art projects, underground music shows and alfajores:puro porteño

Entonces..

Yesterday afternoon I met Chelsea at the Recoleta feria to be the wing woman in her quest for a leather bag. It was one of the first days that truly felt like it was autumn and the break in humidity and high 80s weather was fine with me. Of the ferias I've been to, I've been to San Telmo twice and Recoleta about 4 times(it's a ten minute walk from my house)and between the two I like the layout of Recoleta better. It winds and loops and sprawls enough that people are not forced to explore its vendors like a strange sort of mass processional.



We began looking for her bag and almost immediately I saw a man selling beaded bracelets and necklaces. A blue bracelet caught my eye and when it comes to the color blue, I'm like a moth to a flame. Price was $25 pesos but I sweet-talked him down a little to $20. I then gave Chelsea permission to physically restrain me if I tried to buy anything else. We kept walking and found the vendor selling the leather bags she had seen before but the bag she wanted had been sold already. Tragic stuff. So we wandered around some more and saw some pieces of paper and drawings taped up on a big sheet-metal dividing wall just behind a row of vendors' booths. After a half minute of observing, I decided it looked like some kind of project that was (hopefully) open to the public. So we walked over and asked a young woman with a clipboard and paper what the dealio was and she told us it was an art project that her and another woman were doing for their class at UBA(University of Buenos Aires). Basically, they gave you a piece of blank paper to draw whatever you wanted to and afterwards they would ask you a few questions about what you drew and why. A free chance to draw whatever I want in the middle of a park? IN THERE like swimwear.



Chelsea and I grabbed some paint, water and brushes and started on our masterpiece which had no real theme or direction. There were a few cans of spraypaint and I kid you not, I lamented the fact I didn't have any stencils on me. Definitely going to knock out a few and keep them in the bolsa when I go wandering around. I painted the FOKUS eye and added "Arte es..." below it, then threw in the sun, some clouds and ocean waves for good measure. Chelsea painted a cat and some other dopeness I can't quite recall. While we were cementing our reputations as the next Picassos, a woman looking like Penny Lane 40 years of grass,pastillas and band chasing later, came by the project and after briefly talking to one of the women in charge, grabbed a can of spraypaint and went to town on the dividing wall itself. One glance at the faces of the two women in charge told me that this wasn't exactly what they had in mind and probably (meaning definitely) wasn't legal. She graffiti'd something along the lines of "leave us be, let us be free". We finished painting and answered the questions they had for us-why did we paint what we did, what did we think about street art. Afterwards, we hit them up with our own "Art is.../Arte es..." project and they were very willing to participate. One of the women quickly pulled up her sleeve and showed us her very own "Art is..." tattoo. It was crazy cool to find someone who had that kind of ink!

It was starting to get dark and we were starting to get hungry so we went to Palermo and hit up a Mexican restaurant. There were so much color on every square inch of the place that it was like a visual sucker-punch. Yummy yummy cheesy quesadillas and tacos hit the spot. If only they'd had jarritos.

Plan for the evening was a music show at the house of someone we knew in Buenos Aires. We were told to arrive around 9:30 and got there at 10p. We were mad early and Little Dragon was quietly hanging on the airwaves. Eventually more people came and the music started. Two acts played and while I liked both, the second act really went in. During the break, Chelsea and I talked to some of the musicians and collected some pretty great "Arte es..." phrases and photos.

After the music had winded down we hung around for a while and chatted with the musicians. All of them were independent musicians and artists and as party favors were passed around they gave us the heads up on a lot of great, off-the-beaten-boliche path places and people. As we headed out, Earth Wind and Fire's "September" came on the stereo-the vibe of the whole night was very chill and silly and warm and I'm excited about digging deeper into the underground art/music world of BA.
Woke up craving alfajores like nobody's business.

This concludes another random snippet of my life in Buenos Aires.
Over and out, amigos.

-j