my soul (meaning bliss). As a bonus to the spiritual treatment, I got the impression that The midnight man looked right at me as he passed by… ; )
What nesting baby albatross are being fed by their parents… From the Midway, Message from the Gyre series, by American photographer Chris Jordan.
Some days ago I learned, with great sadness, about the death of French-Spanish film maker and photographer, Christian Poveda. I had the pleasure and honor to meet Christian some years ago in Mexico. Sitting in a privileged garden in the mountains at the Gulf Coast of Mexico and drinking tea with rum, he talk enthusiastically about the project he was about to start in El Salvador. Christian Poveda devoted his work and his life to portray social conflicts all over Ibero-America. He spent over three years in El Salvador, working with La Mara Salvatrucha and La Mara 18, two rival gangs composed by Salvadorans, Hondurans, Guatemalans and Nicaraguans and that have held a ruthless war for over a decades. Over 14 thousand forgotten youngsters show a tremendous rage through their tattoos and the complete devotion to their gang, that comes to replace family. They are heirs to the gangs formed in the United States during the 1980′s by the Salvadorian immigrants that flew from El Salvador during the civil war. Born in the Ghettos of Los Angeles, the legend of the Maras became stronger in Central America as the illegal immigrants were deported back to El Salvador. Through his film, La Vida Loca, presented at the San Sebastian Festival last year, Christian documented the personal and everyday life of some members of these gangs, masterfully portraying the violent phenomenon that has been imported from the USA. As commented by Mexican photographer Ulises Castellanos, when talking about his work Christian insisted on transmitting the idea of how artists should get involved in their own work and always be honest with the individuals that were the object of their obsessions. He was committed with his work, with the people we worked with and with the world in general. Christian used to say that it was that dedication that led him to become a paternal figure for the gangs; kids, who were mostly orphans or abandoned by their parents, found a generous person in him. He visited them every day, just stopping by to find our how they were doing and, this, establishing a unique bond. On September 2009, Christian was shot to dead in the Salvadorian barrio of Tonacatepeque, 16 kilometers to the north of San Salvador. Watching his film has been a bitter-sweet experience. The film shows the unique and utterly beautiful way in how Christian Poveda captured images and emotions and, at the same time it shows the crude and desperate reality of El Salvador. There is also the pride and satisfaction of seeing a friend’s work so masterfully accomplished, but seasoned with the sadness of knowing that he is no longer here.
You can visit the homage exhibition, put together by his Mexican Students in cooperation with Zona Zero: http://zonezero.com/exposiciones/fotografos/poveda/index.html
Adieu chère Totally stressy… So sorry, Carolina, but this back and forth every weekend is and will stay really time-consuming. I feel I do not have enough hours to keep up on everything. Even downloading photos, gettin them ready for posting, for the blog is more than I can do. Most of my hours each day here, even on the weekend to catch up for lost time (and dead tired coming back to my temporary ‘home’) are at the school and grinding mills. The stone process is quite slow. Also have to keep up with my professional contact work even on the side lines (and internet connection here at the apartment is SO slow). No time for drawing just for fun or feeling like taking a walk in the fall forest. But the wheels are so addictive, and the time at them can be hell for your hands and back, but the humming sound creates a meditative bubble that just envelopes my mind and is totally calming. So with this in my life right now you will probably not hear that often from me from now through November. There are things here around the behavior of people that every now and then just make me so happy I am not living on this side of the border any more! Actually, a big gift to be able to spend time here like this to really ‘get that message’! It still will never take away the Gray Area of being immigrant but will hopefully soften the edges somewhat. Your studio view towards the mountains is lovely, and the summer light soothing. Must be very productive! Enjoyment and adventures in the gray area to you, Andrea
Hi Sebastián! I’m too lazy to write … Here are pictures in silence… Please, try to hear the sound of the sea (I tried to send a video but I could not).
 Beijos
Hi Andrea….How do you feel travelling from one reality to onother? How do you perceive the distances/ the light/ the language/the architecture/ the people?…(I think that will be in the gray area pieces!) Now, the pictures…_1_ in my studio (also home) windows I have attached pictures taken from my studio (also home) in Barcelona_2_actual view from my window _3_drawing of nº II _4_house in the countryside where we are planning to move soon, and where I go three times a week. I can say that at the moment I feel overlaped by images of different places. I know where I am, but I’m also in other places at the same time. Again in the no-place, parenthesis. Hola Susanne! I have read your message and I must say that ever since this project started, not only I have not stopped thinking about immigration but I also find immigration everywhere in my life. At the end of the day it all starts with the fact that I live in a foreign city. Undoubtedly it is an experience that enriches the one that lives through it leads you to value things that were meaningless before and vice versa. It is one of the greatest life experiences. I have always believed that at least half of our social conflicts and wars will not exists if everyone were given the opportunity to experience living elsewhere. Being a foreigner has changed my life. This is an extensive subject, one way to address it is to separate it by chapters or by creating a journal with our daily impressions, memories, thoughts, visions, etc. This way, we can have a starting point and continue the journey of working together. I have been thinking that we could generate a list of places we both know and have visited and continue on that line of thought. I have so much to say and share that makes it hard to find a beginning so I will be sending photographs, and various articles which will allow us to start forming our mosaic. To start this mosaic, I will begin to share the story of a necklace I was asked to create as an exercise during my first jewelry course in Barcelona. The task was to create three necklace, they should represent my past, my present and my future. For the FUTURE (please find the attached image) necklace I understood that life can take many different directions so I used the analogy of a round about highway.
