Day at the museum

While at the book fair on Saturday, I figured I’d go to see that Boquechivo exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art. And so, I did.

After getting my fancy entrance ticket-sticker thing, I walked inside. There was a guy shouting that we had to leave bags, purses and whatnot at the reception desk. This being the first time I’ve ever had the camera with me at the museum, I took it out of the bookbag. I left the bag at the desk, exchanging it for a tiny piece of cardboard with the number 401 written on it. I had to hold on to it as if it were a bomb, if I ever wanted to recover my bag.

Walking around the first floor, I saw people of all ages looking at the high-quality Boquechivo prints, reading one by one. Because I had spent countless hours at this place, writing down infomation cards for some or all the artworks displayed (school/college assignments), I didn’t bother walking up close and reading each print, as others did. I wanted to see the whole place, and stopping to read would have taken me all day. I looked at a few prints, read some of them and when for the leftmost staircase, this time marked “UP” to maintain a steady transit.

The second level always ends up being representative of modern art, or at least more than the first and third. It’s here where one can find strange new things to see. This time was not the exception. Art installations everywhere, all about the importance of water. Having taken photos of some Boquechivo prints, I thought it would be better to just capture the whole place as it is at one time. So, I aimed the camera at these crocodile figures, apparently made of wax (or is it salt?). I was warned not to use the camera flash, as if I didn’t know better (I hate the flash, and I wouldn’t subject art to that). My camera isn’t that great at higher ISO levels (then again, what compact really is?), so the noise couldn’t be avoided, and only reduced (with wavelet denoise, as always).

There were some strange installations on this floor (and on the floor), including a giant spoon and a patch of grass with eyes. There was also this strange and suggestive video of a girl with her mouth open, catching drops of water with her tongue.  Or at least I hope it was water (and clean one, at that). After a while, I got tired of all the water-ness and went up to the third floor. There are plenty of windows in the museum, but the second floor doesn’t benefit from them as they are kept closed and covered. The third floor, on the other hand, is the most naturally-lit of the whole place. It’s the top level, and part of the ceiling is glass.

This floor contains the museum’s permanent exhibit, so there was nothing new for me to see. I got a second warning about the flash here, from a girl clearly younger than I, to which I replied “I know!”. They should just put a sign somewhere near the entrance instead of having people sit there and say it over and over again. There are some works there by scultor Gaspar Mario Cruz. Cruz is, apparently, a friend of my parents, as we have one of his sculptures here and, a year so before his death, he gave my mother a book about his works. I’ll make a good photo of that sculpture of ours one of these days.

I got back to the first floor and bought a little something, which I leave for the end. There was more of the Boquechivo exhibit that I hadn’t seen, so I walked around some more. I was going to recover my bookbag, when I remembered that I hadn’t visited the underground level. So, I skipped the reception desk and went downstairs.

The main exhibit of the underground level is by Colombian Jorge Riveros, and is called Luz del Caribe, or Light of the Caribbean. Very colorful stuff, and benefits from the natural light that reaches both through the windows and the ceiling from the third floor. This level also has the projection room, with is just a dark room with a projector. This time, two Brazilian poets (Wilmar Silva and Cristianne Granda) are shown, reading their work, over and over again. This would work well if the place weren’t so noisy and someone turned up the volume for the projection. Couldn’t hear a thing!

Finally, there was a small exhibit by Marcelo Ferder, called El Bocadillo, or The Snack. In addition to a small series of photos of people eating, uh … snacks, there was also a group of works, bite-sized sandwiches, made of various materials.

After that, I went back to the first floor, traded my small cardboard square for my bookbag and went for the back exit, back to the noise and crowds of the book fair.

Someone asked if I had bought anything while at the fair. Not sure if it counts, but I said I bought a little something while at the museum. It’s one of old Boquechivo books that still features the Don Bartolo character (who was phased out). I’ve got a lot of books to read already!

College starts again tomorrow. With only three classes and what apparently will be four-day weekends for me, this should be interesting …

Wandering, part two

After a not-so-brief interruption, courtesy of  IFail™, I bring to you the second part of what I started last Tuesday. While the “Culture Plaza” photos from Sunday are more than enough for one post, I figured I’d add a little something else to this. Anyway, enough jibba-jabba.

A place for the arts

After going through and around the Olympic Center, I thought it best to not go as far as I wanted to, neighborhood-wise, beause the weather can be treacherous. Sunny one minute, rainy the next. So, I headed home, but not without passing through one of my favorite places, Plaza de la Cultura, or Culture Plaza.

I wonder, with the art gallery (above, right), all those statues of famous artists and characters, the art pieces outside, the theather and cinémathèque, why not name it Arts Plaza or something like that? There are three non-art-related museums and a library, but I doubt that’s what the place is best known for. Being usually quiet, as opposed to most of the city, people go there to relax, exercise, practice various things (music, dancing, even martial arts), play games, etc. I just like it for its greenery and silence.

