My friends say I'm very koi

I'm turning another vintage pair of Docs into wearable art.

This is super fun, and I'm hatching a business plan for sure.  Name suggestions, anyone?  "Art and Sole" is already taken, not surprisingly.  I'm toying with some other puns (Sole Proprietor, for example, is my current top choice), and also making a list of just cool words (Citrine, Peradventure).

with a shiver in my bones just thinking about the weather

This is the anthem for all Seasonal Affect Disorder sufferers in the world (including yours truly).  Why is Natalie Merchant so perky while she sings this? 

I see the signs of spring starting, and the snow is gone except for in the shadows, and we've had a few warmish sunny days so I know it's going somewhere...but these last few weeks have been very, very challenging for my mental and emotional energy.  The sky in Ithaca is often a coal grey that sits about 3 feet over your head in a dark smooth blanket.  I am literally working from my bed today, with computer and sketchbook and pot of tea and two cats. 

You want a pair too, don't you?

Always on the lookout for different canvases.  Leather paints (not pants) on thrift store Doc Martens, painted last night after years of wanting to do this.  Thai-style spirals and cherry blossoms.  It was very very fun, and I want to do more...think there's a business opportunity in this?

Sulpher and onions

I have a lasting curiosity and love of tropical fruits, the weirder the better.  Some of this comes from all the time I've spent at ECHO in Florida, where I learned that the apple of Adam-and-Eve fame was more likely to have been a rose apple. And even though I draw the line at larvae (see this post), I love trying new foods and am fairly adventurous that way.  And tropical fruit, WELL, what more delightful way to explore new flavors?

Imagine a giant spiny fruit that stinks, like sulpher and onions gone wrong.  Stinks so badly that it's banned from some hotels and buses in Indonesia.  This same fruit tastes like a custardy piece of sweet heaven.  A fruit that polarizes the population into two camps, those who passionately love and whose who completely abhor.  I had heard about durians for years, and had wanted to get my greedy little hands on one so I could see for myself this dichotomy.  My friend Becky (super healthy lovely raw-foods-only) confessed once that she loves durians, and also told me that you can find them in the freezer section at the local Asian grocery store.  The first durian I bought became the centerpiece of a potluck soon thereafter.  Yes, half of us loved it, half hated it. 

Being recently back from the tropics and yearning for any sign of spring and any break from the blandness of Ithaca in early March, I took a durian over the Becky's house a few days ago.  Her small daughter also loves them.  We cracked it open and gleefully devoured the ice-cream-like deliciousness inside.  There are five pods inside, each with a few large seeds.  It was frozen, so the smell was minimized.  I can imagine it's a whole different thing on a hot day in the sunshine.

Look at this thing.  Who was the first person to say "hmmm, this big spiny thing that fell out of the tree and smells weird...let's EAT it!"

Monochrome

I woke up this morning to an unexpected 2 feet of snow.  Yesterday started off at about 45 degrees and raining, and it all went slowly downhill from there.  But I had to laugh when I went outside this morning and really just couldn't see my car under the drifting.  Just in case I was mourning the absence of snow and winter while in Thailand, I've had a good dose in the last week.

Yes, I've been back about a week and a half, no blogging though because I was basically sick and grumpy and jetlagged, which doesn't make for interesting and worthwhile blog topics.  Re-entry is always a little rough, coming back from adventures and sunshine makes my life in Ithaca very pale and insipid.  I'm doing my best to brighten life up here with the colorful tropical things that came out of my suitcases.  Here are my Thai banners on the snowy porch this morning.

I have some interesting work right now for the Montezuma Wetlands Complex and Sunbeam Candles.  Good clients, good people.  I'm also getting ready to get excited about the start of the farmers' market again.  I have a few ideas for new paintings too, based on the colors and shapes of Thailand.

So I have a snow day on my hands.  Going to organize my studio, get my tax paperwork together, work on some sketches for a client, hang out with the cats, and figure out how to make sticky rice and mango for dinner.

Cartoon biceps and bargaining in Thai

Today is my last day in the ISDSI office, and so I thought it might be appropriate to show you the main project I have completed for actual work in my time here.  Oh right, I was working....not just running around the city shopping and eating and looking at beautiful temples!

Raise your hand if you've ever heard of a garuda.

I hadn't either until a few weeks ago.  A garuda is a mythical creature, half-man-half-bird, very strong and fierce and fights and eats dragons and serpents.  It appears on the seal of Thailand.  The director here wanted a tough-looking garuda design for their new CrossFit gym.  Here's the end result.  I spent a long time getting the biceps just right.  Apparently all men spend part of their teenage years drawing cartoon biceps and superheros, but ya know I skipped that stage of development and so it took me a long time.  He's swinging a kettlebell.  Looking forward to wearing this t-shirt!  I also worked on some other t-shirt designs for ISDSI, and did a few illustrations for my language teacher.

(By the way, if you follow that last link and scroll way down you might see me teaching a capoeira class.)

I fly out of Chiang Mai tomorrow evening, and begin the long trip home.  Of course it will be sad to leave, I really love it here and have enjoyed learning the language and exploring and feeling like I really live here for a few weeks.  But on the other hand, I look forward to getting back home and working on what's next.

