Las Artes de los Costarricenses

     

A traditional Mola.

In Costa Rica you don’t have to go far to find artwork. The thing is most of this artwork is replicated and made in mass amounts to sell to the large waves of tourists that come through the country. I however, am lucky enough to be living with an amateur artist that should, without a doubt, be selling his work to galleries. The first thing I noticed when I arrived at my host family’s home was the beautiful artwork that adorned the walls. Oils and watercolors depicted houses with terracotta roofs, barefoot children playing, and beautiful Costa Rican scenery. It wasn’t until a week later that I came home early from class that I saw Carlos, my host father at the table intent and focused over one of these paintings. His water colors were spread all throughout the table, and next to him was the wrapper depicting Florida oranges from one of the chocolate bars I had brought as a thank you gift to them. As soon as he saw me he hid the painting of the oranges, but he showed me the rest of his work. When he is not busy coaching girls volleyball at an American country day school, Carlos spends his time creating these masterpieces. Hilda told me that Carlos always makes a small painting for each student, and I am hoping that he will gift me the one of those beautiful oranges, so that I can forever remember the humble yet passionate old man that took me into his home, and treated me as he did his own daughters and granddaughter.

    I encountered another piece of artwork in the Caribbean town of Puerto Viejo. Near the Panamanian border, this town also has many tourist trap type art booths, with sarongs, postcards, and necklaces made from shells. But what really caught my eye was a table littered with what I found out to be Panamanian Molas. Molas are pieces of fabric, sewn together in an intricate manner so that eventually you are left with a picture like image. Many depict animals, but most depict native symbols and patterns. What truly interested me about these is that it can take up to three months to produce just one. Months of work so that a tourist can buy one for $5, slap it in a frame and show it off. Now, whether these were authentic or not, I do not know, but I do know that they were beautiful, and I was heart broken when the man selling them did not show up before my bus departed the next day. Before I leave this country, my goal is to find somewhere that sells Molas, so that I can talk to someone that makes them, and find out the history of them, and the process of making this art.

    As I said before, there is an abundance of artwork in Costa Rica, even high up in the mountains of Monteverde, only accessible by dirt road. After 3 hours in a bus (a third of that spent a hole riddled dirt road over looking a sheer drop) we arrived in the town of Santa Elena, near the Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve. Our first day there was spent walking in the rain, exploring the quiet dirt road. Along the way we found a cheese factory, an Argentinean chocolate shop, and a rural women’s art cooperative. This cooperative consists of a shop, an art studio and a day care type center. It began when a group of rural women decided to pool together their money and talents and created this cooperative. Here I found oil paintings, handmade jewelry, pots, woodcarvings, bound journals, and clothing. My favorite part was the glass case displaying hand drawn bookmarks, made by the children of the area, who prided in selling them for 50 cents to help out their mothers. I couldn’t help but buy two. In a society that does not traditionally make it easy for these types of businesses run by women to pop up, I was pleasantly surprised to see how these women were prospering. I was visiting during the off-season, but I could tell that the place would probably be full of people as soon as December rolled around. I have encountered so many different art forms in the 5 weeks that I have been here, and with 11 weeks left, I’m sure I’ll be running into quite a few more. (week of 10/1/10)

Even the restaurant signs in Santa Elena looked artsy and rustic.