Category: Uncategorized

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My Humongous Audacious Dream Follow-up

In 2018, I wrote a blog post titled My Humongous Audacious Dream. We had yet to even move on to the property that now makes up ArteSumapaz. Now, we’ve hosted well over 150 artists and volunteers, have completed several construction projects, have participated in local community events, and are just about to sign the agreement to purchase the property over the next six year.

That, in turn, will enable us to start the reforestation project, the sculpture park, and the intentional community; meaning I’ll be able to construct my own home and studio!

The vision for the center has grown so much since 2018, but has lost none of its audacity. If anything, the project members have become more clear about how this place can play a role in helping to heal the trauma to both the people of this beautiful country as well as that of the land.

Invitation to participate

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For painters the studio is the Prison House, and paints are the fluids that circulate inside it. Alchemy’s lesson here is that everything actually takes place within the body. The insanity of the studio is that it is not architecture- it is not made of wood and cement- but it is nothing other than the inside of the body.

James Elkins, What Painting Is
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“What matters in painting is the _necessity_ of self-reference, it’s forbidden nature, and the many strange marks it leaves on the work. In Rembrandt’s self-portrait, his skin is paint, and the paint is his skin. Paint refers to itself, smearing over itself, sliding over itself, caressing itself- its illicit sensuality is constantly apparent , a droning sound under all painting.” – James Elkins in What Painting Is

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The smell of oil paint, Turpentine, and poppyseed oil hung in the air. It never left, no matter how long the windows were left open. It was a special aroma, one I breathed every day, and would probably go on breathing for the rest of my life. I inhaled the air of the studio as if to confirm its presence, then quietly closed the door.

– Haruki Murakami, Killing Commendatore

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Ernesto Neto, Untitled (from the set Ovos), 1993, Line and wax on paper, 63 x 83.5cm

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“There was no guarantee, of course, that the painting would ever be complete. It was still inchoate, something missing. Something that should be there was appealing to the nonvalidity of absence. And that missing element was rapping on the glass window separating presence and absence. I could make out its wordless cry.”

Haruki Murakami, Killing Commendatore

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“In my case all painting… is an accident. I foresee it and yet I hardly ever carry it out as I foresee it. It transforms itself by the actual paint. I don’t in fact know very often what the paint will do, and it does many things which are very much better than I could make it do.”
– Francis Bacon