The PRESENT necklace is in constant development so the task was incomplete. Then showing he PAST necklace was to answer questions about who I really was, what I have done with my life, where I was from, what I have studied, etc. And then, the paths starting showing up, similar to the concept of the future (different roads to take): and I thought the past was different points in my life. Thus, I made a diagram to represent my paths during specific stages in my life. One of the stages I represented was my childhood, when I was a girl. The path was the commute paths between home and my school, or to swimming lessons, or to grandma’s, etc. There were also other paths such as when I went to college or my vacations. That is how I arrived to the necklace I show you next. My past is the collection of paths through different places. Places that provided me with life experiences and with the understanding that the journey from place to place has made an immigrant of me.
. . .“Something I always wanted to know from migrants: Do you feel sometimes like I do, a kind of homesickness, despite that you are very happy in the “new” Country? A kind of strange sentiment about your old customs, language, food, music or humor? I always was very critic about Switzerland during my life there. Now it turned out that I feel more patriotic than I ever expected.”. . . After rereading this fragment that you had sent me previously, I feel that those sentiments take place frequently to those that live their “home” behind. While we were living there, we saw issues and problems with the place, but then, when we are far, we realize that the issues were not as bad as they seemed or that we have changed our value system. Many of my immigrants friends feel the same way. When I first arrived here in Barcelona, every time I heard someone speaking with a Venezuelan accent, I would feel this inner motivation to talk to them or at the very least I would hear every word they said until I couldn’t hear them anymore. I used to be bothered by this when I lived in Venezuela. Now I value the simple things and some not so simples is that before they were not important because I always had them. Such things are for example a tree shadow, flowers, or my pets. I see that you have visited Andalucia this summer. I went to the south as well and one of my favorites images is that of the olive trees. How they are planted on the mountains and as they follow lines it all seems like a magnificent natural hairdo. I was astonished by the patterns and textures created It looked like a sea of olive trees navigating on the valleys and hills. I am very glad that you are in the other side of the wire now. And congratulations, on your weddings! You asked, how should we start our collaboration? Shall we start first with exchanging some images with comments we think are characteristic to the theme of the exhibition, or to our individual work or to the way we think or they just inspire us. Lets just take it slowly and get to know each other and see what works best with us.
For the start I am sending you an image with one tiny “chestnut animal” pin from my last collection “Homesickness”. Chestnuts- in Estonia it is believed that chestnut in your pocket will bring you luck. When we were children we kept many of them in every single pocket we had. Also we used to drag piles and piles of chestnuts home and made little animals out of them. Then we tried to eat them, they tasted horrible, and someone smart told us, that you have to bake them in the owen before you can eat them. Well, the sound of cracking chestnuts in my mothers owen and her face, I never forget. It appeared that chestnuts growing in Estonia are delicious only perhaps for the wild boars. It is also believed that chestnuts help to prevent moths while they are stored between woolen things. Have you ever believed in such a things-superstition?
Hi Nano Double-Standards? I am not sure if I understand right. You mean that on the one hand one congratulates himself for being tolerant when it is not hurting and being avaricious if it gets to the point to share the pie? I don’t know if art can really change social problems. It can make you to start thinking about problems. It can hit weak points, it can shock. But who? Art consumers, fine art consumers are fom a small social class. But it is important to do art projects and to place them into society, even though you feel like Sysiphos. For example if you do projects with children, as I read in the internet, you train them to use their brains. Do you consider yourself as an artist or as a jeweller? Or an artist jeweller, or an artistic jewellery designer or a jeweller maker without limits, or a wheterfishnorbird jeweller, an artist-in-jewellery. I am making jokes if I write these expressions. But sometimes I get confused by defining my job title. When is jewellery art? In my opinion an artistic object should make a statement to which anybody can rely to (the personal story of the artist is not anymore relevant). The esthetic criterias of the object are secondary, but must follow the content of the statement. I called my profession on my website “About jewellery”. Because I like to treat topics from the jewellery world, but I certainly don’t do jewellery that the mainstream recognises as jewellery. They often feel repelled from it. And jewellery attract? And if I act in such way I work more as an artist than a jeweller.Maybe it is also not so important, but this questions pops regularly up. But getting back to the primary topic about migrational problems and how can art interact I must admit that my work is not very political, but I hope it has some socialcritic aspects. To close or for dessert an image: I like the work of Ai Weiwei, also for the choice of his materials. I like if art is materialised and not exclusively intellectual. Best wishes from Zurich! Natalie
Ai Weiwei “Descending Light” Hi… Nice photo of Lisboa (beautiful how the cloud hovers above like a slumbering giant). And I hope that your drawer salad was as good as mine! I did quite a bit of clearing out too, nice to get rid of that old stale stagnant stuff and to make room for new things. I almost think that I like throwing things away more than buying new stuff (and this started when I read a book my Haruki Murakami, Sputnik Sweetheart, where one character only owns a total of two boxes, or very little, so moving is easy). Now I also seem to be quite aware of garbage, waste and what it means to get new stuff and then to get rid of the old (this is part of the last post about toxic substances and so on). I never thought about it much and I don’t know why. But maybe the why is actually not really important here anymore because I seem to be aware of it now… Perhaps the Age of Mercury is what we are in now, or we could call it The Golden Age of Neglect! It makes me a bit sad and currently I am thinking about all of this to understand its core and the way it moves from its core to its end result (if the consequences ever come to a complete stop). And this is heavy stuff, so I think I will leave this for myself alone. Bones. I love bones too. Structures. Scaffold. Death. I love the concept of death also (or how it is such a mysterious thing, so hidden from the world, cleared away from the public eye, sanitized, bleached, made pretty for the funeral, yet we are ALL going to experience it, no escape possible no matter what we try AND most of us are so afraid of it to the point that we never truly live).
