brinley goes to mexico for an artist residency: part 1

Since I’ve returned from Mexico, everyone wants to know how my time was. It’s hard to summarize everything in short conversations, when there was so much to see and learn and ruminate on. So I might try to actually use my own blog like the old times and digest the trip in little chunks, starting with the largest bulk of it, which was spent in Oaxaca.

My time in Oaxaca was very relaxing. The residency I participated in, Arquetopia, has a house in San Pablo Etla, which is about a 30 minute taxi ride away from Oaxaca Centro.

Here’s the front of the house:

We had a cook, Jessica, who made us our meals every day. I didn’t take any pictures of what we ate because it was just too good to wait. I learned how to cook chayote and zucchini flowers, two new ingredients I’m definitely going to incorporate more into my diet. That, and agua de jamaica, or hibiscus tea. I enjoyed the kitchen: the smells and the sounds that came out of it. It served as our centerpiece for gathering and conversation.

San Pablo Etla is a very peaceful pueblo. I really enjoyed just walking around the neighborhood, where the noisy silence was calming. The area was full of corn fields, squash, flowers, butterflies, dogs, horses, chickens, cows, donkeys, lichen, air plants…. the biodiversity there is rich.

We spent about 8 hours a week learning traditional Mexican embroidery techniques and styles, and had weekly meetings with our mentor, Francisco, who would assign us readings based on our project to prompt new ways of thinking about, executing, and approaching our art. My project is about (to very briefly summarize) domestic work and the ways that work in the home bleeds into work outside of it.

The rest of the time during the week was ours to decide. I spent a lot of my time listening to audio-books and podcasts as I stitched on my blanket. And like I said before… I went on a lot of walks, sometimes alone, sometimes with the other gals at the residency with me. During each walk I kept thinking, “soak it all in, be present, notice everything, take deep breaths, and write notes after this to record your thoughts,” trying to hold on to as much of the memory as I could to take back home with me.

Here was the view of and then from the patio, where I was able to spread out my blanket and spend many sunny afternoons sketching, stitching, and stretching.

My favorite part was, undoubtedly, the weather: often cloudy, rainy, thunderstorms, and around 70 or so degrees. Just my type.

My least favorite part were the bugs. I could have definitely done without the bugs. But I did feel like they worshiped me in some way, considering the extents they went to eat my flesh.

I will be working on the blanket I started here for the next six months or so. During this time I will not be making much else, so I’ve started a Patreon to help with the funding I could have made from participating in markets like I have in years past. I will be giving exclusive project updates there, so even a dollar a month gets you a peak into my process before the big reveal in June ';)

Here’s one of the samplers I worked on during my instructions from Maria. Yes, it’s a little rough!, but some elements of this will be making its way into my blanket with practice.