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Sara is another American artist who is staying here in Mooste. She is here in Estonia for nine months on a Fulbright scholarship doing landscape painting. She rents out an apartment in one of the "blockhouses"- I think their name gives enough of a clue to their appearence. This afternoon Sara invited me over for tea- when I arrived I noticed that the outside of the door was padded so fortunately enough she had a buzzer. Her living room was full of oil paintings, which she has done en plein air in various places throughout Estonia. The wallpapers in this apartment are outrageous, although a little distracting for viewing paintings. We sat down in her kitchen and discussed many aspects of creativity & insanity as well as the need for fiscal & emotional stability and independence as an artist. We also discussed the ephemeral nature of much of conceptual art, & how it can feel like throwing a big dinner party and then it is all over...where as with painting, by contrast, it seems to have an everlasting historical nature and what she claims to be an "intrinsic value". Sara had previously made installation art, including a project in Seoul, Korea where she filled an entire subway with her artwork. However, now she feels more inclined to express herself through her oil paint & watercolor landscapes. After a glass of Irish whisky & some chocolate with hazelnuts- (what decadence!)- She offered to drive me back to MoKS, as it was starting to rain again.
When I got there, one of the girls from school had returned to work on her soap bust & was waiting by the door! I could have given her her bust and lent her a plastic knife, but I felt flattered that she had returned so keenly & I let her in to work in my studio for an hour or so. She spoke English remarkably well, which I told her would help her finding a job in Tartu when she was older. She responded right away, & very matter of factly- that she had much bigger dreams for herself. I asked her what her dreams were, and rather coyly she expressed her dream for wanting the "magic world" from Harry Potter to become real but that that would probably never happen & so she was pursuing music- but that one never knew where life would take them. She stayed there carving her soap bust, trying to perfect the shape of it's skull while telling me stories of her step parents, the snobbery of the popular girls in her class, & above all about the ghosts that reside in Mooste & that haunt many of the children and even "teachers that never lie". She even revealed her own personal encounters with the ghost baron- that whistled for his small hunting dog & then disappeared. Never thought too much for ghosts, but the creaks in the floor & random sounds of the night seemed that much creepier tonight...thanks to my "A+ student"!

I cannot believe I live in a world where "millions of rows" is some sort of achievement for a spreadsheet program. (Excel 2007: 1,048,576 to be exact.)

If you need that many rows, it means your setup is broken, either software-wise, or organizationally.

As most of you know, I've got two babies coming this summer, one literal, one figurative. My firstborn son and the wine bar. The progress of the Wine Press I've been writing about almost daily, the baby I've been a little more circumspect about. He's as figity as I am, I've felt him kick, punch and hiccup. I even pressed down on Laura's belly one night and felt his little butt. I'm going to be taking a little hiatus from this one for a bit, at least until I sort out what I want to do in terms of merging baby, wife, work, life etc.

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I would like to open a new art gallery, or open ended exhibition space in a small abandoned building located on the route to Resina, a neighboring village to Mooste. "Route to Rasina" would be the name for it, in Estonian it would be called "Rasina T" because "tee" means route. The small building has windows all around it, so art works could be viewed from the outside even when the gallery is closed. However, the work would not be situated in the direction of the window, as in storefront displays. My idea for the gallery space is that it would expand the life of the town out to the periphery. Resina T could become another potential social hub; a place where people could conjugate & mingle amongst each other. I would also like the gallery to have an online presence for the more international art community to follow various happenings in Mooste. In a way it would be an extension to MoKS, but it would also have an identity of it's own. It could exhibit selected work from the students at the local school as well as visiting MoKS residents, which are coming from all over the world & are at various stages in their careers.

The soap carving was a great success! The students seemed to apply themselves fully to the project, which is not so easy- to carve a human head from soap. There are a great variety of expressions in the faces. When it was time for them to leave, many of the children wanted to stay- asking their teacher if they could skip their next class. They will be returning next Wednesday to continue.

