Four years have gone by and it’s getting harder to keep time from slipping by. Is it age-related or just the fact that I’ve been keeping busy? I really don’t give it much thought, it’s just a fact I’m confronted with now that I’ve packed up my studio and shipped my things off to a new destination where I’ll start all over again.

In the past year, though, keeping busy had something to do with it. One of the reasons I decided to stop posting on aa was because there was too much I needed to tend to, and the lure of the ethereal world was sneakily keeping me away from the real one. But I also felt that a break from blogging and commenting might actually be a good healthy thing. Too many things kept popping up on my screen asking me to join and I needed to distance myself from my computer ‘routine’ to be able to focus on the concrete things I wanted to achieve at the studio. What’s the point of being on 8 different sites if you can’t get anything worthwhile completed in the real world to talk about?

So let me tell you about some of the few things I was able to help out with apart from my own production and input at OD?

In this past year OD – oficina do desenho – came a long way. From being a small independent art school where Rui Aço gathered his students and I helped out as tutor and developed my own projects as artist in residence we have become an association and have since started to engage our community in a more pro-active way.

The snowball had been picking up momentum but it was really only after we presented our collective project at the Cascais Cultural Centre [Dec 08 to Feb 09] that we started to realise the impact OD seemed to be having and that we became fully aware of the opportunities and responsibilities we could expect in the coming years.

The project 3 Men on a Boat in which Rui and I teamed up with Fernando Vidal – before he distanced himself for professional reasons – was not a commercial exhibition but nevertheless it was one of the most successful projects I ever took part in. The reward was not monetary; it was much more valuable than that. I think I can safely say that it enhanced our presence as artists and as trustworthy partners within our community. It opened doors for future exhibition possibilities and collaborations with the local authorities both as consultants and as active creative participants in cultural activities. And, because it went on for over two months it exposed us to a greater audience, as a matter of fact it was one of the least publicized yet most visited exhibitions at the cultural centre ever.

The staff at the Centre were tremendous, they fell in love with the project and went beyond the call of duty to spread the contagion to visitors coming in to see the galleries hosting more publicized artists. Maybe this had to do with the fact that Rui and I were present on location most of the time. Indeed, to me it felt like home for those twelve weeks. Personally I didn’t so much see this as an occasion to dump my work, no matter how beautifully presented, but as a privileged opportunity to deepen the much needed connections with curators and the people in charge.

I also invited a few selected people over to lunch at the centre’s restaurant and gave tours, maybe not so much spoken but just to be there with the public lest they wanted to ask questions, and though we invariably spoke about other things it was always somehow linked to the philosophy behind the work and what we aim to achieve with the school.

Local schools, from kindergarten to 12th graders, organized field-trips to see the show and ask us questions… and, sometimes, play with the dangling steel treads of my boat, which, I’ll admit, must have been a temptation for any child [and I caught a glimpse of the odd grown-up having a go!], but it was so inspiring to be caught up in their enthusiasm that it made it impossible to ask them not to touch. I can’t even begin to tell you how rewarding it was to see my installation and video through the eyes of those children. No amount of money can equal that.

Once that was over I slowly entered into a new mode – different tempo, different focus. In January my wife was told that she would be reassigned to a new posting and so when we took down the show my boat came straight back home. I continued to paint and oversee the work of the students at OD up until the end of May but the students couldn’t help but notice how the paintings, art materials and unfinished canvases kept disappearing until there was nothing left but the original concrete space I had added a little colour to over the three years I was there.

I’ll miss those exchanges with the students, I’ll miss Rui’s insight and companionship, our painting styles may seem diametrically opposed but we share much in common and I learnt a great deal from him while I was there. It was good while it lasted, and I’ll always be connected to the school in some capacity or other, I am, after all, one of the founders, but I’ve become more and more absorbed with the move and have instinctively crept into that buffer-zone I know inside of me where I am able to cope with the loss and prepare for the new stuff.

In May, with me half-here-half-there and not being much help, OD organised an event that brought together commerce and art in an attempt to boost people’s morale and get them back on the streets looking at the shops and at the art. The original idea was for 30 shops to allow 30 artists to redo their shop windows with art for two weeks and hand out a prize for the best collaboration [artists and shop owners were supposed to work together on this], but things soon got out of our hands when word spread and we ended up with sixty shops… and minus 30 artists. Ana Grácio and Rita Cardim solved things smoothly, amazingly and in record time, rounding up the remaining artists and getting some of the school’s own students, as well as other art schools to join in the ride. Also, the work they had as coordinators, getting artists and shop owners to get along peacefully while at the same time getting all the visuals ready and out on the streets [banners, leaflets with maps, red carpets for the important guests at the cocktail, etc.] was an important part of the event’s success, contributing greatly to putting OD on the local map.

