The Urban Art Retreat | and Sisters’ Place

Please help URBAN ART RETREAT. PLEASE SUPPORT OUR WOMEN’S RESIDENCE, OUR PROGRAM TO SUPPORT PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES, HELP UNDER-REPRESENTED PEOPLE AND UNDER-REPRESENTED ARTISTS. Help us to help young children and teens who we help with healthy food, tutoring & homework, and offering them a place to express themselves.
HERE IS AN EASY WAY WHERE YOU GET SOMETHING TOO!

Go to: http://www.stelladot.com/sites/hhcharmboutique

In the top right corner, click “Find Your Hostess” enter the following, select the event and click Continue/
First name: Urban Art Retreat
Last Name: Fundraiser

When done correctly, across the top of the screen people will see this:

Party Host: Urban Art Retreat Fundraiser Your purchase will count toward this Party

If they don’t follow those quick and easy steps then purchases will not count toward the fundraiser. Just a reminder, I’ll be donating 20% of the total retail sales to Urban Art Retreat so the more we spread the word, and get others spreading the word, the more goes to UAR!Please
Go to: http://www.stelladot.com/sites/hhcharmboutique

In the top right corner, click “Find Your Hostess” enter the following, select the event and click Continue/
First name: Urban Art Retreat
Last Name: Fundraiser

When done correctly, across the top of the screen people will see this:
Party Host: Urban Art Retreat Fundraiser Your purchase will count toward this Party.

If you don’t follow these quick and easy steps then purchases will not count toward the fundraiser. Just a reminder, owner will be donating 20% of the total retail sales to Urban Art Retreat so the more we spread the word, and get others spreading the word, the more goes to UAR!

Please tell all your friends and relatives. Buy for yourself, buy gifts for others! Every bit helps. If you like jewelry anyway…this way you can also do a good thing to support a worthy non-profit that really needs your support!

August 29 at 7 p.m. is the date for or next fundraiser. UAR will have art on display at Bolat’s African Cuisine Restaurant. On Sunday we will be there while Bolat’s is hosting a fashion show by local designers. The proceeds will be shared by Bolat’s and URBAN ART RETREAT. Nyjiela, the manager, is organizing the fundraiser. Cold drinks, fashion show, art show, and art for sale will be featured at the fundraiser. We might even try to get Mylia to sing! Please help support the UAR by attending!

Here is a 2x annual report from Erika Klotz. She is a member of UAR National/International Advisory Council.

Hello all!!

I hope that you have all been well and enjoyed summer! here it went by incredibly quickly and it is hard to believe that our kids go back to school on Monday! Here for your reading enjoyment are the highlights and updates of my last four months here in Mexico!

The World Cup
I consider myself very lucky because, after becoming a futbol fan back in ‘04 when I first studied in Mexico, I have since been in Mexico for the last two world cups! When I lived in Miacatlan back when I was a volunteer, I quickly learned that I had to ally myself with a Mexican soccer team. For the kids, it was part of your identity and whether I used it to form bond with kids who were also fans of that team (in my case, Mexico City’s Cruz Azul) or create mock rivalries with kids who went for opposing teams, it was clear that soccer was a big deal. Everyone loves watching the world cup games because players from Mexican teams are picked to represent Mexico on a national level and come together to play as a whole. We ended up being allowed to watch all of the Mexico games during work over breakfast (chilaquiles, molletes) with coworkers (the high school kids watched the games at school, too!) or with the kids over lunch. The kids decked themselves out with face paint, employees worked on their quinielas (brackets), and we all had a lot of fun cheering.

Unfortunately, Mexico did just what it did 4 years ago; played great in Round 1, bombed in Round 2. Their loss to Argentina was nothing but painful to watch. But all in all, it was a lot of fun. I enjoyed exchanging emails with contacts at our fundraising offices overseas and I decked myself out in Germany’s colors to go watch the Germany-Argentina game over breakfast with an Argentinian volunteer. I was there to watch them lose after how they treated Mexico. Also, a mere two days prior to the World Cup games, the Chicago Blackhawks won the Stanley Cup! I was not going to miss that, and so I spent the night at a relatively empty sports betting bar where my friend Daniela and I were the only people there to watch hockey and I could yell at the TV as much as I wanted.

