Residencies

Nau Côclea Residency - Log 4

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The fourth day, I was meant to go with Clara in the evening to an exhibition opening in Girona.  However, she ended up needing to run other errands all day and asked that I get myself there.  Since I was going to have to take the train myself anyway, I figured I could go earlier and check Girona out.

While I was waiting for the train, a man sat down super close to me and was speaking in a disordered way and asking for cigarettes and money.  I pretended to not understand anything he said and asked if he spoke English, which luckily he did not, and my not understanding him wasn't even much of a pretense since he wasn't speaking clear Spanish either (possibly he was speaking in Catalan, but also possibly not an actual language at all).  There was another woman waiting for the train so I managed to get away from the man saying again and again I didn't understand him and instead allied with her.  This seemed to deter him from further bothering me, as she told me she'd already told him no herself.  We rode to Girona together (he rode in the toilet to avoid paying), and she helped me figure out where Devesa park is located.  I wanted to visit there hoping to see some wildlife in the park.  Unfortunately, Devesa is a very orderly and sculpted park and there wasn't much in the way of wildlife; there were a number of ducks and ducklings, some caged peafowl, and one pretty blue, white, and black bird that I couldn't get near.

Then I decided to head toward the old Jewish quarter and heart of the city, which is now a shopping/tourism hub.  I wandered through the streets for a while, stopped and bought a small coffee gelato cone, and browsed the shops while loosely trying to head toward where the art center I needed to end up at that evening was located.  I walked by an art store and bought a new type of paper, and stopped by a bakery and purchased some quiche and a tart.  Then the art center appeared!  I'm pretty bad at directions and thought it would be several blocks away from where I was, so I'm happy I stumbled across it so easily.  I then backtracked to a small vegetarian restaurant for a hamburger and lemonade before the show.  Spain had been a challenge as a vegetarian when I studied abroad here in 2007, and it is still difficult but getting easier as exemplified in this restaurant's existence (albeit in a tourist area). 

Clara was late, so I took in the show myself at the Bòlit. Centre d'Art Contemporani.  It was a small but interesting show, and despite there being numerous artists' work on display it was remarkably cohesive.  Clara texted me and said she was actually just going to go to the center's other site instead so I should meet her there.  The Bòlit. has two buildings about 15 minutes away from each other and though I wasn't aware that this was the case, its exhibition spanned both locations.  I found the second site and was introduced to the director, a number of the artists, and some other staff.  One of the other artists and I had an instant connection and we spent most of the rest of the next hour or so together getting acquainted.  Sadly, she had to return back to Germany the following day so we couldn't have more adventures together in Spain.  

While outside talking with the new friend, I also got to observe digger wasps tidying their burrows.  These are fascinating insects and I have never encountered them before.  They dug like miniature meerkats.  I tried to take photos but it was late evening and there wasn't enough light.  I did take a short video of them, though.  I also looked digger wasps up when I got back home and found out that Richard Dawkins spoke about them as an example of the limitations of constructed reality.

I was invited back to the Bòlit to hold an artist's lecture and discussion about my work on the 25th, and to attend an arts festival that weekend back in Girona.  Clara and I then made our way back to her car.  I was so happy to get back home; I had walked for probably close to eight or nine hours total and my feet were not at all pleased.

The following day I spent entirely on drawing, which was good, as my hips and legs made their presences grumpily known as well.

Nau Côclea Residency - Log 3

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The second day we went into Camallera in the morning with her car so I could stock up on groceries beyond what would comfortably fit in my backpack.  I accidentally bought yogurts with sucralose in them again.  This always happens to me when I'm traveling internationally, so you'd think I'd learn, but I always am so wrapped up in making sure there's no gelatin in the new brands I encounter that I completely forget about making sure they don't have artificial sweeteners.  I just hate the taste.  And I bought eight of them.  We'll see how many I can force myself to eat before I throw the rest away.

Clara also had to run an errand at a donkey farm, and mentioned in passing that she didn't think I'd be interested in going at all, but...  WHAT??! Yes, the person who applied to your residency with paintings of animals and abstracted natural landscapes does in fact want to join you on your excursion to a donkey farm.

We arrived at the donkey farm and it pretty much immediately started to rain.  But these were not your typical North American donkeys.  These were Catalan donkeys, which have ridiculously proportioned ears and are super adorable and sweet.  So despite the rain, I took a ton of source photos of the donkeys in between scratching their ears and trying not to step in donkey poo.  My poor camera.  I kept tucking it under my shirt for the worst of the rain, but seriously, this camera is a trooper.  I also encountered an insect called a hummingbird hawk moth, and it is a magical creature.  As in, it appears to be a unicorn/fairy/not of this world.

