Martina's Art

 Other than possibly too much love and affection from his adoring sister, Theo is doing pretty well this morning.  His fever is down and he has a great appetite.  I have a great video of him laughing but can't seem to get it uploaded.

 So I headed off to part 2 of my homeopathy course.  I have been really enjoying it and am looking forward to learning more and more long after the class finishes. I took the class with 2 very good friends and the homeopath is temporarily teaching at ISM so I have many resources close by.  The venue is the same one used for my yoga class.  The space is small but lined with windows and sliding doors that open on to a full length balcony overlooking the bush and Mt. Meru.  It is breathtaking.

 

Then after barely being home for an hour Carl and I took off to an art exhibition.  A good friend of mine was an artist/teacher in Switzerland.  She came here about the same time as us so that her husband could finish researching for his PhD in the agricultural economics of African small businessmen (or something like that).  Martina has somehow balanced her time between her 3 children and her studio.  The exhibition last night was wonderful, I am so proud of her and inspired by her!!

She showed two very different types of work.  The first was acrylic on kanga.  Kanga is the local cloth that women wear and use to carry babies.  Each kanga has a swahili phrase and these phrases are a form of expression.  You would buy a kanga with a phrase about love and nurturing for a new mother.  You may buy a sassy one to wear in front of your neighbor if you were upset with her.  Picture 4 on the postcard above is a good example of kanga and picture 3 shows the phrase.  Martina framed the kanga like canvas and painted portraits, scenes from daily lives, and families on them.  In each one she preserved the phrase and her painting brought it to life.  They are so beautiful and really capture Tanzanian life and culture.

Her last piece was entirely different.  People drink loads of soda here.  It is still sold in bottles and the bottles are returned to the company and reused.  The bottle caps on the other hand end up everywhere.  Kids often pound them into the dirt to create pretty floors and pictures.  Martina rented a stand at the local market and bought color sorted buckets of bottle caps from locals.  She laid them out to make a thematic map of the world accentuating energy usage.  The landmasses are therefore disproportionate; Africa is tiny and developed countries are enormous.  The carpet is the size of a small room and is so sturdy that last night the kids ran around on it all night long.  She paid handicap artisans to physically construct the piece and the picture 1 above show the strings of bottle caps before they were attached lengthwise.  Throughout the design process she created many pieces of bottle cap art, mostly of  patterns.  The picture 2 above was one of her bottle cap pattern pieces.

Her work is truly inspirational.  Her themes of recycling, energy use and African culture are all very dear to me.  These and her use of local materials and local artisans throughout the creation process are so transparent and brilliant in her final pieces.  It was a lovely evening.  We left the kids at home but we will certainly bring them next time an opportunity like this comes along.  

Sadly, she is going back home in early December.  The hardest part about our life abroad (other than the fact that our family is so far away) is that our friends keep moving on.  I will miss her so much!