STL Today has a new column written by Adam Jadhav. Mr. Jadhav has the unenviable task of manning the beer desk for the Post Dispatch and reporting what he learns from the field. the only upsetting part of it was this picture:

For the uninitiated, that is the ever elusive Dogfish Head 90 Minute IPA. The beer that I could drink in Illinois if I wasn't so lazy but that I can't sell in Missouri because Dogfish doesn't distribute here...yet. It's like putting a picture of 3.3 beer in a Utah paper.

I have decided to ask the students tomorrow the following questions: "what makes you feel alone" ="Mis paneb sind üksildust tundma?" & "when do you feel isolated?"="kuna sa tunned üksildust?" I have given my dad, Mark, instructions to ask Marcel next time he calls to ask twenty inmates on his unit the same questions. The responses will be included in the exhibition: "From Marcel To Mooste".
Night has finally fallen, and I have taken my routine hour walk into the post- soviet countryside with dusty roads, green grass and tilled earth that seems to rise up above me- obscuring the horizon. I have eaten my ration of borsht and potato cakes. I have showered & inspected for ticks, as they can be quite treacherous. I have prepped the soap for tomorrow’s school children. I guess I can put on my nightcap, or thinking cap. I have been having very vivid dreams, almost restless nights. I need to keep paper & a pen near my bed-for those art ideas that seem so amazing in the middle of the night, & so obscure upon awakening.
Estonian word of the day:"Terviseks!" meaning Cheers!

After a couple of false starts with the power winch (the guys were stuck up on it with a power short, I had to flip the switch on the roof) the paint removal began in earnest. The top brick is a bit darker than the other stuff that I had uncovered on the side of the building, but it all looks like it's in pretty good shape. It's 104 years old, so it looks like the paint trapped a whole bunch of soot in.

This morning I ventured out in the rain, crossed the schoolyard & entered in to the old mansion that now serves as the school here in Mooste. I snooped around the school a little bit before finding the classroom where I was to meet Monika, the art teacher to sit in on her class. I noticed that the computer lab was well equipped, comparable to the Pacific Northwest College of Art, where I earned my BFA, only the windows looked out over farmland & it was to be used by rural Estonian (8-14 year olds). It comes as a bit of a surprise, but the Estonians seem to be ahead of the USA in the proliferation of WiFi (free wireless internet). Even in a small village of 500, we are all wired in, not to mention even the regional bus that brought me here from Tallinn.

Upon entering the classroom, the teacher introduced me as the resident artist at moKS & I smiled as I took a seat in one of the empty liitle chairs. They were making mother’s day cards out of colored paper and shiny sequins. I observed that the boys were equally as engaged in making their cards as the girls. I guess in grade 5 the kids are still not too self-conscious & or concerned with the “coolness” of what they are doing. They all seemed to slip into their own creative worlds as they made important decisions about which scissors to use to get the right zigzag edge & or where to place the heart that they just cut out.

I noticed that most of the girls were wearing blue jeans, and hoodies & even managed to have received some trickle down punk influence, with pins and skulls & crossbones silk screened to their clothes. I was reminded of being that influencial age, discovering all of the different ways one could adorn oneself- & choosing what kind of aesthetic appealed to me. The class was only 45 min long & then the school bell rung, which sounded almost like an accordion. After the kids left the teacher showed me the exhibition that they are getting ready for in the basement for a special mother’s day event. There was a plethora of paintings, embroideries, woodwork, ceramics, and sculptures made with felt & other recycled materials. I think that they will manage just fine to carve soap tomorrow.

