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| Walking in Vientiane, Laos, January, 2014 |
Preface
This is a story about a trip I would
take that I never imagined taking. The places which I describe are
those which impressed me the most vividly. A trip like this actually
loses its continuity when the memories of it take over. Reporting it would be
fruitless, resulting in a boring enumeration of the scheduled events rather the
events that are meaningful. No doubt, I have forgotten many occurences. The time
went by so fast and was so filled with activity that I have every reason to
have forgotten. The whole experience is indelibly inscribed in my being.
Here
I Went
On January 10, 2014, the first leg of my journey to The Republic
of Lao, PDR, began. This day was preceded by weeks and weeks
of anxiety. The trip had been postponed once. Not since I was eleven years old,
when I took a two and a half month tour of the East Coast of Africa with my
grandfather, had I traveled such a long way from home. And this time, I was by
myself.
Laos is a country I have only known in relationship to Viet
Nam. The period of time of the Viet Nam War when I was transitioning out of high
school into college. The years of demonstrations against the war. Intolerance
of a belligerence for no reason. The years when I went to a college nearby my
own to hear Abbie Hoffman, David Delinger, and Jerry Rubin deliver their
opinions. I had never thought about Laos in terms of its culture, its people,
its government. At the time, Far East Asia was, for me, simply generic. The atrocities,
the hundreds of bombs we dropped on the country to ward off the Viet Cong, a
daily news item.
The backstory of this trip, riding on planes and wading through airports, is
that the Curator for the United States State Department’s Art in Embassy
Program, Virginia Shore, saw a large drawing on paper of mine in its first and
only exhibition at the Cross MacKenzie Gallery in April, 2012, in Washington,
DC. But, the “Velvet Installation,” the main event of my second showing at the
gallery, which was solo, grabbed her attention.
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| Velvet Installation at Cross Mackenzie Gallery, Sept., 2012 |
Based upon viewing that piece,
she commissioned me to do a permanent installation in a US Embassy. The new
Embassy in Serbia was the first choice; however, another artist replaced me.
Shore decided to situate my work in the yet to be built Embassy in Vientiane,
Laos, a dramatically dissimilar culture than that of Serbia. That Shore changed her mind made me happy. I felt that my work
suited Laos over Serbia. Oriental instead of Slavic. Conceptually fluid vs. stiff;
colorful vs. monochromatic. Warm instead of frigid.
No serious conversation about the trip began until the fall of
2013. I began asking questions about visas, plane reservations and hotel
arrangements. Learning the answers, everything fell into place for a November
jaunt. Then the US government went through its shutdown debacle and my trip was
postponed, yet again, until January, 2014.
And here we are. The trip happened and I am telling this story.
Touching Ground
When the Mekong River was pointed out to me from the
airplane window by a sweet girl traveling from the US to visit her family in
Laos, my heart fluttered.
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| The Mekong River way in the distance, nearly invisible |
I really could not believe that I was about to land
half way around the globe from where I lived. Vientiane, the capital of Laos,
borders Thailand along the Mekong.
The ground appeared green but not lush. It was mid-day, Far East time.
Upon entering the airport, the passengers on the
plane rushed to purchase visas. I already had mine. I had copied the form from
the Lao Embassy website on the Internet, filled it in with requested information and exchanged it for the visa in December via snail mail in the US. So,
happily, I went marching up to the passport desk, first in line.
On the plane, the
passengers had been given immigration forms to fill out that we would carry
with our passports. The form asks questions about the reasons for coming to
Laos and personal contacts in the country. When I handed my passport, in which
the form was inserted, to the uniformed officer behind the desk, he pointed out
that I had neglected to fill out both sides of the immigration form. He directed
me to a place where I could sit down and complete the form. Just as I sat down,
a crowd of people filled the aisles in front of the entry desks. I was no
longer first in line. Once I reached the line, it did not take long to
assume the same first position, facing the small camera positioned on the desk
so that my presence could be recorded. Once the officer had stamped my
passport, he waved his left hand in a back sweep to usher me in the direction
of the baggage claim area.
The hotel where I was staying sent a car to meet Welmoed
Laanstra, the Curator of Cultural Programs at the State Department, who was
going to accompany me throughout my travels. She was staying at the same hotel.
