Ho Chi Minh City

Yangon and the Circle Line train

We went to Paradise Beach on the Dawei Peninsula for 4 days. The water was like a warm bath. There are little crabs that run like the wind on the beach and leave gorgeous patterns, some alien language. We were surrounded by some local children who wanted to take our picture, they were sweet. At dusk all the green lights of the squid boats came on like spaceships on the horizon.

To get there we rode our motorbikes about 2 hours, on a narrow mostly paved road through tropical countryside and little villages. There was a lot of roadwork, they are expanding many of the roads in the country. It's all manual labor, except the tar is heated in barrels and they have small steamrollers. But men and women carry gravel on their heads, wearing only flip-flops, and dump it in place. They're all blackened from the tar and we saw a bunch of them sitting on the side of the road eating ice cream cones on a break, it was beautiful to see the bright white of the half-eaten ice cream against their tarry faces.      
   

   

We flew to Nyaung-U on our second day. The brother-in-law of our innkeeper (we determined later) picked us up at the airport. Her nieces carried our backpacks (as big as they were) up to our room. We walked among several of the incredible temples, watching a photo shoot of a beautiful bride (pretty clearly a model) twisting in unnatural positions on the brick steps of one, and then we took in the sunset from another. I'm having trouble uploading photos but will keep trying! Wi-Fi is spotty, although more prevalent than I expected...

Arrival in Yangon

After 35 hours of travel, we arrived in Yangon at around midnight, tested the wifi and went to sleep. We spent the next day walking around Chinatown in the morning, near our hotel. First we traversed an amazing market street where there was barely room to walk and people sat on the ground selling unidentifiable vegetables, fish, pastes, meats, and prepared foods,  Then we passed into  the hardware quarter, where little shops spilled out piles of new and recycled fan blades, motors, wire, screws and nails, tools, etc.

A decade later. . .

we're off to Myanmar. Stay tuned!

Open Studios

Yesterday SFAI held open studios to show what the current artists-in-residence are working on. Patty and I are at pretty early stages, having only just finished the prep of all the clay we're working with, but had a few things to show. Patty created a small-scale model of a set/landscape concept to play with. We also began building a large-scale structure, and created a clay sheet for me to explore during the open studios, so that the visitors could see what meant, talking about re: movement and clay. We all experimented on this one together, as I hadn't had a chance to try that particular idea yet. I planned to crawl under it to try to move beneath the surface, then break through, manipulating it almost like clothing; in fact it ripped too easily, so it eluded me, but was a great illustration of the principle of having to follow where the material takes one. We may try again, perhaps with longer fibers to keep the clay from tearing so easily.