This morning I got picked up by John to drive into the city of Tartu. John is American, from up state New York & Austen, Texas but was a bit of a rambling man through eastern Europe finally settling down here in the backwoods of Estonia. We talked about how cities change when progress takes over & how he can barely navigate his way to his own parents house in Austen because of all the new highways that have popped up. The inspiration for MoKS was to create an alternative to the more stratified art world that exists here in Estonia. Apparently many of the art schools have tenured teachers locked in from the soviet times that have not bothered to catch themselves up to more contemporary art practices- New genres would mean nothing to them, accept for maybe advertising. Apparently the state sponsors many of the Estonian artists & galleries and they are also the ones investing in the Estonian art market, so it all seems a little imbed & rather limited for the new generation of artists that are growing more & more frustrated with the gap that lies between them and their predecessors. We also talked about the idea of isolation and how it was relative. John & Evelyn just got back from doing an artist residency in Portugal in an even more remote setting than MoKS, in a village that didn't even have a community store. And I could not help but to think of Marcel, my brother, & his six months in L.O.P (loss of privileges) or solitary confinement shortly after he arrived in prison. I think if I find this situation isolating, spending but a month at moKS with the possibility to take long walks in the countryside & to hop on the local bus to Tartu- then what endurance and strong will it would take to spend six months in a 7ft x 11ft cell with no windows?

In Tartu I gathered all of the materials that I needed. I went to the open market by the river & took advantage of the opportunity to buy fresh fruits and vegetables- including rhubarb! I went on a wild goose chase to find a new camera battery charger-, which was doomed obsolete, as my camera was from the last season of digi cams. In the end they said they could order me one and it would get here by Friday. So soon I will be able to post pictures that actually correspond with my blog. Warning: don't forget while traveling in Europe that their electric sockets have twice the voltage! (That is how I killed my "universal charger"- which I guess referred to the variety of batteries it could charge and not to where you could plug it in.

I got to visit the art store, the fabric store, the home "improvement" store- (which I guess is a new & popular addition, as people are gung-ho to fix up their soviet block houses- which were often made of lower quality materials) as well as a large shopping center, which was wallmartesque in its "we carry it all" format. I used a shopping cart to pile up on 40 bars of soviet soap- some carving utensils, and some bags of whole grains (which I was told by Evelyn & john were brands that were very nostalgic of the soviet era) We all kind of chuckled at the ridiculousness of my shopping cart & laughed about how next time I would have to stock up on sugar and matches. I guess when times were tough those were the things that people would buy lots of, because they would last- soap, sugar, matches.... what more do you need?

It was a busy day. I also got to go to the Y gallery, where I will be having an exhibition from May 27 through June 7. The gallery is connected to the university of Tartu, and is situated in the basement. It has windows though and vaulted ceilings. The floors are white brick, which are also associated with the soviet times. The gallery has five rooms for me to occupy with my work- so I had best get busy- or put those Mooste students to work!

The brick guys are removing the paint from the front of the building and have covered up the facade in plastic so it doesn't get damaged. They left the doorway to the upstairs apartment unsealed yesterday, but today they had to close it off. They assumed everyone had left for the day, but there was a straggler.

No worries, we just put a ladder up on the side of the building. She tossed me her stuff and I spotted as best I could as Nate's wife climbed down from the roof. Good times.

There's just a massive amount of stuff one needs to purchase to open one of these jobbies. As much as I hate to get too wrapped up in material things, there's something very satisfying about pulling the trigger and buying a lot of gear. Were it not for the bank and the title company, I might go a little haywire.

My friend nicole has a voicemail number and you should call it. She leaves messages, you leave a message. Its sort of like postsecret without the suicidal levels of depression. Or Overheard in New York without the other person in the conversation. Or like uh, leaving a message for your friend. 

Anyway, call her.

1.339.368.KOCO

skype: misskoco 

You can listen to other messages here. http://misskoco.podbean.com

Some people are freaks. Some people are sweet. Some people are boring. Some people are me.

 

No, I didn't smoke. I simply slacked off on my personal writing and productivity stuff this week.

I've been trying to cram so much in my days off that I finally took a deep breath and just chilled this weekend, courtesy of my Wii and Super Smash Brothers Brawl.