Just inside the entrance to the airport, a driver stood holding a sign with Welmoed’s
name on it (the prefix as Mr. rather than Ms.). Amused, I went over to
him and said that Welmoed and I were together and he could take me in his
vehicle to the hotel as well. Welmoed was coming from Bangkok; her flight
landed later than mine. I sat in the hotel van while we waited for her. Looking at an airport parking lot filled to the
brim with small motorcycles, I asked the driver why the motorcycles were parked
there and he told me that they belonged to the employees of the airport. I
thought, How frugal.
As soon as Welmoed arrived, we began talking and my attention
switched back and forth from the conversation to the view rushing past the van window.
The land was surprisingly dry, flat, dense with buildings and people; not as
tropical as I thought it would be. Every motorized mode of transportation
possible was zipping around never seeming to intrude in anyone’s path. A nearly perfect mechanized symbiosis.
The hotel was situated on a street that was
literally two car widths across. The steps to the lobby ended at the street. There was no
sidewalk. One would never believe that a building as large as the hotel could
fit where it was fitting, crammed up against other buildings.
When I left Welmoed, having agreed on the time we
would meet later, I was intending to rest. Once I reached the hotel room, I
unpacked and took a shower. The porch outside the room invited me to step onto
it through the sliding doors. The views: so telling of how wedged in the hotel
was within the rest of the neighborhood. Of course, I took pictures. The
temperature outdoors was not really hot, nor chilly. It was pleasant.
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| From the porch of my Vientiane hotel room |
I lay down on the bed, closed my eyes, and nothing
but hazy images of my trip to Laos ran through my mind. Welmoed had
said that she was going to walk around when we parted. Hoping she would be
back, I decided to call her room. When she answered, I said: “Welmoed, I cannot
rest or sleep. I am thinking here: I am in Laos. What am I doing lying on
the bed in the hotel?” We decided to meet in the lobby and do some exploring together. It was late afternoon. It became dark quickly.
Welmoed and I
were wandering around the streets of Vientiane trying to find a restaurant she knew of where we could have dinner. We were looking for street signs and I could not
see a one. Welmoed has a good sense of direction so all I could do was
follow her. When we crossed the street, we did have to wait for the stoplights
to change in our favor, otherwise we would be negotiating our way through
motorcycles, cars, bicycles. Welmoed casually remarked: “We have to be careful,
because I’ve heard that people get hit in traffic.” Okaaaaaay, Welmoed, will
do. That ruined my idealized notions of symbiosis on the roads...
Eventually we found the restaurant we were looking
for. It had moved down the street from the location where Welmoed thought it
was. A lovely, though almost empty, French restaurant. I cannot remember if we
had our dinner early or late. I do not remember what we ordered, we simply ate.
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| Street View, Vientiane |
Welmoed had said that we had to keep moving in time
with the time patterns in Laos so that our bodies would adjust more quickly.
This advice coming from a lady who travels all the time and is accustomed to
jet lag and time change. She is originally from the Netherlands; she speaks
with a hint of a Dutch accent.
I wanted to find a purse that accommodated
everything I would carry during the day. “Let’s go to the night market,”
Welmoed said. We crossed a busy main
street to a flat field which was covered with an array of colorful tents, under
which the Lao marketers were selling their wares.
Thousands of items from clothing to household goods. Welmoed turned to
me and jokingly said: “You wanted a purse, right?” I laughed. Needless to say,
there were hundreds to choose from. For some reason, I was drawn to one…perhaps
it had to do with the way all the color contrasted with a black background. I
bought it; it is an example of Hmong embroidery, I have learned since then.
Welmoed and I both could have lost our minds
in consumerism. Instead, we made our way back to the hotel; the roads we followed to
reach there I do not recall. Without jay-walking, in the dark, we crossed several
streets avoiding moving vehicles.
I was in a daze. Tomorrow was another day and the
beginning of the reason we were there: to search for textiles for my
installation piece.
Discovering Textiles
Monday
When we first arrived at the hotel having come from
the airport, Welmoed and I were each handed a very official folder from the US
Embassy. The folder was packed with information, including a detailed schedule
for Welmoed and me. The schedule was timed out in a list of every activity that
Pam DeVolder, the US Embassy’s Public Affairs Officer, had planned for us. Pam was definitely in charge. Pam is a young, vibrant woman with wide eyes and a wonderful smile. She dresses as would a Laotian woman. She has a great deal of knowledge to share and her enthusiasm is contagious. She was especially happy that the four of us were going to study textiles, because she loves them and when this opportunity presented itself to her, she took it in a flash.
