Lisa Call

On a Roll

Yesterday I completed the South African Impressions project by wrapping up some loss ends and posting the final photos.

Today I finally finished putting up the design walls in my new studio. I did a huge home remodel/addition last year and the house and new studio were completed at the beginning of April. More details on building a studio are here, and all my construction photos are here.

I got all but 16 feet of design wall up and then stalled on the project. Between show deadlines, travels to Europe and family issues there never seemed to be time to tackle this last bit.

Which means I’ve been using my studio with this pile of styrofoam sitting in the corner the last 8 months and it’s been really bugging me:

 
to add to the unfinished energy-draining look this ladder has sat in the corner for 8 months:

Work

Determined not to start the new year with this mess still in my studio today was the day for putting up the remaining walls. The day started off on the wrong foot and after 5 hours of being awake I finally made it up the studio. Serious avoidance going on I believe.

The first wall went up quickly as most of the work was done on it and it was small – just 4′ by 11′.

The second wall was not as cooperative. Big mental block – how as I going to put a 12′ x 11′ wall up by myself and did I have room on the floor and how was I going to cut that angle to match the ceiling and on and on.

With many (as in hours) of breaks on facebook I made it through the project and the answer to all the questions was “it’ll all work out”.

First step was to cut the styrofoam to fit the space (holes for outlets and the angle at the top) and to assemble three 8′ x 4′ sheets so it was 1 big wall (I do this with pins, glue and poster board – I’ll post photos tomorrow of details).

Here’s the wall all pieced together – and look at that – it fits perfectly. I love it when life is easy (if you click to see the larger picture you can see the seams between the pieces of styrofoam):

Next up is covering the thing in flannel (because fabric sticks to flannel without pins – static is very handy). This is a major project sewing together 44 yards of flannel into a big sheet. Again – detail photos tomorrow.

The Results

Once covered in flannel the styrofoam is screwed to wall and wa-la – design wall. Here it is in all it’s glory – 12 feet long and over 11′ high at the peak (in the corner is my last unfinished project in the studio before I start work for my solo show – hand dyed fabric for sale – I need to photograph it and get it listed – it’s been waiting 6 months):

Here’s the other design wall I put up today. This corner is my storage corner for work in progress. The other 3 big walls are working walls – so I can 3 huge textile paintings going or up to 6 or 7 smaller in the works at the same time.

The quilts in these storage walls are the larger pieces from the South African Impressions Project. They are ready to be quilted. Also some labels and bindings and other misc hanging out:

I did an additional 2 hours of cleaning in the studio and set up this table where I had a pile of stuff no longer needed. Now my kids can bring their lap tops up the studio and do their homework with me instead of hanging in their rooms (I’m sure they are just thrilled with that idea):

And since I was showing everything else here is the design wall I use most often as it is closest to my cutting table.

One thing I wasn’t sure about is what it would look like above the windows with the design walls on either side of them. Looks okay and it’s a great place to hang art and misc.

Above the furthest window are some toys I bought in South Africa. Love the wood.

And so now, 8 months later I can dance in the studio again. The energy is quite different now that it is done. Here’s to completion!
 

Day 7 – The Free Day

It’s been a while since I posted any photos from South Africa. I do plan on getting through all 21 days of the tour eventually, this is just a low priority task at the moment, one for times when I’m too tired for the studio.

Day 7 of the South African Tour was a free day while we were in the Drakensburg, the mountains in central part of the country. I chose to spend my free day hiking and was happy Barb and Jessie invited me to join them on a hike toward Cathedral Peak. We didn’t aim for the top but to get a great view of the peak.

It was a beautiful day and the hike was gorgeous. These photos bring back only wonderful fond memories.

[For new readers - I spent a month in South Africa in August - had a fabulous time on the arts and crafts tour - you can see previous posts here.]

The Hike To Cathedral Peak

This photo was taken about an hour into the hike. We’d done a bunch of up and had a bunch more to go.

A bit later looking back to where we came from.

Up the valley – looking back again to the start. Notice the difference on the 2 sides of the valley – one green – one brown – amazing the effect of the sun!