Ciao…..:) Hi Mia!!!!!!! I also feel confused and stuck, I had been disconnected all this time, I’m still in between Barcelona and Luxembourg, but after Koru I will definitely move. Is not an excuse but I hadn’t been able to be focused on this project, lots of things are happening at the same time, I’m trying to say good bye to the city I lived in for 4 years and the projects I started here, Is just so hard to think that my life is no here anymore and is harder to think about how my new life is going to be, a completely unknown and undesired situation. When I moved here (Barcelona) was because I had a reason, a plan and a desire of learn and do jewellery. But now ………. I just feel confused, sad, angry, anxious. I feel that something stops me…. I also think that we should meet, I don’t know if that would break the awkward point but we are getting closer. SHADOWS!!!!!! mmmmmm Good night!!!!! And see you soon!!!!! Hola, Valeria! I love the works of Orozco! Here are more bones…
Cildo Meireles is a kind of pope for me… Mission/Missions ‘I wanted to construct something that would be a kind of mathematical equation, very simple and direct, connecting three elements: material power, spiritual power, and a kind of unavoidable, historically repeated consequence of this conjunction, which was tragedy’, Meireles has said. The resulting work comments on the human cost of missionary work and its connection with the exploitation of wealth in the colonies: the ceiling is composed of The missionaries hoped to save the Indigenous population from what they understood to be the most savage of practices, cannibalism. As Paulo Herkenhoff explains, ‘In a plea to eradicate cannibalism, the missionaries offered in exchange the Eucharist and the Holy Communion – the consumption of Christ’s body.’ Yet the missionaries’ desire to absorb and replace the beliefs and practices of the Indigenous people itself constituted a form of cultural cannibalism, one culture or civilisation absorbing another.
Mobile Matrix (first image), a piece made by Mexican Artist Gabriel Orozco with the graphite sketched bones of a long fin whale found on the south west coast of Spain is displayed at the Biblioteca Vasconcelos in Mexico City. Dark Wave (second image) is a second version of the first whale made for the White cube in Mason’s yard in London. It was not possible to use a real whale skeleton for this pieces, so a replica was commissioned to the Spanish company Factum Arte. Well, it makes my mouth water … I love to eat and to try new flavors! The colors of this salad are beautiful and I was amazed how everything was well cut … To make combinations with food is an art. It seems to me that you’re good at it too! Did you ever make edible jewelry? I like those cherry earrings, candy bracelets , pasta necklaces that we gave to our mothers. Or the Carmen Miranda’s crown made of exotic fruits… I always thought that was beautiful. I wonder a person using edible jewelry in a performance. Ephemeral and interactive … I really enjoyed those bones. I love bones. I started making a mutant imaginary skeleton in ceramics, but I never finished. I left my vertebrae and phalanges in Brazil.
This photograph is of a bone with ornaments from the Bronze Age (some 2000 years BC…). Maybe we are the next men of the Age of Mercury! … And this picture was taken today, after I felt a need to empty my drawer and make a big clean . It’s phase of detachment …
It’s a kind of salad too… Beijos!
Where I grew up
Where I live now
My favorite place on earth
My studio wall
Thinking about where in the world you are at the moment? I hope you are well! /H
Hi Andrea….these two palettes were in my desk for years, and I found them today, and what a nice coincidence the names….how they choose them? Maybe now we can paint ourselves as “online gray”, or “network gray”. likes//dislikes///I like the idea to connect things. I like mountains. I like gray. I dont like flat cities. I like Amsterdam. I like to be a little bit german. I am chilean but I don’t identify with it sometimes. I am here but sometimes I would like to came back to Barcelona. I’am architect but I prefer to be jeweler. I like the contrast between opposites. |
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This is a recent(ish) piece. A skull pin with emerald eyes on an old playing card. And to answer your question, I did make a few pieces with food, but manipulated the food in a way that it would survive its ephemeral nature. I found that this was not an area for me!