Monday started with a brief meeting at the hotel
where everyone met each other for the first time. We discussed our “schedule”
and Pam stressed that we could be relaxed about it, yet had to carry through
with meetings that were “confirmed.”
In this sun-laden open-air meeting, my eyes were
taking in the plants, the environment. Of course, I had no idea, as we gathered
casually around a dining table, how these three women, Welmoed, Pam and dear
Vimol, Pam’s assistant and Cultural Affairs Specialist at the Embassy, would affect
me emotionally. In the meeting, I merely
listened to Welmoed and Pam, discussing the importance of certain destinations.
I had to listen, because I had no clue as to where I was going and what I was going to do.
The initial stop that morning was the new Embassy,
still under construction. The campus is large, the building’s architecture
rigid and polished from what we could see on the exterior. The interior was no
different really, although scaffolding and construction equipment was scattered
throughout. We toured the building, wearing hard hats and oversized work boots.
Welmoed asked the questions. Again I listened. My purpose there was to
understand the scale of the interior and see the wall where my installation
would be.
Funny, I never saw the wall where my installation
would be. The experience of the building was all that was necessary. In my own
mind, I was going to adapt the installation to any area to which it was
assigned.
Tapestries
and Everything in Between
Unbeknownst to me until this trip, the craft of
weaving is an integral part of Laotian culture, practiced by most of the ethnic
groups living in eleven provinces of the country.
We began our textile search at the Taykeo Textile
Gallery, situated in a Colonial French style building with a French style
interior, that is dark wood trim offset by white walls.
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| Traditional Tai Deng Pattern |
I was taken aback by
the number of textile pieces housed in one place. On one table, I was drawn
immediately to a ten to fifteen foot long piece, which happened to be an
antique. The center of this piece is extremely complex; it is a Tai Dang
pattern. On the tail ends, branching out of the woven section is indigo blue cotton
cloth. This introduced me to all I had to absorb and, for heaven’s sakes,
choose from, for I went to this country to purchase, not merely look.
Pam and Welmoed reminded me that this was only the one
of many galleries we were going to see and we had yet to go to Luang Prabang,
where tapestry factories and their products are abundant. So even though the
first tapestry that I touched substantially impacted my visual mind, I held
back from buying it, until I had seen more. I had to overcome a strong impulse to purchase this piece.
As I grazed through the products on display, Pam and
Welmoed spoke at length to the owner. Welmoed snapped copious photos. And even
modeled material that could be fashioned into a skirt. We were having fun.
I was so pleased. The reason that the four of us were
there at the Gallery exemplified the premise supporting subsequent visits to every museum, shop, gallery and factory. That premise is, for me, that
the United States and the countries of the world can understand each other in
the cultural sense, hopefully. That I, an artist, yet uneducated and naïve in
the art of textile making, would be in awe of the amazing colors and textures and
pattern dissimilarities between one textile and another, is a step towards
bonding with people I would never have expected to meet and whose artisanship I
would never have expected to observe in its process. If the populations of
the world could simply honor each other, as we four honored every person we met
in this cultural environment, the problems of the world would be easier to cope
with. As populations, we could stand on the same ground. The cultures of the
world could be as tightly woven as the tapestries I sought to integrate into my
own art work for the Embassy.
Pam, Welmoed, Vimol and I bowed to everyone when we
said Sabai Dee, hello, and Khop chai lai lai, Thank you very much, when we
offered our good-byes. We left our shoes at the door when we arrived, and put
them on when we departed. The exchange of kindness, as we stood in our bare
feet, discussing how textiles are made, the sources of materials, the threads
of silk, the cotton, was inspiring. Our delight in the interaction with the women
who owned and managed textile factories and the women who operated the looms was
a beautiful rarity.
When we reached the morning market, which extended
seemingly for a mile, but it must have only the length of a city block, the
artisans sat in their small booths with their products. In my mind, I assessed
that they represented the core of the country’s population. I wanted to buy
something from each marketer. The goods were not inexpensive. There were silk
scarves and wraps and embroidered pieces. Yards and yards of color to choose from,
carefully laid out on tables or suspended on racks. My vision was utterly
spoiled. I photographed purchase prospects instead of
actually purchasing any because we were still going to Luang Prabang, and I thought
that I was returning to Vientiane long enough to return to the market or the
Taykeo Gallery. I also only had so much money. I had to calculate mentally what
I might spend.
