First Artwork
Six months ago I attended a party for a group of visiting artists who had just completed a week-long workshop on printmaking. I was walking around the gallery admiring the prints, when I came upon one whose splashes of green and gold specks of light I particularly liked. It had an open door, too, that invited me in.
I'm a sucker for windows and doors and frames in art. I speculate it's the sense of movement and transition that those objects represent to me.
Another person at the party pointed out the artist to me. She was an elegant 80-year-old woman who now lived in Santa Cruz, California but had grown up in Guatemala. When I told her I loved her print, she offered to give it to me! I was bowled over.
So I took it home and laid it flat on a shelf of an old built-in kitchen cabinet on the first floor, surrounded by, but hopefully protected from, dust, concrete, rubble, construction, and human interference.
Finally, this past Saturday, I decided it was time to get it framed. Enrique, my neighborhood wine store friend and bicyclist, told me of a framing shop down the street; the guy there advised me of a shop where I could buy readymade frames, and off I went to the papeleria. They had stacks of frames in piles, all tied up with string. I wanted to test the print against different sized frames so I requested that the frames be removed from their piles--an unusual request, I had the feeling. None of the frames had glass, so that would be another task. I deliberated through several sizes of frames, finally made my selection, and put the frame and print into the plastic shopping back, forgetting to place the print in its sheer paper folder.
On the way home, a few stains from the frame must have leaked onto the matting background. Tried to erase them. No luck. I could have searched for another mat, but that felt like too much of a bother, so I decided the stains weren't that noticeable, and if they were, well, I'd call them a 'feature.' (The simplest solution to a difficulty, I find, is to relabel the problem an asset. As my precocious nephew used to say at age 4 about a mole on his face, "It's a mark of distinction.")
It was now about 4:00 on Saturday afternoon, still working-hours. Barry knew of a glass store on the other side of the Embajadoras Market, so I took the frame there. The door to the shop was half-shut, with a guy repairing the deadbolt. He said he'd cut the glass if I waited while he finished fixing the lock. I sat on a stool in the musty semi-darkness surrounded by glass and frames while he worked on the door. Then he measured the glass and, using plyers (didn't he have a glass cutter?), jaggedly cut the glass.
Brought it home, Barry, who has great pride of workmanship, made a face at the cutting job, and we taped it up. Still didn't have anything to hang it with (dental floss?), but the next day on a hike in the hills above town, found some wire that I carried home in my pocket. It's not that you can't buy wire to hang pictures with in Mexico. I'm sure you can. But things are not as readily available here, and the right place to go to get the thing you want is not always obvious, at least to me. It might be partly my lack of understanding as a foreigner.
Now, the print hangs next to the refrigerator, in the pefecct location. Our first piece of artwork in our Mexican home.
I'm a sucker for windows and doors and frames in art. I speculate it's the sense of movement and transition that those objects represent to me.
Another person at the party pointed out the artist to me. She was an elegant 80-year-old woman who now lived in Santa Cruz, California but had grown up in Guatemala. When I told her I loved her print, she offered to give it to me! I was bowled over.
So I took it home and laid it flat on a shelf of an old built-in kitchen cabinet on the first floor, surrounded by, but hopefully protected from, dust, concrete, rubble, construction, and human interference.
Finally, this past Saturday, I decided it was time to get it framed. Enrique, my neighborhood wine store friend and bicyclist, told me of a framing shop down the street; the guy there advised me of a shop where I could buy readymade frames, and off I went to the papeleria. They had stacks of frames in piles, all tied up with string. I wanted to test the print against different sized frames so I requested that the frames be removed from their piles--an unusual request, I had the feeling. None of the frames had glass, so that would be another task. I deliberated through several sizes of frames, finally made my selection, and put the frame and print into the plastic shopping back, forgetting to place the print in its sheer paper folder.
On the way home, a few stains from the frame must have leaked onto the matting background. Tried to erase them. No luck. I could have searched for another mat, but that felt like too much of a bother, so I decided the stains weren't that noticeable, and if they were, well, I'd call them a 'feature.' (The simplest solution to a difficulty, I find, is to relabel the problem an asset. As my precocious nephew used to say at age 4 about a mole on his face, "It's a mark of distinction.")
It was now about 4:00 on Saturday afternoon, still working-hours. Barry knew of a glass store on the other side of the Embajadoras Market, so I took the frame there. The door to the shop was half-shut, with a guy repairing the deadbolt. He said he'd cut the glass if I waited while he finished fixing the lock. I sat on a stool in the musty semi-darkness surrounded by glass and frames while he worked on the door. Then he measured the glass and, using plyers (didn't he have a glass cutter?), jaggedly cut the glass.
Brought it home, Barry, who has great pride of workmanship, made a face at the cutting job, and we taped it up. Still didn't have anything to hang it with (dental floss?), but the next day on a hike in the hills above town, found some wire that I carried home in my pocket. It's not that you can't buy wire to hang pictures with in Mexico. I'm sure you can. But things are not as readily available here, and the right place to go to get the thing you want is not always obvious, at least to me. It might be partly my lack of understanding as a foreigner.
Now, the print hangs next to the refrigerator, in the pefecct location. Our first piece of artwork in our Mexican home.
posted by Louisa at 5:59 AM
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