24 hrs in Paradise

Of course my weekly SXM Unpolished series is not meant to keep away from you pictures from the Paradise side of our island! So here are some photo's from within the last 24 hours...

pictured just after sunset yesterday from a friend's place: dramatic skies, never the same, always impressive, moments of reflection...

Philipsburg, situated on the Great Bay, capital of the Dutch part of the island

this morning around noon, somewhere in a little abandoned shopping mall in Marigot, capital of the French side. Memories of the French Cote d'Azur, such beauty, such a difference in atmosphere between the two countries on the island...

and finally, in the same shopping mall, there's a huge old tree trunk. I could have made a hundred different pictures of it, maybe another time, in a different light, maybe just before sunset, sometimes....

Thanks for visiting and enjoy your day,
Regina

Indian cooking: first results

Last Sunday I posted about the Hindi-Bindi book I was reading and my intention to restart my Indian cooking. So in the afternoon I took out all necessary ingredients, put them in the right order on the counter and after a lot of chopping and cutting the party could start!

as often, the start was made by heating oil and letting onions get slightly brown, together with a cinnamon stick and some cloves

this is the situation after tomatoes and lots of different spices have been added and a very lengthy and gradual dilutation of the gravy, just before putting the marinated chickenbreast cubes in sauce. I even had energy left to make some chappati's

the results: a delicious authentic Indian meal. Though it took me 2 1/2 hrs to fix it (pffff) I think it was worth the effort, for it tasted so good, so different from what you can buy ready made in the shops. Slow cooking, the Indian way!
(to be continued (but not too often :-)

SXM Unpolished (5)

When people hear about Sint Maarten, one picture that is readily visualized is that of a paradise, a Bounty island of just sun, sand and sea, pictures like in a travel guide. Of course that is an important and attractive part of our island. But when you visit us and the taxi takes you from the airport to your resort or hotel, you might come across places and dwellings that are being showcased in this weekly category of the other side of our Caribbean island, straight from the camera (so don't tell me you had no idea ;-)

Marigot, St. Martin, FWI

Indian cooking ahead

Last week has been pretty busy with all kind of non art related stuff: daily swimming and walking exercises, sewing clothes, volunteering and reading.

At the moment I am reading a great book by Monica Pradhan: the Hindi-Bindi club. The story is about Indian mothers and their American born and raised daughters and their complex relationships, if you like you can read more in this excerpt. Each chapter is written by one of the mothers or daughters and concludes with a recipe of authentic Indian food. I feel that there is a correlation between the heroines in this book and my own life. Almost fourty years ago I married my husband. He is from Indian parents that were born and raised in Surinam and his grandparents travelled to this country from India to work as coolies after the slavery was officially ended in 1864 (or so).
So from the beginning of our marriage I learned to eat and appreciate Indian food and over time I bought several Indian cookbooks and gained moderate experience. On our island we have several Indian restaurants which we visit regularly and roti for lunch every now and then is a big favorite! However, preparing roti's myself is a thing I never have done. That is mainly because my mother in law acts quite superior in all kind of subjects, but especially in cooking. After having been told once that the way I chopped garlic was completely wrong, I decided to never again cook in her presence, since I could and still cannot understand what difference it makes. But I digress...

The above may be one of the reasons that I like this book so much: the 'struggle' between the mothers and their daughters, the generation and cultural gap and the way they are able to overcome the differences by eg. cooking.

I think this subject is very actual in a wider context, not only in Indian vs western community, but also with all the migration that is taking place all over the world. In Europe we see this gap with migrants from eg. Morocco, Algeria and Turkey and their offspring that was born in Europe.

Inspired by the Hindi Bindi book, I have decided to restart my experimenting with Indian cooking.
So yesterday I visited our local Indian supermarket and found some very specific ingredients. What to think of Anardana and Asafoetida? These names alone make me curious to give it a try!! Although I already have a pretty collection of exotic mixtures in my kitchen, I had never heard about these...
Next week my husband is off island some days and I plan to experiment and try all the recipes during his absence. My collagemaking and quiltmaking will be put aside for a short period. But cooking is also being creative, at least that's my feeling when I make 'magic' happen in my kitchen! If possible I will show you some results,

Thanks for reading!

