Ponto de Encontro: Meeting Point

Ponto de Encontro sketch from ascent up into the community

My mind is a jumble.  

Steps and paths leading this way and that.  

Connections happen in a zap.  

This is not becoming a hokey rap! Arg!

As stated, it has taken me months to emerge from the exciting jumble-like bustle of twists and turns one finds in the communities sprawling up the hills of Rio.  I have captured here a cluster point, meeting point of human interaction.  Narrowly passersby step to the side, to teeter as they talk.

Into Print

Above All

Printmaking;  media of choice, allowing me to capture the architecture I was seeing, simplify it and reproduce the image into layers of cascading steps and dwellings.

Beginnings

Beginnings 

I hesitate to speak for the artwork that I shall be posting.  I'd like to allow it to speak for itself.  What story is being told here?  

For me, it is very near and dear.  

I hold it in my heart.  

A young soul in the midst of discovery.  

Is he reading a book or making art?

The Gypsy Blood is Strong in You

Taking a sabbatical year is truly something of luxury and necessity all at once.  A luxury because one needs to plan and have the means to take it.  A necessity because I needed to break from the routine. Not many I know have taken one and those who do, consider it a 'gap' year, like something you do after high school, between college years.  Well, those years are far behind, and I know what I'm doing is not a revelation, but I felt it absolutely necessary to recharge, redirect, or re-whatever it is I'm supposed to be doing.

So what have I been doing?  A lot of self-doubt.   Searching.  Musical Chair apartment living.  A sabbatical year is NOT a year off of work.  It is a pause from my usual life as an art teacher, which I still love, but not a break in the sense that I'm on vacation.

There is work to be done.  Volunteer work with Edumais these past several months has been an anchor for me.  Believe me, it is honest, humbling work and I adore it, and it anchors me by giving my life meaning and purpose.

Working with the students with Edumais

Apart from the good, honest work, there has been the day to day of living a more simple life; co-living situations, which are good for the portuguese but not for the artist craving privacy to create.  Also, prolonging my stay involved a lot of shenanigans and stress of which the details are not needed here.

Fast forward six months later and here I am with this blog.  I have finally begun to emerge from the haze and felt that I have absorbed enough of my environment to find direction to write and create art about this Brazilian odyssey in Rio.

Let the posting begin!  A collection of ramblings in Rio from a wanderer, once told by a healer, "the gypsy blood is strong in you."  The healer is for another story....