While making a long journey, we concentrate on the steps needed along the way, careful to keep our footing.  It often isn’t until we reach our destination and raise our view that we can appreciate the surprising distances we travelled.

These last few days in the studio before leaving for a show are always my favorites, especially when it’s the first show of the season. This is the first time I get to physically see the artwork all together, when it’s finally realized, and not just how I’ve been picturing it in my mind for months.

I began planning this series and making work for this moment last October. Because of the all the steps needed and the drying time (especially of the largest pieces), I work with images that I won’t see trimmed and framed for months. Not to mention that the source photograph was likely taken at least a full year before that. That is a long time to wait!

There is a fleeting moment when I have arrived at the destination I have been traveling towards all winter, when I can bask in the accomplishment of the journey for a few days. After these sweet moments of reflection, I lower my head and begin to push toward the next destination.  Away we go again!

This year I have figured out a way to share the view from here! (but the view is fleeting, only until February 28th, details)

(And my drive to and from Columbia today, 250 miles round trip, will be a little warm up for our drive to Florida next week.)

Mile Marker 275, 16x22

This and other pieces like it can be found right now in the “Currently available” tab at the top of the website.

For many years our first shows of the season have been in Florida. With the copious amounts of sunshine, the beaches, the warmth, who could resist it this time of year? And because we do love all of those things — and we do love the patrons and friends we have made there over the years, our annual pilgrimage is still on. But why should the warm, tanned people of Florida always get the first look at the new work coming out of the studio after my winter’s creative bout?

How about those of you still in ear muffs and longjohns? Why must you wait until the sun gets high enough to warm your northern climes to claim some of the soothing golden prairie as your own?

So on the appointed day please pour yourself a glass of wine and enjoy the show! Let me know asap which one I can mark sold for you because on February 28th it will be packed up and on it’s way to Florida!

Warming up to Spring

Friday, February 17 — Tuesday, February 28
Right here at chrisdahlquist.com
byob

My valentine and I are busy in the studio getting ready to begin our show season. Two weeks until we leave for Florida, but who’s counting?

Mile Marker 262, 15x29 (x 4 pieces)

Please contact me to check availability.

As if trying to prepare us for re-entry into the US, our last week in Mexico is always more harried than the preceding weeks. There were many people to have one last visit with, and, all the activities that we had intended to get to that were also shoved into the final days. It was absolutely magical, and I only regret that I don’t have pictures of all of it to share with you. A selection of activities from our last four days:

• Built tables and storage for the art classroom at the girls home, Buen Pastor, with our friend and amazing art educator, Katie Clancy.
• Took a field trip to the small town of Santa Rosa with Julie Foley, where we had a fabulous walk along the rough cobblestones, ate amazing tacos, and bought cactus marmalade from a women’s collective.
• Ate a beautifully elegant Italian dinner at La Capellina with a large table of friends as we listened to Michael Severens play Bach sonatas on the cello.
• Attended a fabulous dinner party thrown by Allen and Cheri Cetto, our Guanajuato family.
• Enjoyed the enchanting duets of Kyle and Michael on pedal steel guitar and cello. My new favorite combination of instruments for sure!
• Laughed through a breakfast outside in our favorite plaza with our new friend Sam Wyngaard.  Sam and her husband Mike are our new heroes, as they have figured out a way to live and work in GTO full time and are building an amazing house in the center of the city. (We can’t wait to see the progress when we return!)
• Went on an adventure (that I am still processing and a bit ashamed of) to the state fair in León to watch a bullfight. I am glad I went to experience the whole event — the enthusiasm, the tradition, the beautiful costumes, but I certainly never need to see one again.

Tables at Buen Pastor

Santa Rosa, Guanajuato

Santa Rosa — cobbles waiting to be made into a road

La Capellina — listening to Michael on cello

Bullfight in León

What did you do last weekend?

And I am appreciating the little things about it: great coffee, a hot shower with fantastic water pressure, flushing toilet paper, soup on the stove and the pièce de résistance — cats so happy to see us they won’t leave our sides. But the trip to the grocery store was so overwhelming I couldn’t focus my eyes — so if you need me I will be at home with the little things!

KC Skyline (summer 2011)

Back to nesting and the huge stack of mail.

Musicians and street performers are in almost every plaza and jardin. And this week there is a street performer’s festival that has brought artists from all over Mexico to every corner of Guanajuato. (Really one should be forewarned so when they encounter a troupe of clowns wielding swords in an otherwise deserted callejon they don’t become TOO startled!) I have seen plenty of places that have buskers in the streets, subways, train stations, etc. but something makes this distinctly different — in this unhurried pace of life people take the time to sit and watch.  Not only is there art but there is audience everywhere! How/why is it that people have become too busy for this, hurrying past with one ear cocked?

And now Kyle and I are off to see some art —  two gallery openings, some street theater and our friend the cellist in one of our favorite restaurants.

Street theater in front of Teatro Juarez

From the book I am currently reading:

Starting to Wander: Living and Traveling in Central Mexico by Stephen Arthurs

“There were broad palatial rows of steps leading up to the entrance of the very opulent theater, but on this night (and on most nights as we later learned), the steps had been commandeered by the general public for use as bleachers for the sole purpose of watching entertainment just as medieval as the estudiantinas: street clowns. It seemed fitting somehow that the common people had turned their backs on the ostentatious grandeur of the Teatro Juárez, and were making their own amusements outside in the streets, the true home of mexican culture.”

Do you make enough time for art? What could change so that you did?

I have been thinking about the poets a lot this last week. Having never known an ex-pat community anywhere else, I don’t know if this is unusual or the nature of those prone to leave the US. Perhaps poets are just naturally drawn to the magical town of Guanajuato. Or perhaps it is something about studying and living amongst another language. I know that Kyle and I have been speaking in a type of shorthand, both in English and in Spanish. When I am uncertain of the pronouns and all the little connector words, it seems that ideas get distilled down to the most basic elements. So much so that all of the complex ideas I had about life here in Guanajuato spilled out of my head in four simple lines this morning.

The Teacher

silently yield to one another.
move slightly to make passage.
patient in the steps.
there is room for everyone.

silently yield to one another

move slightly to make passage

patient in the steps

there is room for everyone

What do you think? Have you lived as an ex-pat?

This time next week we will be back in KC. So this week’s pick is a not a piece of completed artwork but the beautiful plaza that is right outside our door. This is one of the rare moments it is not filled with school children on recess.

Mile Marker 220

Contact me to check availability.