Watercolor painting 16” x 20”: “Out of Time, Out of Place.” While I was visiting relatives in Panama City, Panama last September, I took a photo of a Cuna Indian woman selling hand made trinkets in an open air market. The Cuna Indian families come from the San Blas Islands along the Atlantic coast of Panama. While no one has an accurate account of the number of people comprising these groups, they have their own representative in the national congress. The women are noted for their fine needlework on molas which represent scenes from their lives, current events, flowers, birds and other animals. The term “mola” means blouse, referring to the use of two rectangles of needlework forming the back and front of their peasant style blouses. The women traditionally wrap their legs and arms in intricate rows of beadwork. These fishing and farming people still live in primitive huts on small islands with no modern improvements such as toilet facilities.
I had completed the portrait of the woman creating a doll (wearing clothes from the same fabric as her own), but was hesitating on the background when I received the invitation to participate in the Bridge Project. I was entranced by the photo of the Willow Springs Bridge and its history. When I went to see it myself, I was mentally transported to the leafy environs of the Panama jungle. The juxtaposition of the Indian woman from Panama, who is still living primarily in a past century but is trying to accommodate to the present, and the 1885 metal bridge, out of date, but still useful, is, to me, a strong metaphor of the co-existence of past and present, foreign and domestic.
I had completed the portrait of the woman creating a doll (wearing clothes from the same fabric as her own), but was hesitating on the background when I received the invitation to participate in the Bridge Project. I was entranced by the photo of the Willow Springs Bridge and its history. When I went to see it myself, I was mentally transported to the leafy environs of the Panama jungle. The juxtaposition of the Indian woman from Panama, who is still living primarily in a past century but is trying to accommodate to the present, and the 1885 metal bridge, out of date, but still useful, is, to me, a strong metaphor of the co-existence of past and present, foreign and domestic.