The smoke in the distance is controlled grass fires – they do that a lot. Also the peaks in the background are the escarpment that gently slopes down towards the west. Funky thing escarpments.

And finally – after a lot more up that originally anticipated (I think 2 1/2 hours but might have been 3) we see Cathedral Peak. It was amazing!

Very rocky – just like colorado.

The view over the valley.

Someone thought we were dinner.

The dark streak is a burned grass area.

Hiking back down (much faster than going up).

Then I started taking photos of the grass.

Isn’t grass cool!!!

Love the splotch of green grass in the sea of brown. These colors heavily influenced the fabric I dyed for my South African Impressions textile paintings.

It was a fabulous day. We had a long leisurely lunch after the hike then walked back to our camp – another 1/2-hour of walking. Or at least that is what I remember – it was a big walking day.

This was definitely one of the highlights for me on this trip.

An Adventure with Frans

August 7th was the day to see San Rock Art in the caves with our guide Frans, an anthropologist and rock art specialist. There are around 20,000 individual rock paintings at 500 different cave and overhang sites in the Drakensburg.

After a rather adventurous hike (Frans might benefit from a GPS) we found the location of the first cave (really more of an overhang). Not visible in the photo but it’s to the right:

 

Before we started up, first a stop at the waterfall for everyone to catch up. This is one of the very few photos of me taken in South Africa:

 

Another view of our destination – we had to go up to about the level of the white cliffs on the right hand side of the photo. Note the taller mountains in the background also:

 

And finally – the paintings. I can’t recall how old these are, somewhere around 1000-4000 years old I think but I didn’t write it down. It is very difficult to date because there is almost no carbon in the paint to date. (click on the photos for a larger image to see the art better):

 

An Eland:

 

Running people. Frans talked for quite a while about the paintings and it was absolutely fascinating. He might not be the best at directions but he certainly knew his rock art paintings.

 

We sat in the cave for quite a while listening to his stories. The roof of the cave also caught my attention:

 

Cathedral Hotel

We had lunch at the Cathedral Hotel after our long hike. In my opinion this was one of the best meals of the trip.

I’m not a fan of pineapple but they had a pineapple, tomato and cucumber salad that was delish. And for dessert – home made icecream and milk tart (like custard) – I had 3 servings – yum yum. (I ended up gaining 5 pounds on this trip – buffets can be evil things – oink).

The Cathedral Hotel is even closer up near Cathedral Peak than Didima Camp where we were sleeping. The view was stunning (Cathedral Peak is the one to the far right):

 

Another Adventure with Frans

After lunch Frans said he knew another closer place to see some rock art that was a shorter walk so we loaded back into the bus and headed off to this secret location.

When we got down to the river he noted “er, there was less water last time”. There was no way to walk along the river to see the paintings.

Well except I wasn’t to be deterred and started to crawl along this ledge and was able to find the paintings (you can see the last couple folks crawling back along the ledge in the center of this photo):

 
Only 4 people followed me, everyone else waded across the river to try to see them from the other side. With Frans pointing things out from the other side we were able to location the human figures and 3 eland. I didn’t bring my camera on the ledge so no photos of that art.

After crawling back (there was about 2 feet of clearance) I also took of my shoes and waded across the river as there was more rock art on the other side.

Well except not really – it had been destroyed or worn away by the cattle. All that was left were 2 legs about an inch high.

I did find the rocks to be beautiful so it wasn’t a wasted trip across the water:

The Views

The walk back to the bus afforded us some beautiful views of the valley and Cathedral peak:

Didima Camp

After the hike we rested in our rooms and enjoyed the view of Cathedral peak before another big buffet for dinner (if I never see another buffet again I’d probably be okay).

 
This was one of my most favorite days of the tour. I got to go hiking, Frans was delightful, the food was amazing, the weather was gorgeous. I am definitely a mountain girl.

Travel

The 5th day of the South Africa, August 6, we traveled in our big bus from Johannesburg down to the Drakensburg Park in Kwq-Zulu Natal.

It was our first ride south in Johannesburg and it look similar to other directions. Lots of houses.

