Arts Lab 7.0: Monica Lourenco | Month II

This month was more chilled, with activities but more focused on our personal artwork and time for ourselves. I think I’m already getting used to this kind of adaptable schedule. We continued the Folklore Residency, finished our personal artwork for the Folklore Alternative Museum and exhibited it four times, I gave my first SuperTalk with Salma about ceramics making (October 26th), we went to several events, met once again with local volunteers, and we started with the JEMOM Museum – we visited the Jewish cemetery. We also had our On-Arrival Training between the 20th and 24th of October. As done in the previous report, I’ll share more details and reflections about some of those activities.

It was also a special month because we had a Halloween party for Eva’s birthday (super cute but spooky!), had enough free days to go on a trip together to Constanța, I finally met the crafter who made me a personalized jewellery tools bag, tried to cut Andrés’ and Mohamed’s hair, and I’m not alone anymore in a three-bed room: Hedvika just arrived (a good matching roommate!).

Folklore Residency (October 15th – 17th), Trinitas School, Târgu Frumos

Continuing the Folklore Residency with Eva, we started the first day of this week cutting egg boxes to make papier mâché (paper paste) to dress the sculptures that the students had previously made. After this, we put the cardboard pieces in water to later shred them. The goal for this day was for them to see different traditional clothes and, through collage, make their own costumes. They glued them on top of the collages of the creatures. They seemed to enjoy it until they were bored again and we needed to improvise and play more games until the end of the class.

On the second day, we shredded the paper, squeezed the water out of it with pieces of fabric, and added glue to the mixture. Then, each one of them took their own creature and dressed it up. Everything was done on the floor! Although the goal was for them to use the collage as reference, they just did their own thing and added paper paste on the sculptures. After they finished their work, and before the ending hour, everyone started to leave the room and we cleaned it by ourselves. It was unexpected and we couldn’t do anything about it; they were saying they had a class after this one. I felt powerless, I just wanted this residency to be over.

On the third day, Eva was sick and I went by myself with Mircea. When we arrived, the students didn’t want to work. The girls felt that they were working for the boys because of the last day (while doing the papier mâché, most of the boys were just sitting and didn’t want to do anything). I needed to ask Mircea to translate my words. On this day, they were supposed to work for themselves and not in groups: write the story of their creatures using guidelines written on the chalkboard and finish the sculptures with glitter and collected leaves. After telling them this, they decided to cooperate and keep going with the work. It was interesting to see how I would act being alone with the students. Unlike when I was with Eva, I didn’t do games and ended the class before the hour. Maybe, again, I wanted this to be over. But I also didn’t feel the need to keep them longer. I decided to let them go and enjoy themselves. The games are really important for them and I need to work on that, mostly on my posture and how I interact with them. For the next residency!

Pumpkin Festival — Festovleac (October 18th), Pașcani

Ahhh, the Pumpkin Festival in Pașcani was so fun! We were invited to create activities and a cultural presentation of our countries in this event organized by a local organization. The event was a food competition between local schools with food and desserts made with pumpkin. We got the chance to taste some of the delicacies from each stall and also the traditional Romanian soup (ciorbă) and, of course, palinka.

For the activities, some of us were photographing and recording the event and the others were doing face painting (I was in this group). It was my first time painting faces and it was interesting! Some requests were small drawings like leaves, pumpkins, ghosts, stars; and others more sophisticated like full-face foxes or the characters Stitch and Angel. I think next time it’s better to have some drawings in a book for the kids to choose from; otherwise, it can be very overwhelming to make drawings that I may not be comfortable doing (like Stitch, grrr!).

The cultural presentation was ok. I didn’t want to go dressed up as a fado singer, so I replaced the playback part with a game for kids with trash bags. It turned out to be a super fast presentation, not what I was expecting. We are on YouTube! 

After this event, we went to some stores for art supplies and visited the city center of Pașcani. There is a long staircase with a magnificent view of the lower part of the city (of course, we needed to take a picture at that spot). It was a long but enjoyable day; I’m glad we went.

Photoshoot for the MAF’s Catalogue (October 25th), Ruginoasa

After we discussed what we wanted to do for the MAF’s catalogue (its theme), we decided we wanted to embrace Romanian culture by wearing its traditional costumes. The Cultural Centre of Ruginoasa accepted to loan us their costumes (mulţumim!), some of them more than 100 years old - what a responsibility and honor at the same time! We saw the permanent exhibition with the traditional tools and costumes used by the villagers and some photos. Later, we started to undress the mannequins and began the photoshoot, first outside the Centre and then next to the Cuza Palace, in the garden. We were all very cute and happy.

Meetings with the mentors

This month we met four different mentors.

On October 25th, after the photoshoot with the costumes for the catalogue, we met Alexandra at her family’s house. We talked about entrepreneurship interconnected with NGOs. She has a company with her husband called Ely Bass related to 3D scanning and virtual reality. It was a very interesting conversation. Between topics, we had different dishes to eat, from ciorbă to sarmale and also sweets (the cake with whipped cream was delicious). The main purpose of this dinner was to make a second photoshoot with traditional Romanian food but we totally forgot, and we just remembered it the next day. Nevertheless, it was a very pleasant day.