I had a great moment last night, empowered by language and a wee bit of cultural understanding.  I had met up with some girlfriends for a Thai massage, and then had to get way back across town to go to the evening Walking Street market one last time.  Armed with my newly-learned Thai and some bargaining skills, I asked a couple of tuk-tuk (motorcycle taxi) drivers how much it would cost to get a ride to the Tha Phae Gate.  They conferred and said 100 baht.
"Paeng maag!" I replied (too expensive!)
"Mai paeng!" they came back (not expensive!)
"Hahaha!  Mai bpai!" (I'm not going)..and I smiled and walked away and crossed the street to flag down a rot daeng (red bus taxi).  I asked the driver...and got a ride for 40 baht.  That's more like it.

Glittering

 

 Walking by the wat with the mirror walls near the north gate of Chiang Mai.

A brief pseudo-ethnography of farmers' markets

This is an entry for my market friends at home.  As most of you know, I'm part of the Ithaca Farmers' Market and therefore have a certain fondness for this genre of food shopping.  Thailand is full of markets of various kinds, from the tourist-ridden weirdo Night Bazaar to the local farmers sitting by the side of the road with their basket of papayas.  Here in Chiang Mai we tend to get our food for the house primarily at the market down the road (pummelos, cashews, eggs, spices, greens, kilos of passionfruit, fresh orange juice, snacks wrapped in banana leaves, etc etc)....I often walk there in the afternoons after leaving the ISDSI office.  I also love strolling the Sunday evening Walking Street market downtown, about a kilometer of road closed to traffic and completely packed with art and craft and food vendors. It's so fun.  Even though I come from the other side of the world, I feel a certain solidarity with the vendors at these places, setting up their displays and being nice to customers and answering questions and hoping to make a living...I know what that's like.

There's a mix of people at all of these markets...some seem to be peddling items that were made or grown elsewhere, but some people are definitely there with their own produce or art/craft.

Here's a couple of photos of farmers' markets.  The first is the Je-je Market, a small organic market which is open two days per week...we go on Saturday morning and stock up in an attempt to limit exposure to the otherwise ubiquitous chemicals.  The second is just a nice shot of a bountiful display of tropical vegetables available at the market that's open every day down on the east side of the old city near the moat (there's also a noodle vendor there, which has been my source for fresh wide rice noodles as I continue the quest to make my own pad see eu).

Here be dragons

I'm exhausted!  One of my best friends from waaaay back had a few days off in the middle of a business trip to visit, and the last few days have been a whirlwind tour of every possible fun thing to do in Chiang Mai.  Belynda and I hit the Chinatown shopping area, back sois full of scarves and bags and embroidery, the Sunday Walking Street Market, ate our way through the city (street food and restaurants), massage and manicures, fruit shakes and iced teas, temples, more markets, walking all over the place, and the grand finale of a fun-and-scary bus ride at rush hour.  She is on her way to the next leg of her trip, and I'm definitely going to bed early tonight. 

I'm feeling rather pleased with my rudimentary Thai language.  I might sound like a two-year-old with a bad accent, but I can negotiate market prices, talk to tuk-tuk drivers (and arrive in the right place) and ask where a bathroom can be found.  Not that I always understand the answers, however...

But now it's back to work, I have something like three t-shirt designs to work on that are slowly not going anywhere.  But they will look fresher in the morning.

Here's my favorite photo from the last week, dragon feet at Wat Buppharam, just outside the east gate of the city.

The other, OTHER white meat

My life is now complete.  I have seen a street vendor at the famous Chiang Mai Flower Festival peddling fried insects.  And before you ask, no I didn't.

Color

I had a great day yesterday.  I could understand enough Thai on the bus to know that the people were talking about food (although people often talk about food here, you would too).  I walked through the northeast corner of the old city, which is full of small streets and no traffic and flowers and shops.  I took a full-day cooking class (oh yes I did).  Got a pedicure for about $7.  Returned triumphant from the market with cashews, acacia, wide rice noodles, and tiny bananas.

Here's a dose of color for my friends on the east coast being snowed under.  I have to confess it's hard not to gloat a little when I read the Ithaca weather report and see phrases like "freezing drizzle" and "windchill of -2."

In which my drawings are useful

Alright everyone, this right here is one of the best parts of my job.  I mentioned a few posts ago that the Echo folks had me illustrating a seed-saving tutorial.  I used big markers on heavy canvas, to create sort of a flip chart which can survive being rolled up and taken to villages.  Not that these are particularly amazing illustrations or anything, but it's a true pleasure to work on a project that will directly be useful, and possibly helpful.  Here it is in action last week at a seed swap meeting in a Palong village.  This tribe is seriously displaced, having left their homeland in China and then needing to flee Burma and now trying to find a place to be in Thailand.  It's a longer story than that involving land rights and citizenship issues, and far more convoluted, and I don't know most of it so I won't try to tell it. 

Of course, the Palong women who are listening to this presentation probably already know more about saving seeds than I ever will.

I realized long ago that I'm not cut out to be an actual agricultural development worker, or an environmental educator, or an ecologist who has the knowledge and equipment to save the world and everything in it...even though that's where my interests and passions lie.  However, I can draw, and therefore can offer that skill to the people doing the groundwork.