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Category: Lisa Flynn

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Lonely children, beautiful art

A day painting a mural with kids reminds me of how precious friendship is.

Joe Anna Arnett painting with two girls in Pecos, NM.

Jane Chapin bought a beautiful but worn adobe building in Pecos last winter. Her goal is to create a new Art Center for the town. This will be a place where kids can get more art education than they do in school. The art center will also be a base for adult painting workshops.

Regular readers may remember Jane as the organizer of our trip to Argentina in March. She’d planned to paint a mural with schoolkids in Buenos Aires at the end of that trip. They would work from artwork done by the Pecos kids. In return, she’d bring back artwork from Argentina that would become a mural in Pecos. This cross-cultural effort collapsed with the world shutdown from COVID-19.

My students pitched in too. Here’s Jeannie Cole working with a young lady named Mariah. (Photo courtesy of Linda DeLorey.)

Normally, art centers take a percentage of tuition as their fee from instructors. As Jane sketched it out, the new art center would work differently. We teachers would teach our workshop and then do a project with the local kids as our contribution. I don’t often teach kids, but I like them just fine. I was looking forward to working with them.

Then COVID-19 hit, and the whole world ground to a halt. The county dragged out the process of issuing permits. Building renovations are still only half finished.

New Mexico imposed draconian limitations on visitors, so that hotels and B&Bs were essentially closed. My workshop only happened by the grace of God and the graciousness of Jane and her husband, who moved the whole operation to their home in the mountains above town.

Jane and a few of her minions.

As of last week, the Pecos school district was doing remote learning only. This is absurd: to date, all of San Miguel County has had 103 cases and no deaths from COVID. This is a remote, rural, poor community, with some 30,000 people spread out over 4700 square miles of mountainous terrain. That means lousy or non-existent internet and cell-phone service. And it means extended isolation for these kids, who haven’t been in school since the end of March.

Jane gamely changed the mural project so she could salvage something for these kids. Instead of an exchange with Buenos Aires, she would have the Pecos kids paint their own images on the walls of the Pecos Art Center. She transcribed the drawings to the walls, and worried that nobody would show up.

But they did, and both kids and parents were enthusiastic. There were enough volunteers, including artists Joe Anna Arnett, Lisa Flynn, Gail Ewing, and two of my students, Jeannie Cole and Linda DeLorey. We were able to work very closely with the kids, and most of the mural got painted. It’s lovely, a sign of promise and hope.

Not finished, but most of the way there.

But the greatest joy of that day turned out to be the simplest thing. We watched these youngsters play together, chatter, run around and simply have fun. Their happiness was palpable. They’ve been lonely. One mother admitted to me that she’d allowed her daughter’s best friend a socially-unsanctioned sleepover, because the girls have been so sad. I lived in the country. I know that kids who ride the bus do most of their socializing in school.

I left shaking my head at the utter stupidity of adults. Kids don’t die from COVID. While they could bring it home to their families, the chances are pretty remote in a place like this. Yes, children are resilient, but it’s creating completely unnecessary hardships for them.

I’m sorry for skipping Monday’s post. I got in at 2 AM, and there was nothing left in my tank.

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That way madness lies

Stranded, we don’t have the luxury of recrimination. We recognize that we all must pull together.
I amuse myself with a weird little still life.
Yesterday was a wonderfully warm day of rain. It wasn’t heavy, like one would expect in a rainforest, but light and lacy. In a moment, the sky would cross from bleak to brilliant and back again. Rainbows broke spontaneously over the mountains.
Despite the exotic beauty, none of us are traveling with umbrellas. We decided to stay inside. Lynn Mehta and Lisa Flynnpainted interiors. David Diazagreed to sit, so he was painted by Jane Chapin, Natalia Andreeva, and Kellee Mayfield. I made a desultory effort at a still life, above.  As you can see, my heart was not in it.
Jane, Guillermo and Cristina puzzling over this morning’s news.
Mostly, we attempted to find a way home. The State Department recommended that we contact a travel agent in Buenos Aires. We did; they could book us from Buenos Aires to America, but we are two thousand miles from Buenos Aires. The current rumor is that flights will not resume from El Calafate at all.
What we have found is that the Patagonians themselves are about a thousand times more informed and helpful than any central administrators, government or airline. I confirmed that the airport was closed over WhatsApp; my new friend Sebastian answers my messages, which is more than I can say for Aereolinas Argentinas.
Kellee takes our temperatures daily.
Of course, our Patagonian friends have only a few people to worry about. Our State Department and the airlines have tens of thousands of people on their docket. Still, a day spent on logistics left me feeling fractious. I’m not anxious, but I realize how oppressive our bureaucratic culture can be, even in small doses.
The irony is that we are at least as connected as people back home. Kellee gave an interview to an Arkansas television station; it was their lead story. Yesterday, I ordered a new brush roll from Amazon. That reminded me that I should Facebook my postal clerk to tell her that we won’t be home any time soon. I’m getting photos of my grandkids, family news, and even the occasional phone message.
Laundry, quarantine style.
My fellow artists remain patient, cheerful and kind. Yes, we could have made different decisions that resulted in a different outcome, but there have been no recriminations. Yes, we are running out of wine and clean clothes. But we agreed on our course of action, and we continue to support each other as we muddle through. Nobody talks politics; nobody blames anyone, and certainly not our government. We recognize that, in extreme conditions, we must all pull together.
At one point, Kellee pointed to Guillermo and Cristina and said, “See this couple here? They are the epitome of what humanity should be in a crisis.”
That—the best, rather than the worst—is what we’re focusing on. Paul exhorted the Colossians to “clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.” Nobody here is overtly religious, but they’re living that.