There was a layer of smoke over the southern part of Johannesburg that I hadn’t noticed much in the city. You can kinda see it in the 2 photos below. Lots of fires to heat and cook results in this layer of yuck in the air. Kinda like Denver in the winter.

Love these duplexes with each half painted a different color. And a huge sea of them.

 

And like everywhere else – gotta have the satellite TV. Somethings are universal.

 
The drive south was beautiful. We took the scenic route by the Sterkfontein Dam – an interesting combination of water storage and hydro electric station that is part of the Tugela-Vaal Water Project. They pump the water around depending on if they need water or electricty.

Mostly it was just beautiful to drive by for this tourist.

 

Water.

 

More Water.

The mechanism to pump the water back up the mountain is here. But it can’t be seen as they covered it all back up after building it. Very cool.

Lunch

We had lunch near Winterton at a place called Thokosiza, shops and an amazing lunch. We had a brownie that everyone talked about for the rest of the trip as it won the award for best dessert. I failed to take photos of my food, but we had some amazing meals.

While waiting for our lunch we got to watch the Weaver birds. We had a lot of bird folks on the trip and I have to admit I’m not much of a bird person although I enjoyed the few that made themselves very obvious.

Weaver

 

The nests of the Weavers. Pretty clever houses hanging in the tree.

 
There were aleo all over South Africa and many beautiful flowering ones at Thokosiza. I did some sketching and plenty of photography also. We were all swarming about taking photos of the birds and flowers (and shopping).

To Cathedral Peak

We stopped into a rug weaving/candle making place nearby and then loaded back in the bus for the drive up into the Drakensburg mountains. One of the top holiday destinations in SA and for good reason – it’s incredibly beautiful.

Our destination was to Didima Camp- near Cathedral Peak.

The drive up up to mountains was amazing. Through a tribal area (Zulu? I wrote that down but later remember being told they were not zulu so not sure).

I took a zillion photos of the homes and when I get them processed and up on smugmug you will see many more.

I’m pretty sure views like these would be rather expensive in a place like California. Gorgeous!

 

Photos out the bus window are an artform that I sometimes mastered and sometimes didn’t.
 

The mountains had a very similar feel to the Colorado Rockies but also very different. They were gorgeous. It was late afternoon when we arrived.

First view of Cathedral Peak.
 

Cathedral Peak from my hotel room – my view for the next 3 nights.

 
Just 3 more nights and my incredible trip to South Africa will wrap up and I’ll head back to the US. I haven’t had the desire to do much blogging while here as my head is swimming with all we have seen – arts & crafts plus much culture and politics and landscape and history.

It’s all fabulous and much to process.

We just got back from visiting a project where they are doing potato stamping on fabrics and making cushions and other household items. We pretty much cleaned them out of stock, which is generally the story everywhere we go. They said it was their lucky day. Ours also.

Photos will be posted some day, after I’m home and sort through them all.

In the meantime, the photo above is of some rock art paintings we saw a few weeks back in the Drakensburg. Beautiful.

Cradle of Humankind

Today was a trip through a rhino and lion reserve to the Cradle of Humankind – one of eight World Heritage sites in South Africa.

The Cradle of Humankind Site comprises a strip of a dozen dolomitic limestone caves containing the fossilized remains of ancient forms of animals, plants and most importantly, hominids.

At least seven of the twelve sites have yielded hominid remains. In fact, together these cave sites have produced over 850 hominid fossil remains, so that to date they represent one of the world’s richest concentrations of fossil hominid bearing sites.The scientific value of this area lies in the fact that these sites provide us with a window into the past, to a time when our earliest ancestors were evolving and changing. Scientists have long accepted that all humans had their origins in Africa.

 
We received a private tour by one of the archaeologist around the above photographed dig site. Very interesting stuff for sure.

Animals

As we had to pass through a game reserve to get to the dig site we got to see some animals also the way.

Rhinos and Warthogs

Cape Town Zebras

Zebra, Sable Antelope, Ostrich and maybe something else

Landscape

I love the grass prairie in this area, which they of course do not call a prairie but something else – probably something with the word “veld” (for felt) in it. Either way the landscape is beautiful and definitely inspiration for my South African Impressions art project.

