RIA Salon on Mexico

Last night I talked at RIA Salon about my trip to Mexico last year. I showed photos of the workshops I offered in four art venues, and displayed prints I made during the trip. I also showed the Kitchen Art based on Mexican foods, a collection of objects I built on cut-out wood, using stencils, wax pastels and drawing. I will do a demo on how to travel light with a printmaking studio on your backpack at Petra Halke's soon.

With some of the photos and videos of the visit I finished a short video (2.55 minutes long) on my main impressions of Mexico during the visit. Here it is.

Fall Art Workshops

Three Events in September!

September has three main events for me. First, as guest at RIA Salon (Research in Art) organized by Petra Halkes and René Price at their house. On Monday 15th I will presented images on the printmaking workshops I gave in Mexico last year. A group of about 25 artists and friends attended. Thank you for the opportunity!

Second, tropical fruits and veggies at Chinatown Remixed. This year I was assigned Kowloon Market on 716 Somerset. It is a neat supermarket, with lots of fresh and inexpensive food. Fresh (and clean) fish area, with live eels, oyster, clams, live tilapia. Also the best duck ever! See the display below.

And third, we were selected for the artist’s residency Art Place coordinated by Arts Ottawa East Arts Council. Alicia Borisonik and I will be teaching an art class to a youth group at the Alexander Community Centre during fall and winter. The residency pays the two artists a salary and also covers art supplies and rental of music instruments.

Veggie Art at Kowloon Supermarket, Chinatown Remixed, 2015

Dealing with Rejection

I have been applying for several grants, awards, jobs and opportunities and five of my applications have been rejected; two have been successful; and three are still pending. I have to continuously remind myself that it is my applications are being rejected, not ME. It is easy to take it personally and to feel like a failure.

However, I am looking into new opportunities, tangentially related to art, if I remember to see life a stage for creativity. Jose and I will train as Couple Enrichment Leaders for 10 days during the General Friends Conference. It will take place at Western Carolina University of Cullowhee, located in North Carolina.

We hope to exercise and multiply what we learn during the training with other Spanish speaking couples who would be interested in deepening their relationship. We will have a taste session of Couple Enrichment on our return, before the end of the year.

Mexican Heritage

Since my visit to wonderful Mexico I wanted to do a series to honour its food, its culture and its amazing heritage. I finished a group of seven indigenous foods from Central and South America we enjoy around the world: cocoa, tomatoes, beans, corn, squash and chilli peppers. The image of the mighty maguey, a cactus that has served to dress and shelter many, and the plant where Mexicans extract the agave to make sweets, tequila and mezcal. 

maguey

Gut Health

I have been very interested in healthy eating since university, and lately my kitchen is a lab of brewing and fermenting experiments. Here is a photo of the new sauerkraut installation just finished last weekend. It enables me to make 10 mason jars of 450 ml each time. I am using red and white cabbage, apples, cranberries, garlic and salt. It is delicious and so healthy! I have been reading about the benefits of sauerkraut and the different bacteria that it feeds in your gut, I recommend the site on Nourishing Treasures. It has a great explanation of the science behind it.

pink sauerkraut ready to be consumed

Kitchen Art

After my visit to Mexico I needed to make something to honour that amazing culture. I decided to start with food: a lot of very important foods we enjoy today are originally from Central and South America. Some travelled with migrants thousands of years ago, like cocoa. Some travelled with the Europeans that conquered the Americas, like tomatoes. That is why, today  I decided to make samples of important foods I love, to accompany my kitchen, or yours.

Another reason for producing this series is that I think of my work in the kitchen as art. The art of cooking healthy, sustainable, tasty and good looking meals. The art of setting the table with a nice layout, inviting colours, useful utensils. The art of hosting a gathering, the expectation of seeing friends, welcoming music, anticipating some moments during the event when you will call everybody for a highlight such as breaking the piñata. And most important making everyone feel special.

Below you will find images of the process used for the Kitchen Art, and some finished samples.

sketch on paper, wood cutout, paper collage, finished collection of CHILES

squash

tomatoes

beans

Website

One of my goals this year was to learn how to use WordPress to have my own website. In it you will find different samples of my work as a visual artist throughout the decades. There are samples of my illustrations, murals, mixed media objects and paintings, and some of the work I have done as a Forest School practitioner. Please let me know what you think.

www.mariagomezumana.com

Nine Organs

Emotions are hosted in different parts of our body, and accumulate over time. Happiness creates marks on our face and tone up our muscles.  Sadness, fear, rage and envy strain our muscles, and concentrate toxic elements in our organs.  Unfortunately, we only become aware of our internal organs when they are not working properly.

The collection of Nine Organs is a votive healing act.  If intention defines the outcome of our actions, my act of creating Nine Organs is healing.  During the creation process I observe the internal organs and become better at interpreting its signs.  I find a tuning with its performance and its needs.  Each organ is constantly working to maintain balance, working from within to build and preserve life.  The interrelations between organs create systems that enable its function.  Nine Organs echoes my body in the uniqueness of each shape and their interconnections with the body as a whole.

 Brain

 Fallopian

Kidney

Art Show HEAL

From February to March I will have the solo show HEAL, at the General Fine Craft and Design Gallery,  located in Almonte, Ontario (see map).  The opening will be on Sunday March 22, from 1 to 3 pm.  The show consists of two bodies of work: The Healing Alphabet, and The Nine Organs.  The objects were made with mixed media: wood, paper, fabric, embroidery, a sawing machine, a torch, transfers, and drawing supplies.