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Hiking in the Andes

“You don’t belong here,” the young men said. “Go home!”

Rio Electrico, by Carol L. Douglas, 8X10, available.
Whatever our quarantine meant on Thursday, on Friday we were permitted to hike along the Rio Electrico. The trailhead is a few scant kilometers from Hosteria el Pilar. The trail leads into Los Glaciares National Parkand ultimately to Chile. We wouldn’t be walking that far; the park is closed. However, we would have views of other distant glaciers and mountains.
We’re traveling with fairly light kits, but they are still full painting kits. They weigh between 15 to 30 pounds each. Mine is on the heavier side and I did not bring a backpack. My solution is to loop the strap of my messenger bag across my chest, like pictures of Navajo women in my long-obsolete schoolbooks. It works, more or less, although after 8.8 miles of moderate hiking, my neck was feeling the strain.
Keeping a low profile is paramount, so we traveled in two small groups. Mine included Kellee Mayfield, David Diaz, and Lynn Mehta. We immediately proved our lack of woodscraft by neglecting to download a map. Instead, we searched the dust for footprints, as if we were trackers in a spaghetti western. A few kilometers of this nonsense and we found the trailhead. It was marked with large brown-and-yellow signs, directly across the road from a parking lot.
Jane Chapin above the Rio Electrico.
Guillermo had warned us not to allow ourselves to perspire as we climbed. “This is not Amsterdam,” he said. The realization that we were hiking in the Andes came slowly, but it left us rather awestruck. If I had a bucket list, this should have been on it. Most of the hike was through a wooded glade that the ever-present wind could not penetrate. It was, indeed, warm. But when we cleared the trees, the piercing wind was frigid. Wet clothes would have been dangerous.
Our first destination was a refugia two hours up the pass. A kilometer short of it, we came across another band of our fellows—Jane Chapin, Natalia Andreeva, Lisa Flynn and Natalia’s husband, Alexander. They’d been driven back from the refugia. It was occupied by four young Argentine bucks, intent on riding out the virus in the solitude of Patagonia. “You don’t belong here,” they said. “Go home!” It has been our only negative encounter so far.
Argentina has banned internal flights because too many people are using the break to vacation. I understand. Most of us live undemanding lives compared to our ancestors. We haven’t learned to take danger seriously. The impulse to break quarantine is terrific.
Painting along the Rio Electrico. Photo courtesy of Jane Chapin.

But it didn’t matter whether these four twenty-somethings were survivalists or just want to party in peace. We were best off leaving them to it. We retreated along the riverbank and set up to paint a superb view of what may or may not be Glaciar Cagliero Sur. It was horrendously windy. I’ve painted in more pleasant blizzards, and I’m from Buffalo. “We’ve hiked two hours to paint for fifteen minutes,” laughed David Diaz.

Alas, we are again confined to the grounds. We will be allowed to roam when we have a certificate of quarantine, or when the Marines show up to rescue us. Alas, our second set of flights has been cancelled. Right now, we have enough flight credits to travel South America for a year, great whacking charges on our credit cards, and no way home.
Meanwhile, the US State Department is calling in all American citizens. That’s of very little use when there are no domestic or international flights available. Those of us with political connections have contacted them to see if the government can intervene.
Meanwhile, the clouds and the sky remain spectacular.
Matthew Parris has a wonderful little essay in this week’s Spectator on the thrill of apocalypse to school children and other romantic souls. We all like breaks in routine—for a while. “On how many gravestones in how many churchyards does that phrase from Romans 15, 9-11, ‘and they shall sing a new song’, appear?” he asks.
We’re in no real trouble. We are not miners trapped in a cave in Chile, or schoolboys caught in a cave in Thailand. (Note to self: avoid caves for the nonce.) Being compassionate people, we want the US government to rescue those in danger first.
However, the break grows old. We begin to long for a return to the familiar. Despite internet contact (which the hosteria laid on in the face of crisis), we want to see our family and friends again. To maintain sanity, we cling resolutely to our groove. We eat breakfast, we contact our families, we wash our unmentionables in the sink, and then we paint. And then we repeat.