The weather shifted today and the sun was no where to be found. Still it was stifling hot with humidity. The humidity is too much for a Westcoast girl like me and a summer storm an oddity. I invoked the earth to bring rain and relieve the heavy sky.
My work was the same ladened with the heaviness of small tasks, unpacking, buying a few needed supplies, finding a cup of strong coffee all interrupting me from getting to the work. I could not reach the paintings waiting in the dark basement which it is still unclear that I can manage to paint in. I still am on California's time. Perhaps manana will be a better day.
I have set up the paintings I must complete here in the tiny little basement. I am hoping that it will work for 3x5 pieces I am painting for the Cesar Chavez Monument now in the building stages at San Jose State University in California. I am working on a portrait of the UFW leader Dolores Huerta who will be one of the pillars of the Chavez Mayan Corbelled Arch I described in a previous entry. She is beautiful but not weak. She must be feminine but not in the traditional notion of emaciated models with vacuous looks. She has the power of an earth mother. When Dolores would nogotiate contracts for the United Farmworkers, the growers would say, "do anything but, don't send Dolores". I want all that in the portrait. These images once painted will become digital tiles for installation on the front and back of the arch. Chavez not a showman or arrogant will be on the interior and spiritually portrayed. Those images are evolving on the table.
