Day 6&7

Here ar e some Pictures from the weekend. I went to Santo Domingo to hang out with Ian and we had a great time wandering arround the colonial Zone and even saw some great street art! But I left arround 9pm and took a long trip back, by bus into La Romana and then by Motorcycle taxi up to Chavon and then in a security pickup to my front door. Sunday we went to the Beach at Bayahibe, it was an amazing Beach! and a great weekend.

Day 5

Today we went to Cuevas de las Maravillas and saw the Taino cave paintings. The caves were once a palce for Taino burial and the wall paintings reflected that. If you are ever in La Romana they are definitely worth checking out. The rest of the day was spent talking about our presentation the night before and checking out the wall we are going to paint. next week is going to be very different than this week. but everyone is very excited to start woring on the Mural.

here are some pictures from today:

This is actually just a wall...

After much confusion, we were informed that the wall we thought was "the wall" is actually not our wall and our wall was one street over....

Here is "The Wall" we will be painting, we decided today that no wall will actually be "Our Wall" until after we have painted it.

So here is a wall. At the end of next week when we are done painting it will be "Our Wall" and then when we leave It will also belong to the people of La Hermano.

Day 4

Thursday was a very intese day. We skipped going to the caves and decided to work in the studio and labs all day because we had a presentation in front of the entire school at 7pm. Everyone worked very hard and came up with objects and elements for our Mural and then in the afternoon we went into the lab to piece them together.

The presentation was a little nerve wracking (it was my first time ever speaking with a translator) but it went very well, and the school really loved out mural ideas. Some of the ideas sparked debate amongst the students and teachers which is what public art should do so I was pleased with my students.
After the presentation we watched a preview copy of Beautiful Losers, An amazing film about an amazing group of artists. here are some pictures from the day.

Day 3

Our third day was filled with procjets and techniques. We learned how to make stenciled patterns and markers out of shoe polish. We also drew some characters and made some serious plans for our Mural...

here are some pictures from the day:

this is our wall.

Day 2

Today was another packed day of colaborative projects, demos and education. But first We started off the day by noticing some street art that popped up around Chavon the night before. Someone had installed temporary installations around the campus using chalk and tape. We took some photos, heard the administration was not happy with the installations and by the time lunch time came, al of the pieces were gone. The Ephemeral nature of Street Art.




Next we went to the labs and went over everyone's blogs. You can access each students blog on the top left hand side of this page to follow each students experience whil they are here at Altos De Chavon. After an animated gif lesson we went back to the painting studio to paint. Our first excercise was to use a common often discarded material (we found old pieces of cardboard, wood, etc) and one student painted a background, and another student painted the foreground. The resulting pieces will be left around campus tonight for everyone to enjoy.



After lunch we went down into La Romana where we met up with N. Uribe and 2 other artists / sign painters at Tenal Atesania for a brief leson on the Culture and History of sign painting in the City. After some delicious coffee we got in the van with Uribe and sped arround the city checking out the vibrant street culture in the city and saw a great mix of murals and hand painted signage, ranging from very primitive to very sophisticated. We also got a special treat on this journey, Uribe brought us to his art gallery/studio where he had some amazing work from some of the best traditional painters in La Romana on display. Below are a selection of photos from our trip.