The studio

Every day we would take a long walk. We got to know pretty much every neighborhood in town. I set up a little make shift studio in the terrace overlooking the ocean. It was a little windy and a fly would make an occasional landing in one of my waxy pieces. “All part of the experience, I kept telling myself”.

After so many years away from my birth country I found it hard to fathom, why so much garbage was left unattended. So the next project was for me to pick up a found object, something discarded in a construction site, or simply thrown away by some walker by.

I decided to create a small 12” x 12” art piece of each of these pieces. So I went to the local everything hardware store and found some long dusty pieces of wood in the way back (wood is very expensive in Mexico and not used in construction). So I asked a nice man (by the name of Bernardo) working with some wires in the back of the shop if he could help me. I needed him to cut 16/12” x 12” squares for me. At first he gave me a blank look, “why would I (…a girl… need wood in the first place and 16 pieces, please”). I explained they were for an art project. He finally agreed. A half an hour later I found myself holding a very long piece of wood over a tall bucket while Bernardo proceeded to cut with a hand saw each of my squares. We managed both to keep both our hands intact, the wood was loaded into our car and I was ready to start work in my studio.

I wanted to start work right away and not loose any momentum. The work went pretty well and every day after my walk, I had a new little treasure to place in my art piece. Still with lots of free time on our hands (and no TV) we spent hours reading and quickly going through the small aisle of books that we brought with us.