My creativity was kicking in and I was
sub-consciously putting together how I could use the tapestries with the velvet
rope. This was one level of improvisation I would use towards constructing the final work of art in the Embassy. Believe me, it was not easy.
Having concluded our day with Pam and Vimol, Welmoed
and I were delivered to our hotel. The two of us each returned to our rooms for a bit and
afterwards searched for another restaurant where we could have dinner.
One that Welmoed had seen on her morning walking tour
had appealed to her. We went there. It was not fancy. The table we were shown to
was nestled in a back corner isolated against a trellis-like divider, appealing
and quiet. We sat down at the table for two. A gentleman from the table across
from us leaned over and exclaimed: “Four people before you have left that table
for another…” Welmoed and I both thought
that his statement was strange. And we sat waiting to order.
Welmoed excused
herself for a moment. When she returned, I said to her that I knew why people
had moved from the table. We were sitting right in front of the garbage and the
smell was just a bit disgusting. Welmoed asked to be moved to another table. As
it was, that table was situated way over on the other end of the restaurant against a wall. Neither of
us wanted to fuss around anymore so we sat at the table and eventually ordered.
Welmoed asked for a pizza and I asked for prawns. The pizza was good and the
prawns were messy. We were almost finished eating and Welmoed leaned over to me
and said, “Can we go back to the hotel…I am exhausted…” She was close to
dropping into her leftover pizza. I said, “Of course.”
We had arrived on a Sunday. This was only
Monday. Tuesday was planned to the
minute. It included a brief visit with Ambassador Daniel Clune.
Tuesday
After breakfast, when I was served the best coffee I
have ever tasted, Pam, Welmoed, Vimol and I met in the lobby of the hotel. We
loaded ourselves into the Embassy van and took off for the Phaeng Mai Gallery
and Houy Hong Textile Museum and weaving center.
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It was at these two places that I became exceedingly interested in the weaving process. I watched the weavers attentively, making an effort to see the pattern of their movements. My observations were not altogether
futile.
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The key to the pattern
of the tapestry is called the hettle; it is strung vertically towards the
middle of the loom. The entire loom is a rectangular solid. The hettle holds
the “information” that the woven tapestry is predicated upon.
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| The hettle being constructed by one of the weavers |
Weaving is more than mechanics; weaving is an art,
especially in Laos where its tradition is being preserved with zeal. The women at the Phaeng Mai gallery create patterns to weave based on traditional textile from certain provinces. An example is shown below.
The female spinners at the Houy Hong Textile Museum and weaving center. were sitting on the floor with their simple spinning machines, spinning silk. The male dyers were stewing silk in a steaming pot. The odor was almost overwhelming. The men wore masks. They did not like to have their pictures taken. The female weavers were in a separate room. I watched one weaver closely. Observing her work instilled in me her dedication and her own appreciation of her livelihood.
We hurried onto the US Embassy to meet Ambassador
Clune. On the way, I complained about my swollen right ankle. It was bothering
me.
The Ambassador’s assistant met us and guided us to
the Ambassador’s office. Ambassador Clune is a quiet, reserved man, a veteran
diplomat and not unlike gentlemen I had met so long ago in my growing up in
Washington, DC. The Ambassador invited Pam, Welmoed and me to sit down. He
exchanged small talk with Pam and Welmoed. And then he looked at me and said: “Well,
how’s it going?” (His wife is an artist as well.) I cannot remember my exact
words, but I said something to the effect that I was trying to determine the
process of integration between my materials, the velvet rope, and the Lao
textiles, which process will be essentially improvisatory. When I finished
speaking, I looked at him and he was scratching his head. I said, “Am I making
sense? You are scratching your head.” To which he replied, “As much sense as
you can make right now.” “Ok,” I said as I smiled and chuckled respectfully. Briefly
thereafter, we shook hands and said our good-byes.