Today

my weekly voluntering at a primary school was on the programme. Since I was a little early, I took out my camera and walked the little street opposite of the school that leads to one of my favorite beaches: Simpson Bay!

As the roosters were singing their song all over the neighborhood, I decided to make a little video instead of a picture. So this is a test, whether it works like this and whether I succeed to let you hear the SXM roosters on my blog, today, on this very morning...

As usual, thanks for visiting and enjoy your day!

From the archives

Hi!

After yesterday's pretty ugly SXM Unpolished picture, I am glad that it is time again for more beautiful stuff. I have been posting in the unpolished catagory during four weeks now and only introduced it the very first time, but yesterday I realized (afterwards..) that maybe I only chase away accidental passers-by on my blog by showing all this ugliness that's is alas all day reality for lots of people... Maybe it is better to write a little sentence that's pointing out my intention of this unpolished sxm photos.

The weekend was lovely with some goodies for me: it was Art Lovers weekend (yes we do have artists here, but mainly on the French part of the island). Once a year the artists of this organisation open their studio to the public and this Saturday I visited the lovely venue of Norma and Corinne Trimborn, two sisters that paint and who originally are from Germany. I enjoyed their art and as a bonus had the chance to refresh my German!

On Sunday the local Rotary organized a fleamarket for the very first time and as I am always the first one to tell how I miss that here, you can be sure this was my day! I 'scored' some books on Canada and Alaska, some novels and my biggest catch was an Eileen Fisher dress, brown tricot, almost new, not my size really but it has potential ;-), which means that I will remodel it and then will have a very fashionable new tunica that goes fantastic with my new pants. I love remodeling clothes, call it recycling or whatever, but for someone that can hardly find new fashionable plus quality clothes here this is like finding a treasure, you see?!

detail

now from the archives a little collage I did last year and have not shown until now: I only rediscovered it last week in the big book I wrote about last week

Bird

mixed media 5"x7"

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Cole Bay

Sint Maarten

Surprise

we discovered some new, future bananas in our garden!

this picture is from last Sunday, taken from above on the veranda

and this is how it looked yesterday, picture shot from below. It's amazing how quickly they developed in only 7 days

***

On another note, here is my last collage from the recent series. I enjoyed making them very much, also learned quite a bit! My next series will be about the states we visited in the US last summer. I took home lots of brochures, tickets and pictures of course, now what better way than to finally use them in a collage?! The plan is to make them in a travel-chronological order, so the first one should have New Mexico as a theme, stay tuned ...

(clickable)

Serisie
Mixed media
5"x7"

This week's collages (2)

Ik Heb Eb

5"x7"

This title needs some clarification I think. 'Ik heb eb' means asmuch as: 'I have low tide'. It is the sea's answer to the question: how are you? I found this little poem of Franck Eerhart in an old Dutch magazine. It is a kind of dialogue between the sea and a visitor and I like its simplicity:

ik zie de zee/I see the sea

de zee ziet mij/the sea sees me

dag zee hoe gaat het?/ hi sea, how are you?

ik eb, zegt de zee/I ebb, says the sea

wat heb je? zeg ik/what do you have? I say

ik heb eb/I have eb

doet dat zeer?/does it hurt?

nee, zegt de zee/no, the sea says

een zee heeft geen zeer/seas don't have pain.

Frank Eerhart

Both collages are made in the technique of my previous post, paper collage, gesso, acrylics and stamping with stamps made by me.

Buckle
5"x7"

This week's collages (1)

Four collages after glueing down the papers

(click)

the bottom right one

La Vie en Rose
5"x7"
mixed media

Wild Alliance

It is all collage with me at the moment... I'm happily playing around in my studio, trying to find my style (and in doubt whether I will ever find it)

These pictures are from a collage I rediscovered in one of the big, heavy books that I use to store my collages. I was putting the latest results in, when I found this one among others that are either finished or still wait for that final touch ;-)

About a year ago, I think, I made collages inspired by Martha Marshall's blog .