News from last week:

Food scientists say stop biofuels to fight world hunger

I am both thankful and a little surprised that all three of my packages that I sent from NYC have arrived safely to the local post office here in Mooste. The post office is located on the corner of one of the blockhouses. I picked up my parcels & brought them back to my studio to unwrap them and check their status. Only two pieces broke, but they can be put back together with super glue. Today I met with Evelyn, one of the founders of moKS, and she introduced me to the art teacher of the local school. She just so happens to be my neighbor- living in the same manor building where I am staying. She does not speak much English, but she understands a fair amount & Evelyn helped to translate to her my idea of inviting some of the children from the school to come over to my studio & to carve soap busts of each other. I would only show them my work & give a little demo & then they would be free to carve. I would like to include their busts in my exhibition in Tartu. I want to ask the children a question to think about while they are carving, maybe something about what they like about living in Mooste & what they would change-if anything. Tomorrow I will go into Tartu with John & Evelyn and see if I can encounter enough of this soviet soap that I have grown attached to for the children to use. My first art class will be on Thursday morning at 10:20. The ones that enjoy it and want to continue I will ask to bring their home keys next class- if their parents will let them borrow them for an art project. I would like to see all of the keys together, some modern, some old-school & over sized. Apparently many people do not even lock their doors, but rather lean their broom against the outside of the door to show that they are not home. Maybe I should try that in New York...

After staying up until 2am carving keys I slept in until 11. I am enjoying creating my own schedule- I decide when to sleep and when to wake up. I eat if I get hungry- otherwise I don't, or maybe I’ll just drink a glass of kefir & move on. This morning I was out of milk & so I went to the store-, which is open on Sundays until 3pm. As I entered, a man that was exiting spoke to me- I kind of just nodded my head & smiled- what else could I do? It was the same shopkeeper, who recognized me & gave a slight smile. This time around I felt a little more confident about picking out my groceries. I bought milk & splurged on some honey for 44 eeks (& just for the record the currency is the Estonian krona & it is not pronounced "eek" as in I saw a mouse.)
I decided to buy the last two bars of soviet soap, which I am sure raised some curiosity in the shopkeeper- as it is the lowest grade cheapest soap they carry. The guy in front of me despite being Sunday & barely noon was already drunk and buying yet more beer, he was trying to engage in a conversation with me & he seemed a little disconcerted that I was not responding whatsoever. I sniffled a bit from my runny nose & he started to imitate me in attempts to have some sort of interaction even without words. I could tell that that the shopkeeper was a bit embarrassed and was trying to expedite the transaction with him as he searched his pockets for change & ended up handing her a credit card. On my way out he politely held the door for me & said "bitteschon" -assuming I was German.

It's been a long couple of weeks, school is wrapping up, I'm packing up, and the social obligations seem to be piling up. So, that's my excuse for just leaving you with this bit of good news from the ever tedious, frustrating and sodden world of the IDSA:
Attorney General Richard Blumenthal today announced that his antitrust investigation has uncovered serious flaws in the Infectious Diseases Society of America's (IDSA) process for writing its 2006 Lyme disease guidelines and the IDSA has agreed to reassess them with the assistance of an outside arbiter.

The IDSA guidelines have sweeping and significant impacts on Lyme disease medical care. They are commonly applied by insurance companies in restricting coverage for long-term antibiotic treatment or other medical care and also strongly influence physician treatment decisions.

Insurance companies have denied coverage for long-term antibiotic treatment relying on these guidelines as justification. The guidelines are also widely cited for conclusions that chronic Lyme disease is nonexistent.

"This agreement vindicates my investigation -- finding undisclosed financial interests and forcing a reassessment of IDSA guidelines," Blumenthal said. "My office uncovered undisclosed financial interests held by several of the most powerful IDSA panelists. The IDSA's guideline panel improperly ignored or minimized consideration of alternative medical opinion and evidence regarding chronic Lyme disease, potentially raising serious questions about whether the recommendations reflected all relevant science.