The place has remained largely unchanged since my childhood, although the National Library is currently being not only remodeled, but expanded on either side. Hopefully, it’ll stop there. I wouldn’t want all the open spaces to be replaced with buildings, as has been going on with the surrounding areas.

The place gets  very crowded during the yearly book fair, which became an international thing in the late ’90s, but has been taking place for much longer than that (funny how they don’t acknowledge that). After it went international, many more people started to come. So many, in fact, that for some years it took place elsewhere, at a larger place. It moved back to its rightful place in recent years, but it is far too commercial for my taste. People eat, drink, run around, dance, and they’ve even got Internet access. Books? Reading? That seems to be less relevant. There is money to be made here.

Hopefully, the book fair committee will open their eyes and see what their event has become and do something to bring it back into focus.

A place for education, or so they say

I figured that, if part one had two sections, this one should also have two. I took advantage of my going to college (I mean, it’s only an everyday thing!), and threw my camera in the bookbag.

The photos above and just below were made on Monday, at various times. I had little work to do last week, so I’ve taken my time to be lazy. Unfortunately, the week that now begins has a couple of deadlines.

The Thursday class (the one that caused all the trouble in my previous post) left me with a presentation for this Tuesday. Would’ve been nice to be warned about this a little earlier instead of just giving me a weekend, with all the other stuff I’ve got to do.

These ones (except the first) are from Thursday morning, after a leadership class. I’ve been wanting to photograph those tiny classrooms (last three images above). Special courses are given there. I have yet to see someone taking a class in them. If they take place at night, it must be a bit unsettling, such a small room, nighttime … a power outage wouldn’t help.

Anyway, I’ve got work to do. I’ve got that presentation for Tuesday, but I’ve also got another one on Friday for which I must get some things done that the teacher can comment on tomorrow (so I don’t screw up as much).

I hope you enjoyed these. Will there be a part three? Probably a long time before that happens. It’s almost midnight, and I must get to work.

Watercolor and pastels and collage, oh my!

Just today (Tuesday), I began work on some images that I’m supposed to create, to illustrate some story the teacher gave us. Two of them are practically finished, with five more to be done (and two of those already sketched). The sketching part can take a while, since the rest of the process (adding color) is very straighforward. The story has a rather religious tone to it, something I don’t have much of a problem with, despite my not being religious at all. But I’d probably have an easier time illustrating something else. Nevertheless, I avoided drawing anything “magical” in the story, or even commenting on it, for the sake of being able to deliver the finished result (in book form) next week, hopefully.

My main focus this week is the graphic design project (packaging design, etc.), of which I’ve not made much progress since last week. I also have some web coding to do (I refuse to make any use of Dreamweaver for it) that I could have ready by tomorrow. Actually, I might just get started on that after publishing this.

Vacation approaches. While sleeping has been brought down a couple of steps in my priority list for this week and the next, I hope I can more than make up for the late night works and, at the same time, be able to do some of the things on my list. I’m even hurrying things up a bit by getting all the work done before the next week ends.

Oh, what else to write about … ? There really is nothing much going on, with all the work that will soon be replaced by excessive sleeping. Oh, and this entry is titled after the materials I’m using to illustrate the story mentioned above.

Now, to code a site.

Well written, badly drawn

And, once again, for the gazillionth time, Friday arrives. It’s only getting started at the time(zone) of this writing, but knowing how busy the coming days (sans weekend) will be makes me wish it had taken its time. Unfortunately, the clock ticks no slower than it has so far. My lazy meter continues to fight back at my efforts to avoid procrastination, meaning I should have done some work yesterday (Thursday), but I didn’t.

Earlier this week, I was forced to delve into the wonderful world of writing, for an illustration class. I was supposed to do a story based on a painting by Toulouse-Lautrec, and draw or paint two images to represent a “knot” in the story, as well as its conclusion. Time was mostly spent on drawing and coloring, rather than writing the story. As the title of this entry suggests, the resulting images were … not very good.

On the other hand (see the title again), the story seems to be where the artistic je ne sais quoi poured itself on, seeing that I wrote just over three pages of a decent story a few hours before I had to deliver it along with the images. Others, as I see it, worked hard on their drawings/paintings and wrote half-page stories. Seems that, for that case, I turn out to be a better writer than illustrator. It’s probably my usage of pastels that doomed me from the beginning.

One might think that I must have failed miserably by the above description, but I actually got a rather acceptable grade … 20 out of 20 points. Seems my story saved me. After looking through a few stories, I seem to be the only one in the bunch who didn’t keep the story inside a brothel. I guess the teacher liked my going in a direction other than the expected one.

And so, this short entry comes to an end.

I’ve changed the default header image to something different. Not necessarily good or bad, and certainly not what I had in mind when thinking of header images, but at least it’s not the default (plain) one. I only wish I could remove those red areas on the sides … oh, well.