yesterday i did something i had been anxious to do for so many years, i went to my grandparent's house, the place that holds my childhood memories, the house that always seemed to come out of a garcía marquez novel. it was an incredibly emotional and moving encounter with memory, the house is falling apart but it also seemed that time had stopped there and everywhere i looked i found traces of my family. i was in tears as i walked down the house and remembered the times when we were six and i think happy together (yes, like the turtle's song...)

i took photos which are now up in flickr here http://www.flickr.com/photos/takeout/sets/721576

i rescued three objects and brought them with me

tato loved framing things and had little odd stufff around the house like this weird little poem that i don't quite get

tati always used this coffee jar, it's the one i drew yesterday

this rubber monkey used to be pink and light blue i think. it was not bought for me but i do remember playing with it. it was lying in the garden, still laughing...

i'm trying different compositions with the objects, i plan to draw them and then make a memory box with them. i need to contain these memories.

...and it sometimes seems like i always drew the same stuff. i had not had the courage to look at my old journals for different reasons, one of them beiing that i don't have my new york ones with me so looking at journals in general hurts.

i took these photos with the hipstamamtic app, not sure how i feel about it, i love it and hate it, also don't have the best lenses (yet) and need to play more with it meaning patience which i'm not good at.

this is a page from my current moleskine journal, it's a drawing i made yesterday of an object i brough with me from my emotional archaeology journey into the past. but that will be described in a separate post later today. this is tati's (my grandma) coffee jar, i remember it vividly. i see this object and i see my beautiful grandmother making coffee in the kitchen with black and white tiles... more on this later.

after almost the whole of the first month in lima making absolutely no art, i began to slowly open my journal/sketchbook and started making a few very humble and simple drawings of objecs. this is the first one, i was looking for an object to draw around the house and after looking at different possibilities, i ran into this passion fruit. i had not seen passion fruit in all my years in new york, so it made sense. drawing the fruit triggered memories of lima which was exactly what i needed. baby steps, but always walking...

my film collaboration bottle beach cut up poem with julie fotheringham and jarryd lowder has been invited to be in this festival which takes place in new york on saturday april 30, from 12PM – 7PM

The festival features a stunning collection of 49 short films by gifted New York choreographers/ filmmakers, and international artists from Palestine, Israel, Russia, Bulgaria, Sweden, Switzerland, Great Britain, Canada & the Netherlands.

i'm incredibly excited and proud of this and at the same time a bit sad as i won't be there to see the public's response to it.

more information can be found here http://www.westfestdance.com/