Nonstop Inspiration

His hand hangs on my wall.

When I came to his home, about a year and a half ago, with five cameras to share, he made sure I knew he was interested in participating. He was usually front and center in the group of kids hanging around me, listening intently. He even accompanied a group of us around the grounds before ever holding a camera, planning shots, just eager to be a part of the project.

The Fundación Niños de los Andes cares for young people through most of their teen years, and he was one of the older boys there; slightly shorter than me, thin, muscular, with a delicate smile, long eyelashes and his short hair shaven to the skin on the sides of his head.

He got his turn with the camera the next day, and proceeded to break my heart with it. Looking at the images he captured later, I wanted every photo of his to be in the show. His hand behind the mesh and this one are the ones that made it in.

Here are a couple that didn’t.

Like the girl who started all of this, two years prior, his work inspired in me a deep sense of purpose. I wanted to make find more possibilities for him. Luz y Sombra's first show in Manizales, Colombia, came together, all the while my friends and I tried, without success, to find some opportunity for this talented artist to learn or work with other artists nearby. He and I friended each other on Facebook, hugged, said good-bye, and never saw or spoke to each other again. He had moved on to the next part of his life by the time I got back to the FNDLA a year later.

That return to FNDLA was just six months ago. When Henry and I came home from that adventure last July, all 100 printed photos of the photography show, Luz y Sombra traveled from Colombia to Oregon in my carry-on luggage. Things got really interesting around here when, about a month later, two Colombian chef friends came to visit our humble locale and infuse it with sabor.

Together, we put on a September-long, first time in the USA, Luz y Sombra show/photo sale at the steadfast Bay City Arts Center, complete with two foodtastic events.
It was tons of fun, but I was also on a serious mission, fueled by memories of my young friend shyly telling me he'd have liked to continue exploring his artistic talents, had it been a possibility. Pursuing study in the arts is about as practical a path for a Colombian street kid as it is for any person anywhere who wants to pay their bills. While taking pictures with me is fun, self-expression couldn’t be a future. Or could it?

Here’s where I want to high-five that hand, because I get to find out next summer. Thanks to the money raised at the Arts Center, I plan to return to Colombia with two art scholarships.

The money raised from that work and those kids' photos will pay for two big kids from the Fundación Niños de los Andes to attend one visual arts course each, at any of the city’s many schools. There is enough money for tuition, supplies, and transportation, so that creativity can be more than a childhood hobby for the older youngsters who have more to share.

There's no reason this can't keep going. Feel like taking part?

Starting on December 1, 2016, the rest of the photos for Luz y Sombra will be shown here, and on Facebook, and will be available for purchase. All proceeds will go to art scholarships for more kids from the foundation.

These particular printed visions are very special for another reason, but I'm going to wait until the day the show "drops" online to write more about that. December 1, see all of Luz y Sombra's photos, buy any of them, and make some dreams come true.

This one is no longer for sale though. It’s mine, along with the inspiration its young creator ignited within me, to see big kids chase their artistic side into adulthood.

Successfully Screwing Up

Whew! What's "Whew!" in Spanish, I wonder? Juih?

Anyway, I love staying busy as much as the next traveling homeschooling working mom of four, but sometimes, when you've finished putting on a spontaneous photography exhibit for underprivileged children in South America, you've gotta stop and breathe for a second. Look back, take stock, and write a blog post.

That's right, thanks to the marvelous photography of the children living at the Fundación Niños de los Andes, and the support of the staff there, we were invited to show the kids' work at the Centro Colombo Americano, a prestigious cultural center that has sites in every city in Colombia. The exhibit will be up for another week and half, but we had our big inauguration three nights ago, in which there were lots of art patrons, lots of kids, lots of friends, and even a TV news crew!

Como se dice, "I'm totally not ready for my close up."

And I did it all by myself, without messing up once.