All healing requires time.  It happens in layers, as coatings of skin, streams of kind words, soothing sounds, and restoring actions.  There are different types of healing: repairing a broken tissue, mending a deep soul wound, curing a polluted river, or restoring a broken community.  However, all healing requires a similar disposition: enormous courage to face fear and to look at pain closely.  

During my healing progress, I found creativity and resiliency compelling to carry on; to overcome sadness, despair, and specially a sense of unfairness and rage.  The reason being that Healing urges me to look at my darkest sides, and into the scary shades of unknown mysteries.  Only then, the wound is identified and the real work begins.

Healing starts to happen when I feel again the burning pain.  As I skulk again through it, I begin to experience transformation.  In time, the treasure is revealed.  It then becomes lush soil, rich hummus, and abundant compost for the soul.  Healing brings a sense of gratitude that makes me eager to disclose the discoveries to honour the process.  

In this body of work, art mirrors my healing path: it embodies the process and gives shape to the task.

Artwork During our Mexico Trip

I said I would do a mono-print every day during my stay in Mexico.  I didn't, but almost. I made 16 mono-prints, of which I like 12, and of which I really like 8... And here they are: mono-prints of 18 cm x 20 cm.

Daily I would scratch over a single plexiglass sheet, and I would add new images as the trip progressed. I used the Pin Press to print on paper, making layers of found images such as bus, museum, or metro tickets, receipts, maps, cards, and poetry books.  The "papel picado" motifs were added as stencils here and there, using wheat glue as a binder.  Now I intend to transform the mono-prints into something else: tearing, cutting and painting over them.

Forest School Paperwork

I finished correcting the Forest School paperwork.  Why does Forest School require writing? Some friends are asking and here is the response.

Forest School training is not only about how to work and play with children in a natural environment but much more.  It includes teaching children to assess and manage risks, so they can benefit from outdoor experiences.  The course is a guide to start our own Forest School, and therefore includes developing policies and procedures, elaborating a communication strategy, and defining a Forest School handbook.  As practitioners we study (or review) different styles of learning as well as barriers to learning.  The course includes forest management, site ecological impact, as well as local flora and fauna.  We learn to undertake a formative and a summative evaluation.  The course expects us to plan and execute six sessions, that include several areas: learning goals, planned experiences and alternate plans, observations, evaluation, resources, and considerations for the following sessions.  Each session needs to have a site risk assessment, an activity risk assessment, and a risk benefit assessment.  Finally, practitioners are competent to share life skills such as to use a sharp knife, a bow saw, a hatchet; how to light fire and cook on it; how to build shelters; and how to tie knots for different uses.  And finally, a Forest School guide models how to respect nature, to leave the natural site as found, and how to be thankful for the opportunity to experience it.

Here is a 4 minute video of the skills I practiced with a group of children.

Mexico!

Mexico is an amazing country. Bountiful in resources, culture, geography, historical wealth, countless places of interest, but most important, its people. I have been to Mexico three times and every time I return in love with Mexicans: they are friendly, helpful, generous and resourceful. It breaks my heart the violence resulting from drug traffiquing, corruption in political figures, and greed in corporations such as banks and industrial compounds who profit well from chaos. How to change that? I can only offer what I do: art.

Thanks to efficient friends in Mexico who contacted me with arts organizations, I was able to give four workshops. Different groups were interested, two in Oaxaca and two in Mexico City. The workshops I designed for them was based on chine-collé, a mixed media technique in printmaking. I carried a Pin Press and Akua inks, they provided the rest. The participants were print makers and art students from different organizations. As payment each group brought homemade Mexican food to share with the group. Each workshop was different and enriching. I am truly grateful for having had the opportunity to contribute and learn so much!

In Oaxaca the workshops took place at La Curtiduria and at Universidad Autonoma Benito Juarez:

La Curtiduría
Espacio Contemporáneo para las Artes

Universidad Autonoma Benito Juarez
departamento de Artes Gráficas

In Mexico City I was fortunate to run workshops at the following Arts Organizations.

Escuela de Iniciación Artística de Mexico
escuela numero 1

La Clinica
Artist Run Centre in Mexico City

Transformers

I have been working on mono-prints but I am not quite happy with them.  So I decided today to play transformers, and to turn the five prints I did as prep work for the trip to Mexico, into paintings.  I glued them on wooden boards and waxed them, which gave them a different quality.  This enabled me to work on them a bit more, and it looks like they are going to work fine this way.  Here a sample of the five prep-mono-prints transformed into paintings.

When Does a Trip Begin?

In a few days I am going to visit Mexico, and preparing the trip feels like I am already on my way. I decided to include an art project: I want to create a mono-print every day of my visit. At the end I will end up with at least twelve different images. I will scratch and print a single plexiglass sheet every day. The supplies needed are inks, paper, rollers, spatulas, and the Pin Press. I am already trying the process at home, getting into the routine of a daily exercise. The visit includes Mexico City and Oaxaca, and I intend to post some of the resulting art work on this blog.

Furthermore, thanks to friends in Mexico, I have contacts with two graphic art studios in Oaxaca that are willing to have me for an afternoon each, to share what I do and to and learn from them. I am very excited about the prospect of meeting artists and art studios during my travel. Thank you friends for making this project possible!

The images underneath are a sample of the prep work, as a warm up before departure. Prep work will be a training routine for the mono-prints I will produce in Mexico. Every day I will add a new image to this post, until the day we leave. This exercise will put me in shape, and will ensure I pack all the supplies required for the work. Here are three samples of the mono-prints:

Day 1 prep work:

 

Day 2 prep work:

Day 3 prep work: