First let me apologies for not writing sooner, as I feel I have been away from home for years. The past three weeks have flown by as fast as the snow has fallen for most of you in North America and the sweat has dripped down my back here on the equator. I write from my beloved old home of Yogyakarta in my dear friends Linda’s home. Norah Jones is singing in the other room in eerie harmony with the echoing call to the mosque down the block. It is 10 in the morning and the temperature is already 92 degrees. Hot and happy I am.
Just thought I'd catch you up to date on what life in Bali is like for our little family. Less than 2 months for go before we reenter the land of Bush, something both Bill and I are dreading (not coming home, but the new Republican era). This week was Nypei, the Balinese New Year, which starts their 210 day calendar off. It is one of my favorite holidays, of all the religions I like to hitch hike on. It starts off with a huge celebration - a wild party - the night before with a big parade of larger then life creatures (much like in Where the Wild Things Are) carried on bamboo stretchers by about 40 young men. They carry the Oga Oga around (about 15 or so different ones in our village) much like the Macy's Day parade, with the intention of making as much noise and hoopla as possible to lure out all the evil spirits for one big party.
Laura Cohn, '88. The Peregrine, Newsletter of the College of the Atlantic Association The privilege to make art full time rarely exists for artists. The need for food, housing and materials requires consistent funds on which an artist must depend during his or her working hours. As a budding artist, I subsidized my art-making by waiting tables. I worked many a moon fearful that diners would notice the cerulean blue Winsor Newton oil paint under my fingernails as I placed broiled lobster delicately before them. Only far away, in Southeast Asia, did I discover a place where I could call myself an artist without feeling the need to justify my words, or be obliged to subsidize my income with a second, distracting job. Also, in Indonesia there were more artists than tourists - and no lobsters.
I want to write about how Indonesia, batik, painting, selling art, living a foreign solitary existence, so many elements of my life have fit together into a harmony right now that has allowed me to produce a body of work that sings.
Laura Cohn '88. The Peregrine, Newsletter of the College of the Atlantic Association, Fall, 1990 I am awakened by urban sounds of children playing, booming Indonesian pop music, televisions blaring, fighting cocks crowing, and the heat and brightness of the equatorial sun. It is a typical work day, with a morning routine similar to that of one of my peers in the United States. I bathe, dress for the office, then sip piping hot coffee as I read the daily paper, struggling with the printed Indonesian word and the minimal four inches of English copy about global events.