Travels

I take a lot of photos out of the bus windows as we travel down the road. Hundreds of them. When I get home and have a proper computer to work on I’ll be sorting through them all and putting all of my photos up on smugmug.

Here’s one of my favorite roadside photos from today’s journey. It’s not perfectly focused as many of these are taken at 100 km/hr but they are okay-ish.

Need a muffler?

The sign says “Mr Exhaust” and the post to the right in front of the white pickup are all the mufflers.
 

Timeline

We just spent 3 nights up in the mountains (in the Drakensburg) where I didn’t pay for internet. I’m also not always interested in writing a blog post as our days are packed full of activities.

The result is my blog posts and real-time are now quite out of sync. Tour Day 3, this post, occurred on August 4th. I’m going to continue to post the days in order on my blog and not worry they might be a week or so behind reality.

We are in Durban for the next day and then are heading towards some animals where I plan on seeing a lion, even though I’m told that is difficult, which is fine, I still plan on seeing a lion (or 3 or 5).

Mapula Embroidery

Women of the Mapula Embroidery project in their classroom

 
This morning we drove out to Winterveld to visit the women of the Mapula Embroidery project.

With the help of the Soroptimists the Mapula Embroidery project was started in the early 1990s (before the end of apartheid) with the goal of enriching and empowering the women of Winterveld.

As we drove up the work was hanging on the wash lines waving in the breeze.

The subject matter of the embroideries vary and range from South African animals and plants to politics, health issues (AIDS, cholera, etc) to gender dis-empowerment and male authority. Individual expression is encouraged and the results are quite interesting.

These are some smaller pieces they also had for sale, some were made into cushions but many were not yet finished. The subject matter of these smaller pieces were almost all African animals as they are sold in tourist shops around South Africa.

This is one of the pieces I purchased and the woman that did the work. It was one of only 2 pieces with a white background instead of black and it is much larger than most.

I’m going to write more about about this project after I return home as it is quite interesting and if there is interested I’d like to see if I can bring some of these embroideries to the states and help sell them as it is an excellent project. Although that is something to think about after I return home.

Ndebele Village

In the afternoon we visited a Ndbele Village also near Pretoria.

They had recreated housing in styles over several hundred years, all of which were interesting and I loved the shapes and designs. The traditional Ndbele still paint their houses and we have driven by many of these in our travels.

Misc

A few other photos of from the day:

 
All of the house photos from the previous post were also taken on this day on the drive up to Winterveld and down to the Ndebele Village

Housing in Soweto

Yesterday I mentioned we went through Soweto and the only photo I took was of the shantytown. While a large population does live in these conditions the majority of that area is houses. Most are smaller houses with 4 rooms but there are also very wealthy areas with homes costing over a million Rand.

There are also some smaller multi family homes called elephant houses that were very interesting and usually quite beautiful. On each end was a 2 room living space and in the center is a 3 room apartment. Most often each of the 3 families painted their section of the house a different color, resulting in some beautiful homes. I haven’t seen these anywhere except in Soweto so far. (Here’s someone else’s photo)

There are also buildings that look very much like condos in the US (although much more interesting colors) and single gender hostels (long desolate buildings with single rooms that aren’t as inviting and often without electricity – a photo).

Housing Shortage

Our local tour guide gave an interesting talk about the housing situation in South Africa and the gist of the situation is they cannot build them fast enough. They have programs to give government homes to those that have no income and prorated mortgages for others. There are just not enough houses as of yet.

Since the first democratic election in 1994 the government has build over 2 million homes but they estimate an addition 5 – 7 million backlog. They have large numbers of immigrants from neighboring countries that adds to the housing crisis.

Houses

I find the 4 room houses interesting. I love the simple lines and have taken a zillion photos of them – mostly from the bus as it goes down the highway so they aren’t the best quality.

I suspect I’ll be taking many more house photos as the weeks go by and occasionally I’ll post a group of photos of them.