Graduation and summertime!
Graduation is always a fun time of year and we are so proud of our children’s accomplishments. I have attended the graduations for the past 5 years, so I know the routine pretty well. One of my favorite things is that each graduating class (from elementary and middle school) does graduation waltzes. By name alone what should be incredibly boring is actually a mesmerizing combination of waltzers slowly maneuvering across the basketball courts to create various formations and designs. The best part is the music. The teachers always pick some sort of 80’s song, usually “Total Eclipse of the Heart” and a wild card song or two. This year featured a techno remix version of Celine Dion’s “The Heart Will Go On” and Selena’s “Dreaming of You”. It is 20 minutes of pure bliss. It was also great to catch up with former volunteers who came down to show their support at the graduation.

This year I was very proud to watch the remainder of the girls that I cared for while volunteering graduate from middle school. They have since moved to Cuernavaca as they will begin high school on Monday. It is really nice to get to see them more frequently and watch them adjust to life at our high school home where they have more independence and really start to mature. The high school graduation was also really special, again, so proud. Two new volunteers arrived in July to work at our high school home and they have been really great with the kids. One of the new volunteers is all about traveling, so I have been getting out of Cuernavaca a little more, which has been nice. With overnight buses, I have traveled to Oaxaca, Guadalajara, and Querétaro on weekends which has been exhausting, but fun. Michocán and Guanajuato are on the horizon and I have not been to Mexico City in three months and it is calling me back. Overall, the summer passed quickly with summer activities in full swing and our kids took multiple excursions to water parks. It was nice to have the kids home during the day, eating with them at lunch, and having them pop into the office, peeking at my computer screen to see what I was working on, creating post-it note art. But, as usual, time passes quickly, and it is now time to get back into the school routine.

“Ya viene el aguita”
The rainy season toyed with us in terms of starting, but when it arrived mid-June, it was here to stay. When I lived in Miacatlan, which is at a lower altitude, the hot months (April & May, prior to the arrival of the rainy season) were HOT and you just took it for granted that you would be drenched in sweat 24 hours a day. In contrast, here in the highest part of Cuernavaca, I did not so much as need a fan! The hot months were warm, no doubt about it, but nothing compared to the inferno heat of lower altitudes. I did not miss the sleepless nights spent loathing the heat one bit. The other shocker of living in Cuernavaca is how much it rains! In Miacatlan, it usually rains only at night, not interfering much with daily life. This is not the case in Cuernavaca. Here the sky opens up and the rain beats down whenever it chooses to. Sometimes in the morning, often in the afternoon, always at night. We also got a lot of rain as a secondary effect from the hurricanes which caused so much flooding in northern Mexico. Due to the hilliness, the streets instantly turn into rivers, water flowing downhill as fast as it can. I immediately went on a futile quest for inexpensive rain boots and spent the month of June plodding through ankle deep water and keeping a stock of socks and a towel at work. Luckily, a former volunteer brought me some spiffy pink rain boots that immediately became the envy of all the girls in the house (they will make sure that when I leave, the rain boots stay) and strangers have stopped me to ask me about them, too. What can I say, I’m a pink booted fashionista. Now I take the rain boots and my giant umbrella with me where ever I go and they have saved me from getting completely drenched many a time. The best rain boot memory will always be carrying one high school girl piggyback across a flooded street, almost falling and lots of laughter.

The rainy season has other consequences, too. Since I am at work all day and often out and about on the weekends, doing laundry became quite difficult. With the ever present threat of rain, I did not want to leave clothes out to dry on the clotheslines because the rain could come and drench them again. I know that my landlady’s mother would take them in for me, but it would be a lot of work. My landlord hung up a clothesline under an overhang, but clothes that I hung there remained damp for days on end, shaded from the sun, the air never drying out enough for them to dry. After over a month of not being able to do laundry and having no more patience for damp towels, I buckled down and lugged 17 pounds of clothes and towels to the laundromat. Compared to the dampness of the air and everything around you, the laundromat, with its whirling dryers and enveloping dry heat and clean smells is like entering a greenhouse in the middle of winter. It was the best $8 I have ever spent

The rainy season has also brought a few other surprises. There is a little fuzzy bug that I call the moisture bug. It crawls along, not really doing anything, just being fuzzy. Whenever I sweep, there are always a few wriggling in the pile I sweep up, or when I come home I stomp a few out of existence while crossing the floor. The daddy long legs that I let live in the corner so it could kill things takes no interest in the moisture bugs. Also, the paint in my bathroom has taken to peeling, driven off the wall by an excess of moisture. But it’s not all bad, I really do enjoy the climate here. The upside of the rainy season is that everything is green and growing, the water is important for life, for farming, etc. The Aztec rain god Tlaloc would be proud.

