The adventure for craft in the University of Valparaiso continues in 2008. Last year, I witnessed the design students attempt to develop product out of a remote stony Chilean village at the end of the road called Pedernal. This year, their enterprising teacher Patty Gunther takes them to La Ligua, a centre for handmade textiles. [...]
Posts Tagged ‘Chile’
Their ‘artesanía’ is our ‘folk-art’
DSCF3466 The in-flight magazine for LanChile identifies the position of craft in Latin America. It uses the Spanish work ‘artesanías’, which is usually translated as ‘craft’. However, in in the bi-lingual magazine, it is translated instead as ‘folk-art’. Why use this term? The writer María José Villanueva positions artsesanía as a counterbalance to globalisation. It [...]
The hunt begins…
First thing this morning Clifford Charles dropped into the B&B and we went for a walk over the rocks. He told me that the South African reggae star Lucky Dube had been killed outside his home in Johannesburg. This seems particularly sad news given that one of the Dube clan, Hlengiwe Dube, was playing such an important role [...]
South of Madrid
It’s hard not to enjoy the spectacle of oil paintings in the Prado museum. The vivacity of Velazquez is compelling. But the audio that accompanies the collection goes on ad nauseum about what ‘masterpieces’ they are. You soon realise that your enjoyment is being channeled into an imperial mindset. The vertiginous scenes of baroque paintings [...]
First results from Pedernal
Design students from Valparaiso University showed the first results from their workshop with residents of Pedernal. These are early days, as the students explore how products might be developed that relate to life in this remote village and also activity engage the residents in their production. The next phase is the response of the residents themselves. Let’s see what unfolds. [...]
Back to Valparaiso
DSCF1494.JPG It was great to return to Valparaiso and spend time with some of its amazingly creative minds. We spent a day considering what a design for the south might be. The students are very interested in the way design relates to community and were making some quite seriously proposes for developing products that both [...]
Santiago shots
The opening of the South Project at Centro Cultural Estación Mapocho in Santiago de Chile. Arturo Navarro, the director of Mapocho, welcomed visitors along with the Craft Victoria director Kevin Murray and Minister of Culture Paulina Urrutia. They ended by reciting together Pablo Neruda’s Ode to Mapocho. The speeches were preceded by a rogativa, the [...]
Exhibition opens
Make the Common Precious opened in Santiago tonight with great fanfare. The Chilean Minister of Culture Paulina Urrutia officiated at the opening, despite having just flown in from Spain that morning. She was given a personal tour of the exhibition and expressed great joy at the marvellous transformations that the makers had enabled. The opening [...]
Chiloe looms
Chiloé is an island off the coast of Chile about the same latitude as Tasmania, though Chiloé is probably even colder and wetter than Tasmania. Like Tasmania, Chiloé has a resilient craft tradition. Borne of the mixture of indigneous Maphuche and Spanish traditions, Chiloé is a proud refuge of traditional folkore, manifest in is fantastic [...]
Valparaiso revisited
Valparaiso seems the perfect embodiment of Make the Common Precious. The port city is hardly well endowed financially, and suffers from particularly severe vertical challenges, but the people manage to give their city the feeling of a work of art in itself. The houses are painted bright primary colours. The stencil are is everywhere and [...]