A nurse met us in the hallway. I wondered why. She
said she wanted to examine my ankle. Pam had arranged this as we arrived
without my knowledge. We went into a
room and closed the door. I sat down and
the nurse took my shoeless right foot into her hands. She asked me several
questions; she wanted to be sure that no blood clot was developing. I thought,
Are you kidding? Then I asked about the real possibility of that happening. She
counseled me to be sure to keep rotating my ankle and stretching. The
swollenness was caused from sitting on airplanes for hours and hours and not
really moving around enough to maintain blood circulation. The swelling went
down when I started following her instructions. Whew.
We rushed to the airport for the plane ride from Vientiane to Luang
Prabang which lasted two hours. We arrived at our hotel, located where the Nam Khan
and Mekong Rivers meet. I was aghast. Really? The Mekong River? Wow.
The owner of the hotel is Swedish and greets his
guests with glasses of white wine and a genuine smile. Before going to our
rooms, we visited briefly with our host. It was dark and time for dinner. We sat at river’s
edge in the outdoor restaurant. I felt as though I was dreaming. Welmoed and
Pam conversed cheerfully; I listened. I think I said a few words…serious
words…regarding my observations for the day. We talked, we laughed. We said
good night.
I was looking forward to tomorrow. And after a
restful sleep in front of the warming glow of an electric heater and under a down
comforter on a comfortable bed, I awoke on my own at 6:30 am. Tomorrow had
come.
Luang
Prabang
Wednesday
January weather is not particularly warm in Laos.
Since the hotel's restaurant is outside, I had to dress in layers, especially at 7 am. But
the waiters always supplied the heating unit next to my table so I was never
cold.
Although the menu offered American versions of
breakfast, I did not eat any, while in Luang Prabang, nor in Vientiane, actually. I had soup with onions and noodles mixed probably with chicken broth.
It was fitting to have hot soup on a chilly morning sitting beside the river. Coffee. Yes, I had coffee.
The Nam Khan River is down a steep hill from the restaurant. Where that river merges with the Mekong on the left from where I was sitting, directly ahead is an island. On the island is a Temple; it appears to be small. Across the river from the island to the beach below is a bamboo bridge.
At about 7:30 am, filing across it in the fog were four Buddhist monks, dressed in their saffron colored robes, coming from the Temple or Wat. I did not know their destination. The mistiness hung over the island and river for the duration of my breakfast. Before I left for my room, the sun slowly broke through. And the day began.
Our first official stop on this day was the Traditional Arts and
Ethnology Center. We traveled by touk-touk. Vimol
negotiated the price with the driver for the short trip to town. We traveled in the back for a semi-bumpy ride.
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| Pam and Welmoed with touk-touk |
Luang Prabang is a quaint, intimate city; at least
what I saw of it. The homes are not new. They seem original from the time of
the monarchy, pre-1975, and before. Their entrances are close to the road and hidden by
plant life, large-leafed plant life, and
vines. In fact, generally speaking, Luang Prabang is greener and not as flat as
Vientiane. Luang Prabang is nearly directly north of Vientiane, in the center
of Northern Laos.
I cannot remember if we road in the touk-touk or
walked up the very steep hill on which the Traditional Arts Center is located.
The building had a sharply peaked roof. All stucco exterior. The interior had
been rehabilitated for the purposes of exhibition.
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| Traditional Art and Ethmology Center, Luang Prabang, Laos |
We were met at the entrance to the museum by its
co-directors. Pam and Welmoed took off with them and, after I bowed to them, I
wandered into the exhibition area. The exhibits are not extensive but they are
informative. The didactics and graphics taught me more about the ethnicity of
the country than I could have gleaned on my own.
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| Photo of Akha Woman |
The exhibits show a multiplicity of objects, which
display the Lao peoples’ ingenuity and faith in their capacity to exist in an
incredibly creative world. On view were costumes for men and women from
different eras, textiles, basketry, jewelry, wood carvings, and utilitarian
objects. Each was made with patience, focus, attention to intricacy and detail.
It did not take much to convince me that the Lao
people are beautiful. They have souls. They are peaceful. They deserve
attention for how they contribute to the world, hidden away from the forefront.
Their artfulness is endless: tradition is the only
limiting factor from group to group. An Akha
woman’s costume, made from a dark indigo material, greatly impressed me. The
jacket and skirt were edged with multicolored bands and patterned strips of
cotton, no one the same. It was at this point that I decided in my mind’s eye
to let go of any preconceptions for the parameters I had to set for myself to
choose tapestries for my installation.