New Vocab!
quemacocos – sunroof of a car
polinas – I began going to Zumba classes (LOVE it!) and the instructor broke out the polinas, ankle-weights!
duelo – grief, loss
gula – gluttony, one of those fun sounding words, especially if you are hungry “tengo gula!”
poliolio – modpodge, a great sounding word in either language!
sufrida – someone who suffers – i got called this by being slightly dramatic about a frustrating work situation
pleonasmo – being redundant. somewhere i picked up some incorrect, redundant Spanish, saying things like going up upstairs, or in inside. “voy a subir arriba” or “se metió adentro”. the kids often find this humorous and ask me to repeat how exactly I am going to do what I have just said. I am working on correcting this error, but a pleonasmo still gets by every once and again.

Photos:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2067754&id=40800206&l=53f33969dc

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2075843&id=40800206&l=e2a335b830

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2069727&id=40800206&l=af2232cf7a

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2070365&id=40800206&l=6420ba84d8

That’s all folks!
I continue to enjoy my job and the volunteer who works with me on projects is a great help! I will put in mygoodshop.org one more time for a shameless plug as well as nph.org (How to help –> Projects)
Also, September 15th, Mexico turns 200! ¡Viva México!

Much love and hugs!
Erika

We are down to 3 interns from the southside housing complex. Tanisha, Tatiana, and Martika claim they still want to work here at URBAN ART RETREAT. Even though it turns out that it is not a glamorous job! They still want to work here. Even thought they only get to work with children one day a week, they still want to work here. Even though they get dirty and grimy and get paint on them, they still want to come to UAR and perform their jobs! The interns from Oakwood Shores have been working very hard to help out at URBAN ART RETREAT this summer. They have been doing a lot of cleaning. Not long after they started, the URBAN ART RETREAT art studio was flooded. This involved a whole lot of work. Dianna and the interns had to take everything out of the basement art studio. Then they had to take even more stuff out side into the gardens. It looked like a junkyard here for a week or so. Then everything had to been cleaned really well. And cleaned some more. And more stuff taken out. No sooner than we got it all out into the gardens to dry out and sort out….we had to bring it in to the cleaner art studio. Each day bring in more and more stuff. Throwing stuff out along the way. In the process of doing this we realized they needed some little skinny tables to put stuff on in case there was ever a flood again!!
The teens had learned show to build a bench out of salvaged wood. Cassandra brought wood she got from the dumpster of a construction site. The girls started measuring and cutting with Dianna and then Melissa helped the interns finish up the bench with screws, nails, and braces. The bench was then painted with bright colors and a garden design. Dianna calls the extremely sturdy bench- the Big Butt Bench. Even a big person can sit on this big bench. Using the knowledge they now have in carpentry, the interns built 5 skinny tables for along the art studio walls. They painted them very bright and gay. Spots and everything! They also have done some research on statistics about domestic violence. They have arranged things, and swept floors, pulled weeds, and much more.

And then comes the newest employee- Chantara. She is working in the office. She is doing some grant researching, setting up presentations about violence against women, children and people just for being different. The presentations will be open to all volunteers, interns, neighbors,and the public in general. We will post the dates and times.
Chantara is also working on mailing lists, recruiting gigs for have Studio Will Travel, and getting new attendees for Differently Minded Art Studio. She answers the phone when she is here. She is getting UAR off phone lists. She will begin the process of open houses and especially an open house for interior decorators and designers. We have art for interior decorators to hang in homes and offices.
She will act as liaison to a neighborhood school to set up an after school program where the older kids from that school will help our younger kids on the block with their homework under the watchful eyes of adult volunteer teachers.

And if all that is not enough, we have a summer Intern from France named Chloe. She is visiting a list of area resources to see how we can connect and work together. Chloe is also writing a paper on UAR and will take part in our programming while she is here. I hope to have Chloe write a post this summer on this website! Please come and visit and meet Chloe on Aug. 28. We have an art reception planned for that day, and Chloe will be the hostess of the art gallery. Come and say hello.

On August 28, 2010, the UAR will present a party to celebrate the summer and lots of things are planned to take place. We will have an art show reception from 1-4 p.m. The show will feature art by UAR artists members, participants from our various programs including seniors in C.H.A. building, residents from Sacred Heart Home, children from the summer program, emerging artists who have shown in our various art gallery shows, students from our After School Matters spring program, adults from our Differently Minded Art Studio program, and even art by one of our residents!

We will offer a veggie cookout and marshmallow roast in the gardens. The kids will present a Talent Show and be in the Spelling Bee. There will be a balloons animal maker, art making tables, and much more.
This event is free and the public is welcome to join the neighborhood in the fun times!