I used a big patternsheet of an old sewing magazine as a base, painted big areas in all kind of colours with acrylic paint and pasted pictures and text pieces at random. Then, using a window (frame) marked 5" x 7" rectangles that I liked and cut these out: you get a lot of collages from one pattern sheet I can tell!!

I showed some of them in this and this post, below is another one:

detail

Wild Alliance
mixed media, 5" x 7"

P.s: I love how everything falls into place, it seems, when making collages!
Only one week ago I was sailing the Heineken Regatta, across wild seas between the islands of Anguilla and St. Maarten/St.Martin and now, one year after making it, I find back this collage and can only agree with the picture and the text: wild alliance

Le soleil joue

first results

same technique as my Saturday post,

skipping some pictures and

then:

'magic' happened,
finding this picture suddenly made the collage look like an old stucco wall.
Somewhere in a sunny, faraway place, might be Tuscany, could also be the Provence,
imagination assisted by the text:

Le Soleil Joue
mixed media

SXM Unpolished (3)

(click for details)

Dutch Cul de Sac

Sint Maarten

Stingray collage

phase 1: magazine cut-outs on watercolour paper

phase2: after applying some glazes of acrylic paint

phase 3: gesso, some stamping, violet acrylic paint with palet knife
and finishing with a glaze of goldyellow

Stuck!!
Finding this picture of a stingray that made the collagebackground look fresher...
I think it is finished now...

Stingray
5" x 7"

collage on watercolour paper

Problems in Paradise

Internet has caused a lot of problems this week. There seems to be something wrong on the route from the responder on our roof to our inside computers. The provider tried to help, but only made things worse by reinstalling new software on our router, so now we don't have any connection left, arrrrrghhhhh... Time to work on my papercollages!

This tuesday I started four, in a modest colourscheme, laid out before I started to work. All went super, I was following a workshop on the internet (was possible still then). Put on several washes of acrylic paint and then did something stupid: varnishing what I had then. Had the intention to paint slightly over that afterwards, but as soon as I had put the varnish on I realised that I had made a mistake, I think this is called 'learning by trial and error', isn't it?

So I had four pretty interesting backgrounds ready, not in my usual style at all, as a matter of fact they looked kind of ' Italian, or Middle Age-y' to me, but I liked them. Then I was stuck: how to finish them, or one? Painting being no option I concluded that only building further on the collage would do, so this morning I found proper images for two of them, will show the collages as soon as we're online again. No pictures today, as I am internetting from the Public Library.

I think this weekend I will mainly use the advantages of Paradise: going to the beach for a tan and a swim...

Have a great weekend!

Heineken Regatta

rounding the last buoy

it's very hard working during the race!

Here is a link for a youtube film about Sunday's race:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvesZ0ZDcy8

Sunday I sailed the Heineken Regatta for the first time, oh boy!

It was raining all day, it even was cold, we were wet and hungry, no time to eat however during the race, for it was very exciting!

The last etappe of this annual event started in Marigot (French side of the island), the first buoy lay somewhere near Anguilla, then back to the south west point of Sint Maarten again for the finish in Simpson Bay (first picture).

Though I have been feeling seasick-iish (I took medicine for this) during the biggest part of the race, I enjoyed this spectacle very much. Now I know that it is really about the sailing, not only the beer drinking afterwards...

Thanks to the guys that invited us on board!

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Marigot, St. Martin

No. 3 and 4

As I already told I made four paper collages last week. For me it has been a good start. I have been working this way in a series before and liked it then as I liked it now, so I think this will be my working method for the weeks to come! This time the colourscheme was more or less the same, but the subjects differed. Monday will reveal what colour has 'chosen' me now, for this is something I am not in control of at present. Probably it's better to choose from my stack of papers before I start and thus limit the possibilities, so much to learn still...

