Costa Rican Carving

Muy Cansado

People who work in offices sometimes dread Monday mornings because it´s time to go back to the daily grind after a change of pace on the weekend.  Here in Puntarenas, Monday morning means only a few more days to get a massive piece of sculpture finished.  People are getting tired...tired of the sand, tired of the heat and humidity, tired of tool trouble, and just plain old physically tired.  While everyone is making progress, some more than others, many people are getting a little stressed by the amount of work to be done in just a few short days.

On the good news front, reinforcements arrived over the weekend in the form of Terry and Katie, partners in the Artists Refuge and capable hammer swingers and chiselers.  They pitched right in to help, and along with the other sculptors like Marcia and Sandy who are here to function as artigiani, are making the difference for several people.  Many local people have also come to lend a hand, working under the direction of the sculptors to help them finish their work by this coming weekend.

This whole event has been a true community effort from start to finish.  The sculptors have helped each other, the town has supported all of us, and we´ve built great friendships that will last.  Last night we were having a discussion about the transitory nature of life, and it´s both gratifying and a little sobering to realize that as an artist, you´re leaving a legacy for this community that will far outlast your remaining time in this life. What a gift.

The halfway point

It´s hard to believe we´ve been here in Puntarenas for a week.  In some respects it seems like we just got here, but it also feels like I´ve been gone from home a long, long time.  Time does seem to move slower here.  Maybe it´s the heat, or maybe it´s because everybody gets up so early and works until dark.  Or maybe time really does slow down when you get closer to the equator...

Everyone has been working hard for the past couple of days, and figures are starting to emerge from the stones.  The stone itself has been a challenge for many.  It´s very hard and has no fracture planes, so it takes a great deal of perseverance and strength to remove large quantities.  It dulls chisels quickly.  Some of the sculptors are wondering how it will finish.  Jock says he´s enjoying working the stone -- it´s not nearly as hard as granite, and with his wet saw, he says he can cut through it like butter.  It´s always interesting to see how different people relate to material differently.

In answer to your requests for more stone pictures, I´m adding some now so that you can see the progress.  I´m also including pictures of as many of the sculptors as I can so that all of the people back home can see what we´re doing.  And we decided that including pictures of the townspeople who are so generous to us is important also.  It´s one of our little ways of saying thanks to them.

Sunny Saturday...

And is there any other kind here? 

The skies here are so beautiful, especially at sunrise and sunset.  The clouds, the colors...so different from what most of us experience back home.  Our hotel sits at the end of the peninsula, and each morning on my way to the beach I walk past a stone breakwater.  It´s home to a colony of iguanas, and they´re fascinating to watch (and try to photograph).  They look like little dinosaurs, and it´s impossible to sneak up on them.  Unlike my mom, I think they really do have eyes in the backs of their heads.

Everyone was up and at work early this morning, anticipating big crowds that will probably slow things down later in the day.  People are fascinated by the whole process, sometimes to their own detriment.  Despite the presence of caution tape around the tents, onlookers still tend to get too close.  Yesterday Edgar was removing stone with a hammer, and a baseball-sized chunk flew up and struck a young man in an especially painful spot.  It´s a precarious balancing act to encourage people to watch, yet keep them at a safe distance.

Last night the owner of the local hardware store, Hassan Lee, hosted us at his mountainside retreat about a helf hour out of town.  We had a wonderful dinner with plenty of wine and a dj and karaoke.  Edgar is quite a crooner, and Juano entertained us all with an acapella version of ''It Had to Be You'' that he dedicated to Donald.  Elsie and Susana also had the good natured nerve to get up and sing, but everyone agreed they should keep sculpting and leave the singing to the pros. After a week of togetherness, friendships are solidifying, some of them between people that don´t speak the same languages, but have figured out ways to communicate and bond in spite of that.  The world stone sculpture community is getting smaller each day that we´re here.

I´ll have more pictures up tomorrow so that you can see how far people have come since Monday -- or in the case of the Ticos, since Thursday.

Friday Happy Hour

And no, we´re not all sitting in a beachside bar sipping cervezas -- although I think everybody would like to be...

