Went last night to a friend's big old house for the Johnny Cash memorial barbeque and ended up looking at her photographs of her last trip to Cuba.
The dinner she & her partner fed us was delicious; he is a farmer and a master cook and we all ate much more than we should have.
The pictures of Cuba were fascinating.
She worked a few years ago in Havana making scientific drawings of grasses and insects. She said it was like paradise, very few cars, people riding their bicycles everywhere, nobody rushes around; it looks like the world stopped in the 1950s. Life is hard but also easy; she said so many people are genuinely happy. She said she would like to live there.
On one of her adventures into the hills near Havana where she had heard of a cave, she asked a tobacco farm worker to tell her where she could find it. She said he told his boss he was leaving and would be back, and walked her twenty minutes up this dirt road, pointed at the cave and bid her good day. She took his photo; he looked like he was 100 years old.
Another experience, she was taking snapshots in a small village south and west of Havana when two men approached her and asked her if she wanted to see their pig. She said if two men in some little town here offered to show her their pig she would graciously decline, but she went with them, walked along the trail to their two-room hut, and behind the hut was an outhouse and a shed. Inside the shed was the biggest pig in all of Cuba, as declared by the two men. They were very proud of their pig, she said, and stood smiling behind it while she snapped their picture. It was as big as a horse, and bigger than any horse in Cuba. She didn't ask what they fed it.
She has some of her drawings and paintings on her walls of things she didn't have film for, like the butterfly she saw on top of a little girl's head, and the sunset over the Atlantic one evening. Some photos were framed, like the one of the above-ground cemetery, with the shadows and dried flowers and bright sky blue paint on the grave markers.
One of the other guests who was looking at her photos is a photographer, and he kept telling her how she should have taken her pictures, and how she should work more on composition with her photography. She's very quiet, and she's one of the most successful artists I know. She actually makes a living selling her work. She is also a badass, and after one too many "constructive" comments from him ("You seem to have the 'bulls-eye' habit going on here" because she centered her subject-- heavens. I am sure he meant well but he got too excited by being a critic), she said in her deep low voice, "Well I guess it's a good thing I'm an artist, and not a photographer."
And she makes a mean rum and coke.
The dinner she & her partner fed us was delicious; he is a farmer and a master cook and we all ate much more than we should have.
The pictures of Cuba were fascinating.
She worked a few years ago in Havana making scientific drawings of grasses and insects. She said it was like paradise, very few cars, people riding their bicycles everywhere, nobody rushes around; it looks like the world stopped in the 1950s. Life is hard but also easy; she said so many people are genuinely happy. She said she would like to live there.
On one of her adventures into the hills near Havana where she had heard of a cave, she asked a tobacco farm worker to tell her where she could find it. She said he told his boss he was leaving and would be back, and walked her twenty minutes up this dirt road, pointed at the cave and bid her good day. She took his photo; he looked like he was 100 years old.
Another experience, she was taking snapshots in a small village south and west of Havana when two men approached her and asked her if she wanted to see their pig. She said if two men in some little town here offered to show her their pig she would graciously decline, but she went with them, walked along the trail to their two-room hut, and behind the hut was an outhouse and a shed. Inside the shed was the biggest pig in all of Cuba, as declared by the two men. They were very proud of their pig, she said, and stood smiling behind it while she snapped their picture. It was as big as a horse, and bigger than any horse in Cuba. She didn't ask what they fed it.
She has some of her drawings and paintings on her walls of things she didn't have film for, like the butterfly she saw on top of a little girl's head, and the sunset over the Atlantic one evening. Some photos were framed, like the one of the above-ground cemetery, with the shadows and dried flowers and bright sky blue paint on the grave markers.
One of the other guests who was looking at her photos is a photographer, and he kept telling her how she should have taken her pictures, and how she should work more on composition with her photography. She's very quiet, and she's one of the most successful artists I know. She actually makes a living selling her work. She is also a badass, and after one too many "constructive" comments from him ("You seem to have the 'bulls-eye' habit going on here" because she centered her subject-- heavens. I am sure he meant well but he got too excited by being a critic), she said in her deep low voice, "Well I guess it's a good thing I'm an artist, and not a photographer."
And she makes a mean rum and coke.
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