On November 1st, we met Iasmina, Mircea’s friend, and we talked about two different key competences: active citizenship and interpersonal skills, and the ability to adopt new competences. We did several games where we shared where we stand when thinking about country, European and world citizenship, our values, motivations. We also learned how we can become better selves as facilitators and human beings.

On November 8th, we met again with Oana to talk about budgeting for ourselves in this project and also for European projects. It is a very important skill and we learned about the piggy bank method which I, for sure, will use in my future life.

On November 11th, Cosmina shared with us her knowledge about the history of Romania related to the Jewish population. It was a hard topic but important for us to get into the JEMOM museum. She also taught us how to better handle stressful situations and more about universal human needs, which I was not aware of.

MAF Personal Artwork process, exhibitions and activities

For my personal artwork theme, I decided to work with the Capra dance, one of the winter traditions of Romania. The goat symbolizes prosperity and good fortune related to livestock and harvest in the upcoming year. Since my main goal in this project is to explore the jewellery field, I wanted to create a set of necklaces. For the chosen techniques, I took inspiration mainly from the Craft Market that we visited in September. I used techniques such as wood carving (Capra’s head), beads with the pattern used for the Folcloristica banner, crochet, tapestry, embroidery and macramé. I also incorporated tilia seeds collected in Târgu Frumos and corn husks given to us at the Pumpkin Festival, connecting in this way all the events and experiences we had during the past few weeks. I really liked the result and had a lot of fun doing it.

We prepared our exhibition at the HeART Hub, everyone with their own space and interactive part incorporated. We also exhibited the residency artworks. It was a challenge to make everything look pretty and cohesive with the materials we had available. We concluded that we needed more planning for future exhibitions.

The inauguration was on November 5th. The city mayor, teachers and general public were invited to come. A lot of people came indeed; we were apprehensive about how many people would actually come. We made a presentation about our artworks and then the public was free to make their own tour through the space. For my interactive part, I invited people to write wishes for the upcoming year on a piece of paper, hang it on the strings and open the mouth of the Capra three times (ritual-like). I was mesmerized by the wishes; some were very deep and special and I felt it was important somehow for the people who came. At the end, I was tired but very happy with our group; we all did a great job as teammates and worked very well together.

We made replicas of the same exhibition for the local volunteers (November 8th) and for the students of Liceul Moldova (November 11th). On this last day, the students from the residency Eva and I had facilitated came too! Although I thought we had left the class with a negative image, when they saw and met us, they gave us hugs (what a relief!).

On November 7th, we were also invited by the House of Culture of Târgu Frumos to do activities with kids related to our personal artwork. These invitations are part of the Alternative Museum Caravan concept, where we can take our art wherever we are asked to. I decided once again to take the mask workshop that worked very well last time. And this time was no different; the kids were very talented. Although not related to Capra, it fits well in the Folklore theme. For the future, I plan to create activities related to the personal artwork using clay or other materials for kids in advance, to be prepared for this kind of invitation.

The Guitars Day (November 8th), Clubul Copiilor, Târgu Frumos

We were invited to be the public audience of a national event called Guitars Day, where musical groups meet to play songs. The group of Târgu Frumos couldn’t go to the event location so they arranged a Zoom meeting in their school. We had already seen some of the girls playing at the library last month, so we knew some of the songs and could follow them. They are really good musicians and I felt very proud of them.

The school really mesmerized me. It looked like a jungle, with lots of big plants AND taxidermized animals and alcohol jars with specimens! I immediately saw an opportunity to work with them, not as an artist but as a conservator (my study specialization). Some of them were in really bad shape, especially the jars. As I was told, the collection was prepared for the school some decades ago and since then it has not been taken care of or used. These types of collections were common in public schools to teach biology-related subjects, not anymore (unfortunately). I would be super happy if I can give some love to those animals — let’s see.

Constanța group trip (October 27th – 30th), Constanța

Yes, we did a group trip to Constanța! Organized by the lovely Eva with a lot of effort and love. We wanted to see the sea! We took a night bus and arrived at 6 am, and oh my, how much I missed seagulls! We did a lot of different things, from sleeping at McDonald’s, trying ramen, Vietnamese and Greek food, going to the Art Museum and to a thematic and spooky bar, walking a lot through the city and the beach, and some of the people even went to swim. It was really nice. Despite being all in a group, we also took time for ourselves without making other people feel sad. Wonderful memories were created there.

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As a conclusion, it was a lovely month, and I can’t wait to start the JEMOM museum. And already two months have passed. This is going super fast; somebody slow it down!

This monthly report was written by Monica Lourenco, our Portuguese volunteer taking part in a seven-month Arts Lab 7.0 mobility, co-funded by the European Union under the European Solidarity Corps.