After leaving Ramallah in October, we had 3 more moves (Amman, Georgetown, Dupont Circle) and a baby! So, I'm just now getting around to scanning the artwork I did last year, and remembering my adventures in art making.
When moving to Palestine for the year, I didn't bring very many materials with me from home. I put my boxes of papers and fabrics into storage, along with the sewing machine, scanner, and supplies of paints, threads, wires, etc. I brought only the basics for cutting (scissors, x-acto knives and blades, a small cutting mat) and painting (brushes), hoping that anything else I'd need I could find locally. There are a lot of artists in Palestine, but art supplies were not so easy to find for a newcomer (with no Arabic skills). Luckily a friend was able to guide me to a store in Ramallah that looked like office supplies from the front but had an arts and crafts section tucked away in the back corner. There I found paper and acrylic paints and, later in the year, woodcutting tools for making printing blocks.
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| Roadblocks I |
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| Roadblocks II |
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| Arab Town |
I was always on the look-out for things to use in collages and during a walk along Rukab Street (the main street in Ramallah) I found a nice selection of thread. I even managed--by enlisting some young guys passing by who spoke English--to ask for and find a thimble. That was challenging to explain even in English but I needed it desperately after wearing away my fingertips with the amount of sewing I was doing by hand.
I found a batch of old newspapers listed for free on
ramallahramallah, the local yahoo group that is Ramallah's version of
Craigslist (there is a Craigslist for the West Bank but it isn't really used). There was also a pile of translucent paper left in the house we rented, which seemed like a good omen given my love of vellum.
I also used a lot of coffee grounds in my work. These were abundant because we were drinking so much Arabic coffee, which is made by putting finely ground coffee (and sugar if you like) in the pot and boiling it directly on the stove. At the end there are smooth grounds left in the pot, which make beautiful shades of sepia and interesting textures as the grounds dry.
I didn't finish a lot of work in 2010, busy as I was with my job and bar-b-ques on the shores of the Dead Sea, but I did start a number of other pieces that I plan to go back to.
