When Gods don't Smile Down
We hadn't had rain for quite some time and the water reserves for next year were worrisomely low. Finally, the heavens broke open in the early hours of yesterday. After 24 hours of torrential rain of the like that produces flash floods, the city is sparkling clean, the plants are sighing with relief and my seventy year old tiled studio roof has been exposed in its leaking glory.
It's Friday evening.
No rain. La lluvia en Sevilla, es una maravilla…
I shoo my kids from the classroom as if they are reluctant to go and make my own dash to catch the last hour of CREAs drawing session. On a weekly basis, the group gathers in varying shapes and forms to draw together in their shared arts space. The night is falling and the lights glow yellow from the shop window in the converted commercial space, a glowing cats eye at the edge of the world.
Erika Espinosa and Rosana Balastegui are students at the local faculty, Angelino Carracedo is an artist by night, and Arturo Casarin is visiting temporarily from Mexico. Some aspire to full time art careers, but the opportunities are few and galleries very exclusive. Others make art because they need to. The age in the group tonight ranges from early twenties to seventies, but the majority are young and looking for the platform which CREA provides. The atmosphere is welcoming and warm, luckily for the model. Tonight the theme is “animal”. Other nights it has been Grief, or Red. The sinewy model makes a predatory lunge, her shaggy black mane falling around a small, narrow face and I am reminded of Egon Schiele.
Meanwhile, in between changes I chat with members. A group show recently finished in Malaga. The new publication is almost ready. The Eroticism of Drawing is a calendar publication made in partnership with a local erotica shop, featuring the work of local artists that make up the collective CREA. Just last week there was a book launch and a contract signed for book distribution throughout the Spanish speaking world. Things are bubbling. Artist Ana Arcas Espejo enthuses about a project she and her poet brother have just made together. She presses the book into my hands and tells me the editor is letting me have it as a gift.
I start to share some of my ideas for a project in 2008 back in New Zealand. Before long Ana, Nuria Mezquita, a poet and collaborator in CREA, and I were pouring over an art book project they were preparing and discussing image and word.
This is a collective pulling together successfully. It began around 2000 in the typical fashion of these things, a group of creatives, spearheaded by the fearless Antonio García Villarán, were looking for opportunities. Antonio rented and opened a studio to teach drawing. The objective was to offer an alternative to the institutionalised arts programme in Seville. As time went on, the studio became a looser idea and the artist tutor-relationship began to disappear, although there are still traces of the facilitator. About two years ago, Antonio bought a warehouse space where all the participators contribute to the costs. The group today is a driven, multifaceted set of characters and guises, interlinked, multi/cross-disciplinary, and propelled by a visionary.
Presently the collective consists of the following:
El Cangrejo Pistolero (The Shooting Crab): editors of poetry books, organisers of weekly poetry performances and lovers of words,
Rastro Music, organisers of music sessions,
The Cloud Conductor, designer, blog administrator, illustrator, artist,
CREA shared arts space
I note the absence of patron’s logos in their projects.
“No, no. We have no funding.”
The model takes a turn and on all fours, she bares her sharp teeth.
Seville boasts a population not unlike Auckland, but the depth of government funding nationally or locally is nowhere near as developed or as far reaching as New Zealand. On this point I note the pride in Antonio’s voice. “We raise money ourselves, we fund everything ourselves through our other jobs, design work, collaborations with others…” On the upside, this allows them a certain freedom. They don’t have to think how to couch their ideas in terms that tick the correct, politically charged government funding box.
However, to every silver lining there is a cloud through which the gods do not gaze. Seville boasts an International Biennale programme, but the local artists are ignored and left to find their own platforms for expression. Despite the fact that the Biennale of 2006 investigated themes of the marginalised, the artist as agitator, artist collectives and art/act-ivist movements, an invitation to attend, much less participate, was never extended to the local grassroots movements like CREA.
The session is wrapping up, as does the model against the now cold night air. The chatting and discussion will go on into the evening. Its 9pm, the night is yet young. I say my goodbyes with a promise to return with more ideas for my project. I’m excited. I step outside, leaving the warm yellow cats eye to make my way back through the darkened narrow streets. The threatening clouds have passed over without punishment tonight and I can walk happily with my thoughts. The moon is clear and almost full and my tummy is rumbling for food of another kind.
CREA Shared Artists Space, Seville, Spain
El Cangrejo Pistolero Publications, Poetry and Performance, Seville, Spain
