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| Working away on their masks |
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| Sara having a good time |
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Last step...tying the masks on |
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| Super Heroes! |
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| Girl Power! |
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| Dan and I in front of the school |
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| So Happy...Big Smile! |
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| Everyone with their masks...so much fun! |
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| A portrait of Dan done by one of the kids |
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| 3-D Glasses! |
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| Monster Doodle |
Hey all, we know it's been some time without a new post but here it is. From Bogota, we managed to get to Medellin where we will be until January. So far, we got settled in at a guesthouse with students and young professionals from the city. It's a perfect place to stay long term, in a great location, safe, and fairly cheap. So we were all ready to get going on art projects with the University of Antioquia when a curve-ball came our way. The public University students are on strike all over the country(over Government privatization issues). We found this out about three days after coming here and learned that, currently, there are no classes for students, no community art projects going, and no alternatives for us.... :( The unfortunate news caught us by surprise as we had committed to about 2 and 1/2 months here and now didn't know what to do. We had been connected to a professor in the University's art department who has been involving us in his art workshops. Juan Velez is his name and he is one of the coolest artist professors we have ever met. He's hip and is very involved with community art murals and public art in general. So we are making connections through his network and excited to work with a local art collective:
plato hedro. We hope to organize an art event with the youth of their outreach programs. We also participated in a street art workshop put on by Juan himself. Very fun night!!
Just last Friday, we started the 1st of hopefully many, Youth Art Workshops, at a school in Medellin. It's kind of funny how this came about but we will take any leads at this point. Next to our gym, there's a juice lady selling fruit concoctions, her name Maria Jose. Her husband, Juan Carlos, is a painter and teacher at a nice school with a great art program...voted the best school in Medellin! We set up a meeting with him, and a few days later found ourselves teaching a workshop with his kids... :) That's how it works out here. We prepared a quick lesson plan, got some candy and went off to the school at 6:00am.....early for us. It went super well. After meeting many staff, we started our workshop, Super Hero Powers and Mask Making. We did two workshops with 3rd grade classes and had a ball. Fun times, and all in English! The kids loved it and we felt good getting into our element. We'll post pics of this soon!!
In other news, we are busy painting a series of acrylic paintings in a little studio, set up in our little room. We are planning an art show at a cozy, artsy cafe called Cafe Zorba. This will be towards the new year, and we also hope to involve kids in a themed show here, nevertheless, we have a place to show work, and something to work towards.
Other than that, we are studying Spanish, going to cafes in the area, reading, drawing, working out at our gym, cooking meals in the house, speaking spanish to our housemates, having fun with them out at bars, dancing salsa, and getting to know Medellin, rain or shine.....but mostly rain here. We're enjoying the ups and coping with the downs, realizing that to be an artist in this place, at this point in our lives, is a Dream!!