Charl Eli

collage 6.5" x 4.5"

magazine cut-outs

on watercolour paper

Buddha

collage 6.5" x 4.5"

Have a great weekend!

Results (continued)

Caribbean Man

collage, 6.5" x 4.5"

magazine cut-outs

on watercolour paper

Results

Caribbean Girl

collage, 6.5" x 4.5"
magazine cut-outs

on watercolour paper

Hi!

As you see the collage looks quite different from what I anticipated yesterday. Thinking about how I could achieve in paper a similar veiled result like the one in my last post, I jumped to the conclusion that this way of working is not right; it would have taken to much trouble to imitate it in paper and you can even wonder if this is desirable.

Digital collaging has different possibilities than the 'real stuff' as someone once called paper collage to me, both are artforms that deserve their own character and recognition. Now I really have experienced what I already had read and heard ;-) Btw: I looked up the correct meaning of the word: smitten and I feel pretty ashamed, because I found out that this particular word may have sounded quite bragging to you. And being the beginner that I am, I hope you will understand that I did not mean it this way, sorry for that! What I did mean was that I liked and was enthusiast about the effect of that digital collage. And not being a native speaker it can happen that I think a word is correct while it isn't at all, that's the finetuning I miss...

On with the collage: I made four of them this week. These four are quite simple, just tearing and cutting the magazine pictures in colours that I liked, the subjects are different but the colour scheme is more or less similar. Caribbean Girl is the first one of this week's series. Like the yellowish digital collages of last week, it makes even me feel happy (and I am not exactly missing sunlight!).

Thanks for visiting, more collage work tomorrow,

Regina

Working on

this...

Started a new series of paper collage yesterday. Had something in mind like ocres and rusty colours, but surprise: my papers led me this way! All four of them are drying and waiting for the next step/layer. This young lady kept asking: oh please Regina, can you work on me in PS? Just to get some more ideas and inspiration, perhaps... So I came up with this: bottom layer an unfinished paper collage, layered with a black and white picture from the archives. Not a good idea, for now I am smitten (can you say that in this context?), I want to finish it this way, but maybe in some more turquoisy color. But how am I going to do that? Stencilling, stamping, screening? Whatever it will be, I have to dig in my toolkit and first work on that! But I am loving the process, this unplanned and spontaneous way of how things go. More in future posts, stay tuned and...

Enjoy your day!

Regina

SXM Unpolished (1)

Colebay, Sint Maarten DWI

In July 2008, after having read several blogs regularly, I decided to start my own. I longed to 'meet' fellow artists, to have a place to show my creativity and I wanted to be a real part of the blogosphere. One thing more I decided at that time, was to be positive about the island we live, which is not always easy! But I felt that if I emphasized to look at the beauty, I could better cope with the ugliness and poverty that you meet inevitably too. It took me about four years to get used to certain streets, vistas, circumstances and by now it feels more or less like home to me. Being positive and showing the beauty of this island certainly helped, at least it helped me. In most of my banners the word Caribbean is part of a sub-title. I show pictures of beautiful beaches and places I go. Mostly I work on these a little in Photo-Shop, some boosting (thanks to the actions of Pioneer Woman)and some cropping, thus leaving out the ugliness and yes: emphasizing the beauty. But in essence these places are and look like Paradise (whatever and wherever that may be...)
During this almost 2 year period of time, I now and then wondered if this showing only the beauty was all right. When you arrive on this island and the taxi takes you to your hotel, you come across these places that have nothing in common with the beauty, still they also belong to Sint Maarten! They even might cause an unexpected culture shock! I have been thinking about this dilemma a lot lately and have come to this solution: why not start a category of pure pictures, SOOC (straight out of the camera), not PhotoShopped, cropped or whatever. Sint Maarten and St. Martin as can be seen from the car, en route to a stay in 'Paradise'! So I will show a picture every Monday from now on, unpolished and pure, without words, without judgment, see for yourself, just with the name of the neighborhood:

SXM Unpolished