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| Akha Women's Costume |
I spoke out loud as I was taking the picture of the costume: “I am giving myself permissions here.” It was if a door had been
opened and I could move forward. Time to begin
purchasing tapestries.
In the gift shop, three fairly large cotton
tapestries were hanging high on one wall. I stared at them for about a minute.
I looked away and then turned my head to look again. I chose one. “May I buy
that red tapestry?” I said to the shop attendant. He moved quickly to take it
down from the hooks it hung on. I was thrilled. I said to Welmoed: “I just
bought my first tapestry…” She replied: “ Gooooodt!” There was no stopping me now. I had reached
the place in my mind where it was supposed to be…the reason I had traveled so
far.
After lunch, we strolled along the street dropping
in and out of shops. I could see possibility everywhere I looked for
tapestries; I knew what I wanted now, in shape, in color, in type of material.
Proper selection was essential. The structure for my installation work was
falling into place.
Because we were not coming back to this city, the
money flowed from my pocketbook. When an artist buys materials for doing a
piece of art, not much can halt the process. This was certainly true in my
case.
The sunny day penetrated the narrow streets which
were filled with people, cabs, touk-touks. Dogs. Tourists. I did not feel like
a tourist. Although I obviously appeared like one. I was there on a mission. It
was as if a thread was pulling me where I needed to go. There were only a
couple of shops that I saw no reason to go into. I was painting with cloth in
my head, nothing short of an amazing experience, because I was doing this
exercise in Laos.
Vimol negotiated with a touk-touk driver to take us
back to the hotel. Pam, Welmoed and I stood to the side away from Vimol. When
Vimol was satisfied, she nodded her head and we all climbed into the rear cab
of the vehicle.
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| The first tapestries I purchased in Luang Prabang |
Wednesday was almost over. The day had been long. I
had made choices and acted on them. Welmoed suggested that I lay everything I
had purchased out on my bed and take a photo to assess my future needs. Which I
did. Doing so helped me immensely. Welmoed, a designer herself, knew what was going on in my
quiet creative world.
That late afternoon, it was apparent that I was
showing my exhaustion. Pam and Vimol urged me to get a massage. Where should I
go? Why, right next door! Ok, great. I went next door for a Lao Massage. It
cost $8.00.
I entered into the multi-bed-on the floor room,
disrobed and lay on the mattress shown to me. For the next hour, the masseuse
worked my body unlike it had ever been worked before. I have massages regularly
in the US. But this massage won the prize for stretching, bending and kneading.
When it was over, I could hardly move. It took a few minutes to regain
awareness enough to rise off the mattress and walk out of the room. The massage
was exactly what I needed, I think. I paid the owner and gave the masseuse a
tip, turned to her as I left, bowed my head and said: “Khop chai. Ngam.” Ngam
means beautiful.
I do remember making it back to my room. It wasn’t
far. I took a hot shower to distribute the energy that had been released.
However, I do not remember eating dinner at all. I must have.
The next day was going to be the last in Luang
Prabang and in Laos. After figuring out with Pam and Welmoed that my plane ride
back to the US began at midnight on January 17 and that I would not have that
extra day in Vientiane as we thought I would, I had to pack for the trip home.
I separated the textiles from my clothes. Since
Welmoed and Vimol were going to buy what I postponed purchasing in Vientiane,
after I left the country, all the textiles would be shipped to me. I had to prep
them for hanging once I was back in the states. I think that I had purchased over two dozen.
Sleeping was easy. I awoke again on my own at
6:30am.
Thursday
We were scheduled to visit one museum in the morning
but wound up at another; somehow our directions were confused. The entire
complex was situated at the end of a long driveway in a French colonial house.
Some of the displays were set up in an open air room. Over the entrance were hung two carvings of a double-headed Naga. The Naga, Pam explained, was a protector; a creature of mythology supposedly living in the Mekong River. After hearing Pam describe this, I realized that I had seen replicas of this creature integrated into the architecture. Mainly at the temples. Golden Naga heads at the ends of their extended sweeping snakelike bodies on staircase banisters, roof eaves, roof peaks. Entrances, exits. Interiors, exteriors. Everywhere.
The four of us continued through the museum passing
by old photographs and tools in display cases. We came out into an area where a
woman was stirring a hot, dark liquid in a pot. She was dyeing silk with
indigo, processed from the indigo plant. Vimol translated. I forgot to say that
Vimol asked our questions and translated for us all the time, especially in the
markets, even though Pam speaks Lao fluently. The Lao woman dyeing was alone in
a room where there were tens of dyeing pots on shelves, keeping her company.