Constitution Hill

On Monday, the arts and crafts tour of South Africa started out in Johannesburg with some history. First stop was a tour of Constitution Hill and the new home for the Constitutional Court.

This site was originally a prison with a rather unpleasant past. From the official website:

Constitution Hill is the new home of the Constitutional Court, the protector of our basic rights and freedoms. Constitution Hill is also the site of Johannesburg’s notorious Old Fort Prison Complex, commonly known as Number Four, where thousands of ordinary people were brutally punished before the dawn of democracy in 1994. Many of South Africa’s leading political activists, including Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela, were detained here.

It’s quite interesting that they chose this spot for the home of the Constitutional Court. They’ve reused the bricks from one of the old cell blocks for one wall of the court.

With a “those that forget their past are doomed to repeat it” theme. I think it’s really quite brilliant and the architecture ingeniously ties the past to the new future for South Africa.

The tour resulted were some excellent opportunities for photos of walls, the inspiration behind my Structures Series. Looking forward to using these photos in my new African Impressions Project.

Old Prison Wall

Court room wall rebuilt from old bricks as a reminder of what the past held. The opposite side of the room symbolizes the future.

Wall in the courtyard in Number 4.

Newtown Cultural Project

Next stop was an artist’s proof studio in a revitalized area in downtown Joburg called the Newtown Cultural Project.

They relocated to this new location after a fire. Very cool how they’ve used the plates salvaaged from that fire in the stairwell.

Soweto

We spent the afternoon on a bus tour through Soweto, a collection of African townships south west of Johannesburg.

High lights were a traditional African lunch (salad and rice for this vegetarian – they eat a lot of meat in South Africa), a tour of Nelson Mandela’s house, a stop by the Hector Pieterson Memorial and a lengthy drive around the area.

It doesn’t all look like photo above, in fact, most of Soweta is not like this, but I wasn’t taking photos and instead enjoying the experience. Now I want to go back and photograph because the houses were mostly simple but the colors were amazing.

The Bushveld Animals

On Saturday Laetitia and her husband took me to the Bushveld, a sub-tropical woodland ecoregion of Southern Africa, an area with well-grassed plains (ie the Veld or “Felt”) dotted by dense clusters of trees and tall shrubs.

The Bushveld is one of the most mineral-rich regions of the world, which is very cool, and even better (at least for what I wanted to see) this area had a lot of animals also.

We went to Dikhololo, a private resort and game reserve where they have removed the Big Five, ie the animals that might want to eat me – the lion, the African elephant, the Cape Buffalo, the leopard and the rhinoceros.

Although technically these are the animals that are the hardest to hunt (I suppose they are more likely to trample not munch). Not that one wants to have a pack of wildebeest chasing after them but at least it seems safer as they are smaller.

Either way the point was we could get out of our car and walk around and get close to the animals without a fence between us, which was pretty cool.

We saw around 10 species of animals and I have photos of them all but will only process a few while on my trip.

We saw a group/herd/gathering of 10 giraffes. Really beautiful graceful animals.
 
 

A sable antelope – beautiful creature.

And of course lots of zebras – love love the stripes.

I can’t recall the name of these antelope but they were putting on a demonstration of head butting. It looked rather painful but they were pretty entertaining.

The Bushveld Landscape

Beautiful. Simply beautiful.

Hartbeespoort Dam

After the animals we checked out the Hartbeespoort Dam area. Beautiful also and also some nice art galleries.

The Weather

It’s winter in Africa at the moment so it’s not hot and humid. On the day we went to this game reserve they were having an unusual cold snap and it was exactly that – cold. Brrr.

But we were very fortunate because it rained much of the day but only when we were in the car. When it was time to get out and walk around it would stop raining.

So I had nice overcast skies for photography but didn’t end up getting wet. Excellent timing for us.

Right as we got home we had some beautiful hail – very very unusually for this part of Africa in winter:

Sunday

Sunday was a relaxing day with Laetitia and then a drive to Johannesburg for the start of the tour. I met up with the group Sunday evening and we are in full group tour mode. I can tell I’m going to have to get a lot of sleep as we have a full itinerary every day.