I won’t go into the details here but it was a tremendous success, with a formal opening by the Mayor and the cultural and legal advisors from the Town Hall and the Cascais Cultural Centre taking their time to see each and every shop, talking to the artists and shop owners [when initially it had been said that there would only be time for a brief overview of the main square area]. From here on I think many things are possible, many doors have opened, both for OD and for each individual helping out to make it what we all wish it to become. And even if in the years to come I won’t be participating as an active participant I still look forward to telling you more about its progress as Rui keeps me informed, because I now think of it as one of my babies as well.

As for me, soon, I hope, I’ll be getting back to the business of setting up a new studio and looking for new projects – starting from scratch… in Japan.

Created by Jose Freitas Cruz On 07/03/09 At 11:11 AM

I hadn’t been in Greece long before I started planning the next venture. Someone had contacted me over the internet about doing a statue for them. I didn’t know what it was all about, but during the summer we exchanged a lot of e-mails and gradually I got the picture. An angel for the tomb of a friend. I thought about how cool it would be to do this piece at a small prep school with a nice art center, the Wooster School in Danbury, CT, sharing the technical creation of a statue with some students. I worked up a proposal, asking for work space and offering what I thought would interest students.
I had an in there, one of my old clients from NYC knew someone on the school’s board of directors, and since I was an alumnus, the two things seemed likely to give me a good chance of success. I started researching pre-schools for my two kids, and tried to figure out how much transplanting my family from Italy would cost. The last piece of the puzzle was the school’s art teacher. I had spoken to a few people there, and had only to propose the idea to her. I did, and received no response whatsoever.
Now you can speculate all you want about why she closed the door, but in any case I’d talked about doing this statue in the US and that had been the attraction for the client. I knew its eventual destination was Mexico. With my plans derailed, I had to come up with something even more attractive, without raising the costs.

Somehow, the idea of doing it in Mexico came out of the woodwork. I talked to my wife about moving the family there, but when I read the State Department travel warnings, it got me thinking, well, this one is not for the family. I wasn’t going to be in Juarez or Nuevo Laredo, or Monterey or Chihuahua, the hottest trouble spots, and although little Delicias was right smack in the middle of all of them, it wasn’t really on a through road. So all I’d have to do was sculpt away, not drink the water, and stay off the streets after dark for four months. At first I was going to drive, but in the end I parked my Honda with its flashy NY plates in Houston, and flew to Chihuahua. TSA confiscated 3 out of four of my bags, you know, marble tools packed in suitcases with socks, underwear and t shirts padded around it doesn’t look good on an x ray screen, but after a few days I got it all back. And how is an interesting sidelight.

There’s a big difference between the conduct of officials in the US and those of other countries. Now just imagine, you’re entering customs, and you want to know if what you’re doing is considered work or not. You want to know if tax is due on the tools, many of them brand new because Mexico is 120 volts and all my Italian tools were 230. The customs guys and the baggage guy filling out the lost luggage report start talking about sculpture and what I’m going to be doing there. They actually get excited! So the question of tax doesn’t even come up, they give me 180 days instead of the sixty I asked for, ‘just in case…’ and lo and behold, when the bags finally show up the baggage guy actually drives them himself from Chihuahua all the way to Delicias, with friends. And promises to come back every so often to see how the work is progressing. I’m beginning to like Mexico. Try to imagine this happening with any official, anywhere, in the US. I think our priorities here are round the bend, and that this is the main reason why so many people in the US have gone postal.

I do see a few Hummers with all black windows around this town, and wonder who owns them. But I know they won’t have anything to do with me, if I don’t with them. My setup is a marble studio just like the ones I used to work in back in Italy, except that this time, my room is behind the front office. It’s true I can’t go outside after the workmen leave for the day, because they release four junkyard dogs into the gated enclosure I’m living in, but then again, I’m not here for the nightlife, and they pretty much guarantee there won’t be any unexpected visitors.

My client and I drove from the airport in Chihuahua to Delicias and checked into the Casa Grande, a four star place. We went to see the brother and sister of the deceased, visited the cemetery where the statue would go, and stayed for four days more in the hotel. Then he flew back to Houston, and I was on my own. The block didn’t come right away, so I passed the time carving little things, some of which are here.

