Nearly a month has passed since I arrived in Provincetown at the lovely Sea Change Cottage. I am amazed how fast the time went. My Canadian friends left yesterday and a deafening silence decended where there was engaged conversations and happy chatter. We left each other with promises of a real wilderness trip next summer kayaking in the Queen Charlotte's, the ancestral land of the Haidas. This would fulfill A lifetime dream of mine to see where the totems once stood. Tony is familiar with the northern territories as his work with Native bands to preserve their land and mineral rights takes him north regularly.
Much planning was achieved on the World Wall addition. Tony and Tania will convene a group of Canadian advisers including First Nation people to determine the exact content of the Canadian addition to the mural wall. I will join them for those sessions in the north. After the conceptualization group has met, a small team of Canadian artists will work with the concepts to produce the final images for the wall. We at SPARC (the Social and Public Art Center) will ship the giant canvas and the paints to the site for painting either in Vancouver or Mayne Island for the months of production it will take to complete the mural. It will premiere with the additional nine panels from, Israel and Palestine, Russia, Finland, Mexico and the United States, in Vancouver in approximately a year. My collaborators and I spoke of many issues and had the luxury of sustained talks over breakfast, during walks and on the beach at sunset. How wonderful and creative the time was!
On my own once again, I am working against time to finish what I set out to do here. The time here has had many affects but one important one is that I have found that my clenching teeth have subsided and once again I can hear my self think outside of Los Angeles demands.
My last three days will yield the completion of Dolores Huertas portrait and hopefully the second farmworkers image. The second image commemorates the abolishment of the dreaded "short Hoe". No " hoe" is not a "rap song" reference but a tool used to work the land that broke the backs of its users, the campesinos in the fields of California. It will turn to gold in my painting as it symbolizes the money it made for agri-business but conversely it also represents the sweet victory of it abolishment by the United Farmworkers activism. I will make not further entries to this blog as my residency will have ended and this was an exercise in recording my process. So when I return to my work in Los Angeles perhaps there will be a new blog on the Robert F. Kennedy production in the Ambassador Hotel which is becoming the new RFK learning Center in Los Angeles. I will be painting in the ballroom where he delivered his last speech minutes before he was killed. So thanks for looking in on my residency and for your emails.
Saludos,
Judy Baca
CLICK FOR MORE INFORMATION ON THE SHORT HOE
