As a study in contrasts, I want to share a special experience I had last night here my village, Muro, Mallorca. Firstly, it helps to know that I am reading a book called
Ghosts of Spain: Travels through Spain and its Silent Past by Giles Trimlett, given to me recently by a friend in Brooklyn. It is not only teaching me about the transition from Franco's dictatorship to modern Spain, but it's also helping me better understand some of the cultural differences I face each day. Just yesterday morning I read about the code of silence kept for many years regarding the numerous civil war murders and unmarked graves. The author attempted to pry information from a grand-daughter of the former Republican leadership about the deaths of three women in her town. Rather than discuss versions of the past from a right or left political standpoint, she wanted to keep the conversation brief, calling such things
'cosas del pueblo' (village matters).
I have definitely been confronted with the insular nature of relationships and gossip from pueblo to pueblo in my 4 short years in Mallorca. I have struggled with finding people who are willing to let me in. The Mallorquin villages are so strongly knit, they not only have different accents, but even have different words for the same vocabulary in two towns only a few miles apart. So, I smirked when I read the phrase,
cosas del pueblo.
At about ten p.m., we heard the familiar sound of the tambor percussion group in the street. They can be heard each Tuesday night from afar, practicing in the parking lot of the local train station. But this time the drum beats were very close - just outside our house. Jose and I realized instantly who they were for - we had just discovered that a beloved local highschool student has been diagnosed with bone cancer at age 17. The tambor group came to his door and pulled him out of his home, slung his tambor over his shouldter as he propped himself up on crutches. The serenade was all the more poignant, as Nadal himself participated.
We put a bathrobe on Malena and rushed out to join the intimate crowd. The song ended and we hung back in the darkness to watch Nadal's classmates and fellow bandsmen embrace him one by one. With heavy hearts, we walked back home. At that moment one thought came to my mind,
cosas del pueblo.
These samples are purely abstract, made with found construction materials and old rusted things pressed into the clay. I have just cast some larger pieces which are more literal 'illustrations' in clay of scenes photographed around Mallorca. They are still wet and not ready to paint.
Look at the interesting result when graffiti is painted and patched over at the elementary school! These are the types of images I shoot almost daily in my own brand of Mallorca's urban archeology.
And, don't they remind you a bit of the open-boxes I have posted many times?
This is an embossing- I just love the absence of color apart from the contrast provided by subtle shadows.
This is a small study (approx. 6X8 inches) on vellum with gesso and magic marker. last night I began blocking out a much larger version (approx. 6 X 4 feet) on untreated wood. Whereas in this study the negative space is white, the plan is to leave the wood grain exposed in the larger version. 
Hasn't it been said many times that artists spend a lifetime perfecting the same idea? Although perfection is not a viable goal, I do enjoy stumbling across hints of this often unwitting continuum. Here you have excerpts from a book of a cut-and-assemble dollhouse. I came across it while cleaning Malena's closet. I purchased it around '93/'94 in preparation for my thesis exhibition at Mass Art. (See MAY posts: Art work from 1995, parts 1, 2 ,3 to see related art work)
detail...still, they look so different in person.
That's where I am at now: all the pieces have been washed and cleaned with a toothbrush. Now they must dry at least 4 days (that's in the Mallorca sun) before I can paint them.
Is it done? This image is a bit washed out. Seeing it up here now I think I need to better integrate the rusted metal elements. I know it needs to be about twice as long.
I think these plaster pieces are approaching the color scheme that works with the under-construction theme. Still feeling that, for the size (approximately 8X10 in.), these are still too busy in terms of texture.
You wouldn't believe how many layers of paint are on the second one. The textures were created with found objects from the street and back roads of Muro, Mallorca.
These two are samples of a few pieces I am currently working on. The clay original is cut into the shape of an open box and impressions are made with various natural and man-made objects. The resulting plaster relief is then painted in many transparent layers.
The plan is to hang these in large clusters on the wall. Once again, I amazed at how what I fore-plan in my mind's eye and what comes out is soooo different. While I enjoy these, they also look bizarre to me. Where will they lead me?