We traveled by van to our next stop in Luang
Prabang, the studio of Prince Nithakhong Somsanith. Or simply Nith. Nith is
an accomplished artist and collector. His own art is exquisite gold thread
embroidery. With a background that includes studies in France, his perspective
is wide and he desires to make a community of the cultures of the Asia in which
he lives. Now in his fifties, Nith is a very lively fellow. His French wife
equally so. He showed us examples of his work, which he carefully folds and
stores in archival boxes, stacks and stacks of them.
With gold thread, Nith embroiders images on
heavy cloth, some of the images made directly from plant leaves.The
process is tedious and time-consuming. As with any artist, it is his calling.
His intimate space is saturated with objects. Pam and I bumped our heads on
sculptures that were hanging from the ceiling. Nith is not tall. He has divided
his house into spaces for doing specific projects. One does not have to walk
far to move from one project to another. Fulfillment reels from the air.
Ock Pop Tok Living Arts and Crafts Center was the
last active weaving center we toured. The Center’s entrance opens into a campus, alive with those who believe
in the continuation of the Laotian craft traditions. Veo, the co-director
escorted us around the school. It was evident by the way in which workplaces
were laid out that teaching and learning were the prime movers. Veo is wonderfully generous in character. She imparts beauty; not only in her
physical being, but also in the way she carries herself.
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| Display of dyeing materials and the results at Ock Pop Tok Living Art and Crafts Center, Luang Prabang |
The absolute high point of this visit was lunchtime.
We were seated at a private table that was close to the weaving space yet far
enough away from the restaurant to feel isolated and strangely apart from
everything that was going on. I could lift myself out of my present and look
objectively at the happenings surrounding me. Until I ate the food. The most
scrumptuous of the entire journey. For
some reason, I started laughing without being able to stop. Everything Welmoed,
Pam and Vimol were doing and saying was hysterical to me. One could say that I
had reached a pinnacle of being fatigued and disoriented, satiated with wonder and enjoyment.
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| Pam, Lyn, Welmoed and Vimol |
When the cook took a photo of us four women just as
we were about to leave, I realized that this trip was the apotheosis of being
away from home. The trip was focused on the generation of a work of my own art
that I was commissioned to do as a representative artist of the United States.
The honor. The commitment. The esteem.
The
Spirit Houses
When I told a friend of mine months and months ago
that I was going to Laos, he told me that I had plenty of time to “study up.”
Time went by and I bought one book on Laos and researched textiles on the
internet.
Essentially, I flew into the country blind and
completely open to experiencing it. I only learned what not to do in polite
company. But after that, I knew little. I did not even know that the country is
Communist. This is how I do things. Learn as I go. I did not even look at
maps. I am doing that now as I write. I am learning more now when writing than
I did before I packed my suitcases.
Both in Vientiane and in Luang Prabang, one can frequently
find, sometimes enclosed with vegetation and tucked back close to the buildings
that line the streets, Spirit Houses.
Spirit Houses reflect my spirit as well. I left so
much of myself there. In a sense, when I return, it will be like going to
another home. The four days spent in Laos were a blessing, a means to know
deeply that we people on earth have the same needs and different ones. That we
can feel the same feelings, yet express them differently. I will leave an
offering to Laos. It will be the installation piece in the US Embassy.
When I arrived at the airport, the US Embassy driver
made certain that I was taken care of when I reached Incheon Airport in Seoul,
because one has to go through an immigration transition from Laos to Korea.
With much gratitude, I said good-bye to Seng. I waited in the Wattay Domestic
Airport until the passport line opened at 10:30 pm.
The doors to the passport desks opened on time. I
was the one person to go through them to proceed to the only desk at which an
officer was sitting. I approached and stopped where orange footprints are
painted on the floor. As I handed him my passport, he surprisingly said to me: “Sabai
Dee.” I returned the greeting: “Sabai Dee.” This officer was the same officer
who had stamped my passport when I entered the country.
After he canceled my visa and handed my passport
back to me, I said: “Khop chai.” He waved me through silently, as he had done
when I arrived. I proceeded to the departure gate.
The circuit had been completed. I was on my way
home.
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