So much Dedication!

Today we had some more participants (in total eight). Since the roads had dried a bit over night, Clemente and his wife Zunilda had made it with their motorcycle. They arrived at 7am and joined us for breakfast. At 9am we met with Mateo at the cultural center and since all of them were new, I gave them the whole introduction to woodcuts again. Clemente's drawings are most suitable for woodcuts, in fact, his drawings look like woodcuts. His small plate, which he used to get to know the tools, didn't turn out the way he wanted and started a larger piece with an armadillo which looks very promising (hopefully I´ll have some pictures tomorrow). I'm curious to see what it'll look like. Zunilda doesn't usually draw, but she helps her husband colour in the black areas in his drawings which he doesn't enjoy doing. She decided to work on her own plate though and it turned out quite nicely. Mateo appeared very shy and struggled a lot working with a 2-D drawing. He is a sculptor who is very adept at carving beautiful animals out of palosanto (a green-coloured, very hard wood). At noon he settled for a snake which he carves now with great effort with these strange new tools. 

 

 Zunilda, Clemente, and Mateo

My crew from yesterday showed up too and everybody worked quite independently already. Eurides and Osvaldo each printed a small edition of 5 of their plates, which turned out great. 

  Part of Osvaldo's edition

Joaquín pulled several proofs and in the end carved away too much of the image, so the image wasn't really visible anymore. He decided to start a new one now that he knows how things work. Joaquín brought his wife Mistra along who also tried a small woodcut. Felipe brought an old photograph of his father, who was a great chief who used to tell all the Nivaclé legends very vividly (Eurides is the grandson of the chief and lots of his drawings are about the legends). Felipe started a portrait of his fathe, faces are hard to do as woodcuts, but he decided he wants to try it anyways.

  

Felipe working on his chief portrait

The past two workdays have been quite long, but there are always the Tereré (Yerba Mate) breaks in the morning and afternoon as well as a shared lunch.

 

Mistra was in charge of cooking guiso (stew) today for lunch. I helped chop some veggies and manage the supplies a bit. Due to cultural ignorance, I served the food; nobody complained, but Verena told me later that among the Nivaclé it is always the cook who serves the food. I hope I didn't offend Mistra. 

 

Our endurance didn't last quite as long as yesterday and we ended the evening at 6pm with a small slideshow I had prepared to talk about woodcuts by other artists from Paraguay and other places. I also showed some Inuit stonecuts which were received with great interest and admiration. And I showed a few things from Highpoint (Aaron Spangler's giant woodcuts) and some of my own work.