The day after he left, I glanced at the headlines in the local paper, and they were about seven kids at a high school in Juarez, who’d had their hands tied behind their backs, been executed, and left alongside the school’s soccer field for the other kids to see. Of course the drug world exists for all teens, but in Mexico it has far worse consequences. Each day there was another story, sometimes two or three, about people found dead here, there, and everywhere, always shot with more than one kind of weapon. Thankfully, not in Delicias. This becomes a part of the culture an artist has to absorb, and in doing so, enter into the mentality of the people around you. Beauty is in fact, an escape, which is why in so many oppressed places and times, beautiful art was produced and desired. In the sterile world of country clubs, of keeping up with the Joneses and their flat screen TVs, of getting that new Prius or better, there really isn’t any need for art. What amazes me about Mexico is that I know I can sell every piece I make here. It hasn’t ever been like that for me in the places I went chasing after the money. Yes, there were buyers, and of big pieces, but how many thousands would pass by something I spent months making, without even glancing at it? Not here. The red carpet is rolled out for artists more than for anyone else.

By my third day working, a family comes in and sees a bas relief of a girl’s face I did in a couple of hours placed on a shelf in the office. They ask if I could do a portrait of a deceased member of their family, in the same way I’d done that one, and hand me a postage stamp size photograph to work from. I have no idea what to charge, and no one seems to want to tell me. But by night time, during a ride around town I didn’t think I’d be taking, the son of the owner tells me a hundred dollars is too cheap. I’m a bit surprised, because everyone around here drives thirty year old pick up trucks with broken windshields, and you can get three Coronas for a dollar. I didn’t imagine you could make more than a hundred dollars a day this easily here, however, in Delicias, art and the dead are highly honored, and both worth spending money on.

Not so in someplace like Mexico City. An artist will have the same problems exhibiting there and selling their work as in any cosmopolitan setting anywhere in the world. I start to wonder if perhaps the best places to produce art are the remote ones, where you won’t be contaminated by anything except what moves you to create in the first place, and perhaps a desire to serve someone else’s needs. Wanting to show in a ‘major’ venue, is pretty much the same as wanting that big flat screen, so you can tell everyone you have one. It’s pretty far removed from what art is supposed to be all about, and if it becomes the driving force in what you produce, you can count on it corrupting, in one way or another, what might have been beautiful and pure.

You can see art corruption in another form if you visit the Menil collection in Houston. While the taste of the Menils is worthy of being called great, subsequent curators who made acquisitions after their deaths brought down the level of the whole significantly. When you consider that all curators of all museums are beholden to numerous corrupt entities, it should surprise no one that their choices of what to acquire are often suspect. No works are ever bought just because they’re good. The main corrupting influence comes from the largest donors to those museums, who have the leverage to see that what they want gets bought, because it serves no one, particularly the curators themselves, to refuse their requests.

One of the greatest, and purist, collections in the United States is in the Frick museum in NYC. Before donating his property as a museum, Charles Frick insisted that no artworks be added, nor any moved from their assigned spots within the building. These masterpieces remain a testament to the clear vision of one man, as he did so well to foresee, and their placement within what used to be his home is nothing short of divine.

Ah, Mexico! These four months have just begun, and all I’d ever believed about this country has proved to be baseless and unfounded.

Except for what I found out in the days that followed. It started with a report that there’d been a shooting right here in Delicias. It seemed that at midnight, right next to a huge statue I’d been to look at that afternoon, three men were sprayed in their car with machine gun fire from another car. Well, I told myself, it was on the outskirts of town, not anywhere near where I was living and working. And the hour was one where all good people ought to be in bed. My block still hadn’t arrived, and that was making me a bit nervous anyway, not the best time to start reasoning what’s safe and what isn’t. I’d spoken to the Mexican expediter, Armando Carrillo, many times and he’d seemed friendly and eager to please. But ever since I’d paid him, he’d been on vacation in Cabo San Luca, and I’d only been able to talk to his stand in, who was neither friendly nor helpful. I’d called many times, and although I was assured I’d get a call back, I never did. I’d been here more than a week, having been told my two ton block of pure white Carrara would be here before I was, and was not anxious to be here if I couldn’t work on what I came to do.

The next day, two people were executed on the street where my studio is. The local police chief was killed the same day, at two in the afternoon, in a separate incident. A lot of these killings are done with ‘cuerno di chivos’, or AK-47 assault rifles, by killers arriving in groups of brand new, buffed out and loaded pick up trucks. I see these trucks all over the place, but none are owned by anyone I know, since anyone who’s working isn’t making enough to buy one.

They say that every day in Mexico, ten people are killed this way. In Delicias, in the last three days, there have been nine. It’s time to cut and run. I can do this statue back in Italy, and besides, I miss my family. Get me to the airport!

Created by Andrew Wielawski On 12/25/08 At 12:21 PM