Chile: Exhibit, conference, more teaching

Here we are near one of the big campus' entrances, waiting for a cab. The night before the official conference, we waited for over half an hour and it became a running joke, because every time our host called the taxi company for an ETA, she was told, "Four minutes!" You can barely see the snowcapped mountains in the distance.

This was the prior day's art students' class.

Before the taxi wait, Carolina helped me install the hanging portion of my exhibit. Ended up being much easier than I feared because she brought thumbtacks and we were able to hide them so that they were not piercing the actual walls, but worked just right.

This was supposed to be our reward for waiting so long: an amazing dinner at a place specializing in Chilean wines, over 350 of them. Lots of tastings, lots of seafood, lots of meat, a wonderful way to spend more social time with the other conference guests.

The most moving highlight was a huge demonstration that went through the streets of Santiago to protest recent horrific violence against girls and women. Ni Una Menos was organized in multiple Central and South American countries, culminating in protests on Oct 19. What we initially thought was an annoying street blockage that caused our late cab to be trapped in traffic ended up being a powerful communal display of outrage and compassion. We had to get out of the cab at the closest point to the restaurant and then walk the rest of the way. Our host kept apologizing, but we were rapt and I wished I could have stayed longer in the streets (my phone is stupid so this is the only picture that made it). The sheer number of people, the energy of the crowd—fervent but not violent, and the solidarity of the masses was truly moving. It made me miss similar crowds in Korea, lament U.S. apathy, and reminded me that it's possible to organize people to pause and do the right thing, together.

We had had a Korean fusion lunch at the conference. The rice cake had nutella inside!

This portion of the conference was sweet, with students in a kind of mock UN situation.

The rest of these photos are of the outdoor workshop I conducted in the afternoon near the close of the conference. My talk was in the morning.

This workshop was totally packed and I'm sorry that they had to turn away more people than they accepted. It was a beautiful day for the work and my students were so grateful. One even gave me a gift, totally unexpected.

I was glad to work outside after being in the conference hall all day.

She came with her mother; so sweet!

She came so prepared, with her own apron! And practiced each technique carefully.

I'm not sure I've ever had a student so happy to prepare her first strip of paper thread. The little things provide the most joy.