Arts Lab 6.0: Sona Tamrazyan - Month 4

Week 1

The fundraising. Our team did a great job, we realized it’s important to make connections and negotiate. For the first time I saw the Romanian Christmas traditions in real life, with all the costumes, dances, music and the parade. It was mesmerizing. The week was extremely cold so almost all the days I spent in the bed and was very sick and I had to skip the Christmas market we did in the Târgu Frumos park and the exhibition in the library. It’s important to take a rest from time to time.

Exhibition at Negru Zi. It was a bit challenging as we never did an exhibition in this style, at a cafe. But we tried to organize the space and invite our friends. Also the owner of the cafe was so nice and supportive so I think we made it work. 

We closed the week with the secret santa reveal party. I was Ella’s Santa but she left for France a bit early so I had to reveal myself earlier. She liked all the gifts I did and it made me feel happy. So almost everyone left for their home countries or to travel.

Week 2

Vacation. I invited my mom to Romania, and we had a full week of adventures, culture and New Year’s eve in Bucharest and came back to Târgu Frumos together. 

We started to plan the next exhibition, which is MARr.

The last days of the week were full of research and history of Rromani people. 

I learnt a lot of new facts about these people and got inspired by their history for my next artwork. I decided to make pictures of coffee cups, for fortune reading, and of course people should try to read them and write down what they see.

In my culture “Coffee cup reading” is also very popular so I wanted to make it part of my artwork, and because the origins of this activity is coming from the Rromani people I feel like I’m a bit closer to their colorful culture.

Week 3

My mom spent 5 more days with the Arts Lab, everybody was so welcoming. We really felt like a full family with a caring mom in the house :)

The week started with Armenian night. I was really excited to share about all the small details and the culture. My mom and I tried to make some iconic traditional food, I hope everybody liked it.

I managed to make coffee for some people during the Armenian night, and take pictures of their cups, with help of Nikola, as I am not the best photographer :)  My mom and I went for a walk in Iași and discovered the Armenian church, which is one of the oldest buildings in Iași. It was built in 1395 and has been restored several times. That made me feel like home.

My mom left Romania, and I was ready to go back to the busy routine.

Week 4

Well I will be honest, this week I felt very demotivated, but still tried to do some small steps for the artwork and the project. 

I started editing the pictures for the posters I will do for the personal artwork and design the way I want them to look like. I helped a little bit Luca with her artwork as it was her first time working with a hot glue gun :). Now she can do it by herself, I’m so proud.

We came up with the workshop idea for the residency with Katrina. I want to try working with clay, that’s one of my goals during this project. I will learn and teach at the same time which is going to be quite challenging but I’m ready for it.

I spent the week in front of the computer trying to find inspiration and do some research. 

I hope I will get my motivation back and start the next month with full energy.

See you soon!

Report written by Sona Tamrazyan, she's from Armenia and she's one of the 14 volunteers participating in Arts Lab 6.0, a project co-funded by the European Union through the European Solidarity Corps program.