The Costa Rican sculptors are putting their international counterparts to shame.  They´re out working at dawn, much to the chagrin of the neighbors across from the beach, and they´re the last ones to leave at night.  Donald has his piece roughed out and standing already.  Several of the others aren´t far behind. 

Yesterday, Constantina said ''I´m the sherrif, and I tell my stone what to do.''  Today she told me she´s ''talking to stone very well.''  Her piece, a large conch shell, is starting to take shape.  Adolfo is also coming along nicely.  Juano is learning from the tico guys, and is thrilled to be working in such a beautiful spot, even if the stone is really hard and difficult to work.

Several people have had tool trouble -- with the high humidity, the dust gets into the tools and turns to paste, but everybody is learning to cope with that.

We´ve had lots of onlookers today, and school kids have been coming on field trips for the past couple of days. Tomorrow will be a zoo -- there´s a run scheduled for tomoroow afternoon that´s supposed to draw ten thousand participants.  I hope they don´t all end up at the beach at once.

The people of Puntarenas continue to amaze us with their generosity.  Last night a women´s service group hosted dinner for us at the beachfront home of one of the members.  They served us local appetizers and paella that was incredible.  The prawns on top looked more like lobsters, and the paella pan was probably three feet across.  Pura vida, pura vida! 

Today I read the news for the first time since I left home last week.  It only took a couple of stories for me to turn to something else.  When you´re surrounded by such energy, passion and generosity, you develop an intolerance for stories about Britney Spears and rampaging college students.  The world is an amazing place full of great people.

Thanks to all of you who are visiting, reading, perusing the photos and leaving comments.  It means so much to everybody here to know that other people are following what we´re doing.

The work begins in earnest

After sitting around watching everybody else work for three days, the local sculptors threw themselves into their work today.  My rommate, Silvia, left the room at 4 am to get started, and when I last saw her she was still at it, and making good progress. 

I watched Donald and Leonardo remove mass -- they use nine inch saws, make a wide cut, then use a couple of good blows with a hammer and chisel to knock off large pieces.  They remove lots of stone very fast.  Being a non-sculptor, it´s fun for me to watch how different people do things so differently.

Juano made the decision to try a new stone, and after some electrical problems, had started to move along again.  Nancy was working with the able assistance of Marcia and Sandy, and even Francisco managed to pick up a hammer and chisel before lunch.

And speaking of lunch, Ocho´s wife prepared a feast for us today.  While all of the sculptors are burning off the calories, I´m thinking I may need to buy an extra seat for the plan ride home.  One of the hazards of my job.

The big picture

Sometimes when you´re doing the things that you do every day, you forget that you´re making a difference for other people.  That´s especially true for artists, because so often you put your work out into the world and never receive any feedback.  This symposium is unusual because not only will the artists come away with new knowledge and friendships, but the entire fabric of Puntarenas will change.

Puntarenas is a shabby city.  It´s not shabby chic like Santa Fe or the villages of the Cinque Terre in Italy.  It´s a tired, careworn town, relegated to a brief stop for cruise ship tourists to buy sarongs and cheap sunglasses. But underneath the weatherbeaten surface, there pulses a spirit full of life and passion, and this symposium is bringing that spirit to the surface.

Each day, the people of the town stop by to talk to the artists, to watch them work, to gain an understanding of what it means to create something of beauty from a chunk of raw stone.  When the sculptures are finished, they´ll line the beach front, becoming a source of pride for the city and its residents.

Each day, a group of local women brings fresh fruit to the artists for a midmorning snack.  Another group prepares a delicious lunch, and every evening a different restaurant donates dinner.  The staff at our small hotel bends over backward to meet our needs, including allowing me to spend hours at the lobby computer because my laptop won´t connect to their network.  Everywhere we turn, people are reaching out to make us feel welcome and to share their lives with us.