"The IDSA's Lyme guideline process lacked important procedural safeguards requiring complete reevaluation of the 2006 Lyme disease guidelines -- in effect a comprehensive reassessment through a new panel. The new panel will accept and analyze all evidence, including divergent opinion. An independent neutral ombudsman -- expert in medical ethics and conflicts of interest, selected by both the IDSA and my office -- will assess the new panel for conflicts of interests and ensure its integrity."

Full article here.

One thing I am thankful for is that my mom exposed me to such things as millet, buckwheat, kefir & inka as I was growing up. If I had come from a white bread/ TV dinner household I would be at a complete loss in terms of how to feed myself from the only “pood”, or store in town. I know that beans need to be soaked & I know that there is a 2/1 ratio of water for most whole grains. My difficulty is the packaging- not understanding Estonian nor Russian- it becomes a challenge to figure out what is butter & what is margarine. You start to notice things like whether or not there is a picture of a cow on the label or not. Makes me think that some good ol’ universal labeling for food could be useful- but on the other hand having different labeling & languages on packaging is what makes shopping in different countries interesting. It gets a little confusing though when products don’t even come in the same type of containers- like “piim” or milk comes in a bag & caviar in a toothpaste type tube. The other thing I noticed is the shortage of produce, which I guess is the result of people actually having their own vegetable gardens at home- & apparently more than the average suburban American garden, which is generally more of a hobby for bored house wives or husbands.
As I placed my carefully chosen basket of goods on the counter, shyly gesturing that I had brought my own bag, but that I did not speak a word of Estonian I noticed that the two guys behind me had their baskets full of beer. I remembered my first night in Mooste & how the founders of MoKS had notified me that there was quite a demand of alcohol at the local store, that actually alcohol was kind of a problem. It is not so rare that small towns have this issue, of how to pass the time when the workday is over when there is so little to do. I have started collecting the wrapping of all of the food I consume, as a way of learning the words for basic food items & possibly the material for a later art project in contrast to a log that Marcel kept of his prison meals- describing what was on his tray for a week in the chow hall & how it tasted & or appeared.

Saturday night & I am sitting here in my studio carving my set of keys out of an old bar of soviet soap. The youngsters hang around the soccer field outside- & their gathering & the sounds that come from people socializing- even if I am watching it through the window comfort me. I am still not sure why I want to carve keys- but at least I am testing the soap out and making sure that it carves well- & it seems to prove itself as being the best one so far, as it does not crack or flake. It is beige and moist & says “flora 72%” on the front of the bar- whatever that is. All I know is that is stinks but carves well. Initially I thought about asking people from Mooste if I could carve them out of soap- just their head and shoulders- their bust- I guess one would say- but then I had this idea just to ask them if I could carve their house key- to represent their Independence/freedom & on the contrary their locks. Now I am uncertain. I know that I would like to have an excuse to interact with some people here- even if it involves having a translator. I have felt an urge to be out in public- & to make myself seen, and at the same time I have an urge to hide, because of my feelings of not really belonging here. Maybe I will do the busts & the keys as well as interview people about their feelings about living in Mooste and whether they find it isolating, as I do being an outsider.

Wow,
I was already surprised to be speaking with my mom on skype- with me in Mooste, Estonia & her in Eugene, Oregon- then it got even more exciting- when Marcel, my younger brother calls my mom from Prison, in Umatilla, Oregon & she puts him on speaker phone and we are all three speaking to each other as though we are in the same room, only thousands of miles apart and each with completely different circumstances. Marcel could ask me about Mooste and I could ask him about how his parenting class is going & other such matters and my mom could intervene at any moment. If only i could have recorded our conversation it would have been an art piece in and of itself- a sound piece. I guess it was recorded through the prison- as they monitor and record all telephone calls- Now to get a copy!