Sorry to be off line for a bit. The adventures and work of the last week have been a bit overwhelming and tiring. I am not even sure where to start except that the image enclosed is part of the past weekend’s excursions, but more on that later.
Some highlights have been a late night dinner of Lebbanese food at a restaurant in San Jose on Thursday. There was live music and at the end of the night the man that both Jauquin and I agreed was the hottest one there asked me to dance with him. A dance full of gyrations, swiveling hips and hands caressing the smoke filled air with twists and turns. The song seemed to go on for quite a long time, perhaps longer than my partner wished, who also showed me some traditional dance moves. I think he kept looking toward the band to get them to finally end the piece, but I could have just kept on going and going and going. I think we might go again this thursday.
On friday I believe I ironed out a lot of the details about the show, that is if the dealer has not made any more changes. the opening date should be August 6th right before I leave. so needless to say I am beginning to get a little nervous, the cilantro has not sprouted yet because someone keeps on turning off the water and the seeds keep on drying out, so I have reverted to plan B and about to have a bunch of cilantro seedlings delivered to me to transplant into the fabric, now I know this is not how I usually like to work, but time is short and I would like the roots be quite long. Since I wrote the earlier part of this email the date of the opening has been changed again to July 31st. so needless to say I am even more stressed out. So much so that today my cilantro was finally delivered, too big but alas I only have a week left, Oh the smell is grand, we had to lay the cilantro out on the ground in the water left from my dripping fabric overnight to plant in the morning because the delivery was so late. Enclosed is an image of my giant Cilantro Salad. The name of the skirt sculpture in spanish is Culantro en/agua. enagua is the the costa rican name for skirt, I like how agua is a part of the word.
Went and visited a local company that makes and distributes hand made paper from Bannanas and Coffee. I am trying an experiment of sprouting the cilantro in paper made from theirs.
Spent friday and saturday helping Jauquin prepare his photographs for a small exhibit of his work and other photographers at a cafe in San Jose. He does nice work, too bad he does not have the time to really concentrate on it. We got up early satuday morning to start working on a series of mosaics that we are making for the spanish school in exchange for free classes. The
first one is in a ground level rain gutter filled with mosaic snakes swimming around in a pool of water. Tough work, bending down in the sun, it really tired me out, but we forged ahead and rented a car at 4:00, drove over to the cafe to install his photos, drove home to prepare for his opening we were so hungry that we actually went through the Burgerking Drive through for dinner. We were at the opening until 11:30 then a quick run to the supermarket for snacks for the road, stopped into a disco to see some of Juaquin’s friends then back to the house to prepare for our all night drive down to Manuel Antonio, a beach in the South on the Pacific side. We left Heredia (the town I am staying in) at 2:15 am in order to arrive in the town of Parrita to photograph the enclosed image for the sunrise. Oh what an experience this place called Parrita is. It is a whole town filled with Palm oil trees imported from Africa. Rows and Rows of palm trees surround you as you drive over a series of mini bridges. This place
is the reason why I came to Costa Rica this time. to photograph the process of growth-life-death that this farm displays. It is just surreal to stand amongst these bare trunks left to decay while their babies are just beginning to reach for the sky. I kept on asking Juaquin to start and stop and drive back and forth as we made our way past the fields. (we could only rent a manual stick car of which I cannot drive very well, so he was the sole driver) I did not even have enough memory in my digital camera to
capture it all, What a wild place to spend time in look through the lens of a camera.
Well after 2.5 hours of picture taking we finally made our way to the beach, Oh and did I tell you that we brought Adso the dog with us, he had a tough time at first needing to be in his cage, but eventually he had a good time
at the beach. We found a shady spot under an almond tree and imediately fell fast asleep. I took a nice dip later on and we found yet another shady spot in a more quiet area, and as we were sitting there we saw Henry and some other friends from the Museum walk by, What a coinsidence. After they continued onward, we were laying down on the sand just chatting when
suddenly the ground shook as if a giant foot had stomped down besides us. It was a little earth quake. These things happen here frequently it seems. There was another one that last time I was here as well.
Being that I am of fair skin and auburn hair I ofcourse made sure to use my #30 sun block, but at the end of the day I realized that I had forgotten to protect my back with just the bathing suit on and sure enough got quite a sun burn, even though we only stayed in the shade and the sun was covered over by clouds the whole day. Oh my how sensitive I am.
So what else about this oddyssy of a weekend, actually it is late, i am tired and have to wake up at 5 am, and well this is enough to read and tantalize you for more later.
tat ta
M