HA! or JA! Right. First, we have established that I did almost none of it by myself. Now, let's get to the error-riddled road that got me here, and gets me anywhere I go.

First, a flashback, if you will. About one year ago, I was here, in beautiful Colombia, at the Fundación Niños de los Andes school, teaching English to about twenty of the aforementioned Niños. I read a sentence aloud and asked a student to repeat it. She did, but made a mistake in her pronunciation. When I provided a gentle friendly correction, the rest of the class laughed at her.
I cut that nonsense out right away, saying,

"Listen! Do not laugh at somebody who makes a mistake because that person is doing something great. She is learning. Look at me, here, making mistakes with almost every sentence, but nevertheless I am here, working and getting better. That is how new things are learned."

 Although it probably sounded something like,

"HEAR! No to laugh for anyone who is mistaking. She are making pretty! Her am learning! Watch at me, I mistake all but anyway here I do gooder. Those is things new can knowing!"

Well, the kids all looked at me for a second. I didn't know if I had just blown their minds with a profound truth, or if they were all trying to figure out what the heck I said, but they stopped laughing at any rate, so I was happy and continued the English lesson.

Back to Thursday night. It was the culmination of many weeks of planning, hard work, and flat-out flubs. Shall I list them for you? Well, some of them anyway.

1. I left the USA with six cameras and a healthy supply of rechargeable batteries for the cameras that didn't have their own. Those rechargeable batteries never worked when I needed them. I charged them for days in the house where I am staying, and nada. Buying regular batteries as a stop gap measure got expensive, but that's how I managed. Somewhere close to the end of the photography aspect of the project, someone asked me, "Why didn't you go to Home Center and buy rechargeables?" Duh, I didn't know you had them here. Whoops.

2.  From the beginning, we worked with groups of five kids at a time, giving each child one hour of photographic phreedom to roam the grounds of their foundation and take pictures. In order to label the files on my computer, and keep straight who took what photos, I asked the kids to write their names in a little notebook I kept with me, never checking to make sure that they had written a complete name. When I organized the photos into folders on my computer, I was stuck, sometimes with just a barely legible first name.

In the end, when we were surprised by the news that we would be putting on a show, I had to sort back through all those names, and all those kids, sometimes with four Danielas standing in a row, asking, "Who took this photo?"

3. I never figured out how to program ^this^ camera to stop showing a date, so all of the photos taken with it had to be cropped.

This doesn't even scratch the surface, especially when you consider all the bungled Spanish I had to use at every turn. So many things I would do differently, if I had the chance.

Here's the thing I learned from all of this. You can dream big, you can plan a lot, you can have the best help, but if you can't breathe and work through an error, you will get stuck.

A couple of weeks ago, as I served coffee and snacks to a team of people helping me whittle 1000 photos down to a showable 100, they asked me, "This photo? Who took it? It just says Camila." I admit to sweating a bit in that moment, wishing I could go back and do it over again, hating myself for being too disorganized and unprepared, feeling a small but strong wave of self-doubt. Instead of looking for a hidey-hole and a soft blanket, I just said, "I mistaked. Wish I can do again, but we must encounter the child after we decide the names." And you know what? They just nodded, said okay, and went on. End of the world, it wasn't.

Who on this earth has attempted to learn a new language and started off fluent? Who on this earth has picked up a musical instrument for the first time and played it like a virtuoso? Who on this earth has tried to push themselves from their present reality to a future dream without having to accept his or her limitations?

Acceptance doesn't mean complacency. Pushing oneself to get better is a fine way to spend a lifetime. Acceptance means not spending a great deal of time and energy on self-punishment, or even worse, self-defeating fear that could stop you from trying in the first place. Taking on something new usually means not being that great at it, for a while at least.

photo by Kellen Ramirez

It takes a special mix of humility and confidence to remember that the road to someplace outside of you current abilities is a bumpy one, paved with reminders of your short-comings; but that it's well worth traveling.