Tag Archive for 'Peru'

Peru or Bust: Please help fund our Kickstarter!


Schematic for La Luz, to be installed by Celso at the old Inca sun temple in Cusco, Peru.

Yes, I’m asking for money.

This summer, I’m going to be working as studio assistant/translator/chasqui for my partner-in-crime Celso on a series of installations that will go up at the Qorikancha  the old Inca sun temple in Cusco, Peru. For the project — which is titled La Luz — he’ll be building a series of architectural installations around the ruins grounds (and the attached Dominican monastery) using several hundred bottles of Inca Kola, the nuclear yellow Peruvian soda (see images above and below). It will be a pop paean to the gold that once covered the site. The piece will be pulled apart and re-installed in a new location every three days. At the end of each installation, the public will be allowed to take the Inca Kola home.

The museum that manages the site, the Museo Qorikancha y Convento de Santo Domingo, has commissioned the piece. But as with most arts institutions in Peru, the budgets are tiny. Which is why we’re asking for your help. This is going to be a beautiful project — unlike anything the museum has ever done. So pleasepleaseplease help us get to Peru! Any donation, no matter how small, makes a difference.

Please click through to Celso’s Kickstarter to send us your pennies. We have all kinds of goodies for rewards. And we promise that your donations will be wisely and prudently spent (on lots of Inca Kola). If you’re a regular reader, please think of this as a way to help me keep doing what I love to do — namely, writing about great-weird art I find wherever I happen to be.

Thanks so much! And thanks for reading C-Mon!!!

xox,
C.

Miscellany. 02.07.12.


Banana man, Lima. (Photo by El Celso.)

A year-in-review (sort of).

Spied on our cross-country sojourn: A pick-up truck, outside of Austin, Texas.

It’s been a weird year. I drove back roads across the U.S. Threw a fish across state lines. Stared at an artist in a museum atrium. Taught art yoga. Spent the summer watching a “reality show” about art. Rowed around Randall’s Island in a handmade boat. And joined a religious procession in the Andes. I’ve covered most of these activities here on the blog (or over at WNYC). But a few things have eluded me — either because I just haven’t had time to get them down in pixels, or because I hadn’t quite sorted out my thoughts.

So, in lieu of a year-end listicle (I produce enough lists throughout the year), a little bit of stream-of-consciousness ruminating instead:

Continue reading ‘A year-in-review (sort of).’

Photo Diary: Peruvian cakes.

Continue reading ‘Photo Diary: Peruvian cakes.’

Mona Lisa. Mona Lisa.

For anyone under the mistaken impression that the only place to see the Mona Lisa is at the Louvre in Paris: You can also find her in Lima…at my Tía’s house.

Photo Diary: Heads up.

Spent yesterday at the Museo Pedro de Osma in the Lima neighborhood of Barranco admiring colonial religious everything, including Cuzco school paintings of archangels, inlaid mosaics of the Virgin and — my favorite — some truly awesome 18th century sculptures of heads. From top to bottom: Jesus, St. John the Baptist and an anonymous figure who I’m convinced could have been a member of Los Bukis.

P.S. I’m still in Peru. But you can find this week’s Gallerina guide to artsy goodness over at WNYC.

Martians for sale.

In Chachapoyas.

Photo Diary: Utcubamba Valley.

Continue reading ‘Photo Diary: Utcubamba Valley.’

Lost in Peru.

But you can still find my artsy New York listings over at Gallerina.

Adventures in white-knuckle Andean bus rides.

Over the weekend, we took an epic 10-hour bus ride from the northern highland city of Cajamarca, to the Utcubamba Valley town of Leimebamba. (See a map here.) The most dramatic portion of the trip is the journey across the Río Marañón Valley. The fun begins when you come up over a high mountain pass and plunge into the valley, which is vertiginously steep — with mountains that rise almost 10,000 feet.

For the bus, it’s switchbacks all the way down. And then switchbacks all the way back up. Over the course of the ride, the climate changes repeatedly, from cutting highland chill to tropical heat to cooler but steamier cloud forest. The best part: It’s one-lane all the way, even though the road has two-way traffic. At times, the road is so narrow, it looks like a mirage. And naturally, there’s nothing in the way of barriers between the edge of the barreling bus and the precipice below. It is all kinds of freaky-gorgeous.

More pix and video after the jump.

Continue reading ‘Adventures in white-knuckle Andean bus rides.’