The rest of the day passed in a very sleepy, leisurely, jet-lagged state.  I did manage to get outside long enough to note that A) there are a lot of snails around Nau Côclea (to which Clara responded that côclea comes from the latin for spiral) and that B) there are a TON of ants.  As in, if you stand still outside for more than two seconds ants will swarm onto your feet and up your legs and bite you all over.  Clara commiserated and said she accidentally made them a home here with her when she installed underground drip irrigation and that she'd brought an entomologist in but they said there was nothing that could be done.  There is a powder she gave me that I can sprinkle just outside my doorway to try to keep them more out than in.

The third day was spent entirely on drawing and painting.

Nau Côclea Residency - Log 2

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After all the flights, I had to take the train from Barcelona to Camallera.  I was a bit nervous about this, since I didn't actually know which trains went to Camallera (only the regional trains do, but telling a regional from a non-regional is more difficult than it would first appear).  I also hadn't slept other than a 10-minute nap in Charlotte, NC, and the flights together were about 16 hours long.  First I had to find the train station (not too bad), and then buy a ticket.  It transpired that there were actually two stations I had to visit; at the second, at first it looked like I was in for a 2 1/2 hour to get on a regional train but then somehow a completely different train was found that would go to Camallera in the next four minutes.  I scrambled to get on that one, and did.  Then I spent the next couple hours of transit time falling asleep on the train, waking up, hoping I hadn't passed Camallera but also thinking that it was a ways away so I should be fine but not even being entirely sure this train actually did go to Camallera, and so on.  As I got more and more uncertain, I finally found a list of the stops of the train on my smartphone, and then in six more stops, I was in Camallera!

The residency is about a 20-minute walk away from the station, but the day I arrived my host and the art director of Nau Côclea, Clara, was there to pick me up (no one wants to drag their luggage 20 minutes when sleep-deprived and uncertain of end destination).  The residency itself is a small grouping of buildings in the midst of hay fields on the outskirts of Camallera.  The town is inhabited by only about 500 people, but the train station means it actually has a fair amount of services for such a small town.  It also means that travel to nearby towns is pretty easy.

I have my own small house to myself and it's kind of a hybrid between the Peruvian housing situation and a more Western one.  The kitchen is reminiscent of the one in Peru - a stovetop range fueled by a gas canister, a fridge, and a sink.  Unlike in Peru, though, the water is safe to drink right out the tap and the bathroom has a water-based toilet and a shower - and all the water can be heated.  However, the rooms have no air conditioning and rely on windows and airflow from outside to cool them off, so just like in Peru, the insects come in with the breeze.  I acquired about seven new mosquito bites in the first day before I remembered to start applying mosquito repellent every eight hours or so.

The first day I had a tour of the land, a snack, took a long nap, and then ate dinner with Clara while getting acquainted with her.  I'm the only resident here at this time, so she's going to be inviting me along to some of her social/arts events so that I don't get too isolated.

Nau Côclea Residency - Log 1

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My flights were happily uneventful.  However, on the Charlotte-Barcelona leg, we were served yogurt for breakfast.  The foil top of mine was extremely puffed up.  This has occasionally happened to me before when the yogurt has begun to ferment and it's recommended that you don't eat them at that point.  I looked for the expiration date, and found it was 05.08.15.  That's actually not out of date - in Europe the dates are written day.month.year.  Yogurt can in fact ferment before its proposed expiration date, but typically it doesn't go bad two months before.  I peered around for a while trying to see other people's yogurts or a flight attendant to query, but everyone else nearby had already opened theirs up and there were no attendants on my side of the plane.

A seatmate on the other side asked me if I needed his help in getting a flight attendant since I was clearly looking around a lot.  I said I wasn't sure - what was his yogurt foil doing?  He investigated his yogurt and those of his friends, and said they were all bloated as well.  I figured that while one puffy yogurt may have snuck past quality control and onto my tray, if everyone's were like that then the staff clearly must be aware and believed they were okay to eat.  So I opened it and cautiously dug in while continuing to mull over the problem.  Then it hit me - it's because we're on an airplane.  The yogurts were packaged while on land and sealed with normal air pressure, and were then transported up with us to a lower air pressure environment so the trapped gases inside the yogurt container expanded and puffed the foil top up.  It didn't occur to me at the outset because I'd only ever encountered the problem in a different context.  This is one of the main reasons I like to travel: I love challenging expectations I don't even know I'm making (even when they're about something as quotidian as foil yogurt tops).