Yesterday, one of the local cops who has been standing guard on the beach every day asked if he could have his picture taken with all of the artists so that he can show it to his grandchildren and tell them that he was a part of this revival of his city.  To those of us who came here not really knowing what to expect, it´s both awe-inspiring and a little intimidating.  We´re all doing what we love, and the only way to show our appreciation to these wonderful people is to do the best job we possibly can.  As sculptors, that means creating a finished work of art in less than two weeks time.  For me, the journalist in the group, it means creating a record of this amazing event so that other people can be inspired and awed, just like we are.

And not only will Puntarenas change.  Costa Rica is a small country with a population of about 4 million people -- roughly the size of Colorado.  This event is bringing attention to the rich cultural life of a country that´s become mainly known as a place for adventure tours, scube diving and surfing.  There´s so much more here than that.  At our welcoming ceremony the other night, one of the local artists spelled out his dream for this city -- he wants to see it become a major cultural center not only for Costa Rica, but for all of Central America.  Making a dream reality begins with taking action, and it´s a great honor for all of us to be a part of that first step.

The stone arrives!

After two days of angst and frustration, the rest of the stone arrived this afternoon.  Excited Costa Rican sculptors raced back to the hotel for tools so that they could begin to catch up with their international counterparts. 

Everybody else is making progress removing stone.  Some of the pieces are beginning to show shapes, and it´s fascinating to watch everybody´s techniques.  Some of the local police, who are taking turns standing guard over our section of beach, even got into the act, taking a few whacks with hammers.  Tourists and locals stop by and endure the extreme heat to watch and ask questions. 

The local sculptors have been offering generous advice about working with this stone, since it´s native and none of the international sculptors had worked it before.  Unfortunately for John Ostlund -- Juano to his new group of friends -- his stone carried a major fissure, and after much examination and talking through with the locals, he made the decision to start over with a new piece.  That´s the beauty of a symposium -- everybody is learning from each other and members of the public, most of whom have never seen sculpture being created, are gaining a new appreciation for the process.

We´ll have more pictures up later.

The adventure begins...

The first ever International Stone Sculpture Symposium in Central America began yesterday with 18 stone sculptors from around the world gathered to carve six foot blocks of Nicoya marble on the beach in Puntarenas, Costa Rica.  Before the actual carving began, however, we had a couple of days at the lovely Artists Refuge in Alajuela to get acquainted and relax.  Artists began arriving last Wednesday, and by Saturday night, everyone was present and ready to get started.  First though, we had dinner at El Estribo in Escazu, a wonderful restaurant owned by Francisco´s sister and brother in law.

Sunday we loaded up a small bus with about a ton of luggage that looked like it would cascade off the top as we drove through the mountains, but we made it to Puntarenas and checked into the Hotel Yadran, our home for the next two weeks.  Sunday night the city hosted a wonderful street party for us, complete with speeches that brought home how important this event is to the city and to Costa Rica in general, and performances by a troupe of young entertainers that presented the history and culture of Costa Rica in acted skits and dance.  We were all blown away by the beauty of their costumes and the professionalism of their performance.  The sculptors and their friends broke into an impromptu dance at the end of the program while the town people sat and watched, probably more than one of them thinking that if we can´t carve any better than we can dance, they should just pull the plug on the whole thing.

Monday morning dawned sunny, hot, and humid.  We all walked to the beach to watch as the very large, somewhat intimidating stones were lifted into place so that everyone could begin work.  Unfortunately, Monte Marmol, the company that promised to bring the marble in, only delivered half of what they promised, leaving nine artists without stone.  The Costa Rican sculptors graciously allowed the international people to begin while they wait for the rest of the stone to come.  By yesterday afternoon the beach was filled with the sound of saws and the grit of marble dust mixed in with the sand.

Today the work continues, but the stone company has yet to deliver the remainder of the promised marble. The local sculptors are getting antsy, and understandably so.  It´s tough to watch other people work when you want to get your own piece going.  All of them have been remarkably patient and giving, however, helping out to move stone, lend tools and advice and do a little material removal.  A TV station showed up to film today, and got an earful about the lack of response from Monte Marmol, so maybe with some pressure from the sponsors and the public the stone will arrive tomorrow.

The people of Puntarenas have been fantastic, and we´ll have more about that later, along with plenty of photographs.