trying to keep up with this blog is difficult, especially when i'm also supposed to be completing work for two grad classes and a journal for this class. so i'm a bit behind, and struggling to remember what happened yesterday. let's see...guanajuato. i love it. i wish i could spend more days there, but, luckily we do get to go back on sunday. there is something so lovely about the way it sits in the valley, the bright houses terraced up the hillsides. it is a college town, and does have that feel...much more urban than san miguel, and many more young people. we began our time there by looking out over the city, and then we descended a winding, narrow passage to the bottom where the teatro juarez and the diego rivera birthplace museum were. on the way, we saw some beautiful graffiti and many tunnels. there are many of these stone tunnels throughout the city...i guess the city has been rebuilt three times because of flooding in the days before the dam, and the tunnels traverse the land between worlds, so to speak. our visit to the teatro juarez was a quick one, but we learned a good bit about the french and moorish influences on the theatre, which was once a favorite of vicente fox when he was governor of guanajuato. my favorite part was the glass floor on the second story...you can see the footsteps above you somewhat as you stand below it. we then went to diego's birthplace. it had a lot of his early student work, and it was fun to realize that he was a student like anyone else...copying styles, learning to paint, finding his own voice. being in school myself, i can relate. besides his work, there were some great japanese pieces in the adjacent gallery...contemporary work heavily influenced by design. i need to learn more about that. anyway, we had a great lunch, then trekked back up the large hill to the bus for our return trip. when we got back, we made a trip to the papeleria, which is loosely translated as paper store...or school supply store. but it is so much more. we got so much good stuff, i can't even remember it all. but just remember i'm a designer and i love weird printed things, and i spent 7 dollars for a giant envelope. it was just amazing. i have a poster of mexican presidents, luchadores, and a series of paper dolls in traditional mexican outfits. what more could i want? well, after that, all of the students in the class who wanted to work on their journals got together in one of the rooms and worked on our journals. it was fun to get started and work on ideas. i want to explore a lot of ideas that have been rolling in my head about folk art, politics, design, art, and more. it should be a good experience if i can just carve out the time to do it. that seems to be the biggest challenge. anyway, the pic is of the group overlooking guanajuato. more tomorrow...esteban valdez. unbelievable.
