The buses in rural Argentina reminded me of old school buses on their last legs: those old buses either converted for use by hippies or prepared for ‘twisted metal’ style destruction derby.

My first days riding the bus, I noticed two very important things. The first was that the bus was never on time. Of course, this is a subjective opinion because there were no posted schedules anywhere. There were only the times the locals all converged on the designated bus stop, a timing that I can only attribute to years of practice relying on the faltering bus service. The second thing I noticed was that once on the bus it was almost impossible to stay on your feet; at least that was my opinion for the first 2 months or so. The bus driver always drove like he was constantly behind schedule, no matter how fast he flew through narrow residential streets or how dangerously he cornered around tight street corners, the bus was still always late.

So I found out the hard way that at least for a few months the only option was to keep at least one hand on a pole and your feet spread out in a surfer’s stance. You had to be prepared to brace yourself for any unexpected jolts, stops, bumps or turns. A bus getting into a serious or even fatal accident was far from unheard of. Consequently, I found myself more than once staring up embarrassingly from the aisle floor, or much worse, from the lap of some seated Argentine. Even the elderly and the smallest children would ride the bus with effortless ease. The looks on their faces when I fell, bumped into them, or banged an extremity because of the uncertain flight of the bus embarrassed me so thoroughly that I would have gladly transferred buses at the next stop if only I had known how or when to transfer, or where the next bus might take me.

Nick Friedland is one of the editors of Synch Chaos Magazine.  He wrote this story about a day to day experience he had while visiting a foreign country.  If you have any questions or comments for the author, feel free to contact him by email at Nick.Friedland@gmail.com.

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ARTIST STATEMENT

“I have always been drawn to the arts as both participant and critic. I love to play and improvise and it is in the artistic realm that permission to do so is most freely granted. For me, to create a picture is to solve a puzzle where the solution requires selecting and designing the interlocking pieces. If the process is pleasurable, I manage to maintain a mode of play and feel rich with anticipation and curiosity as to what the end product will be. In the process I work at manipulating perspectives and depth, discovering new ways of using lines and looking for colors that might add zing.”

Ron Weil can be reached by phone or email at 510-528-2984 or ronweil@yahoo.com.  Also, you can see more of Mr. Weil’s work at his website: www.ronweil.com

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Our All-Seeing God

Every Christmas I pray for one special Christmas miracle. The Lord burdens my heart about a certain need. I pray about it and have others pray.  Then, I look expectantly to the Lord for His will and His way in answering.  Long ago I told the Lord I wanted His will in the answers. His plan is so creative and perfect It is usually so different than anything I could have ever imagined. His timing is just right.  He cares for each person so completely, even in the midst of our human struggles.

This year I am praying that a blind student of mine and her roommate will have somewhere to go on Christmas Eve. The leader at the group home where they live does not take them to a community Christmas Party because they have trouble walking up stairs. I thought of inviting them to my house, but I also have some stairs they would have to maneuver.  I am going to leave this in the Lord’s hands and see what He has planned. He loves these ladies who claim Him as their all seeing, all knowing Savior.  O lord, please allow these precious ones to see You in all of your glory this Christmas Season and to experience a wonderful time of fellowship in You.

Patsy Ledbetter may be reached at patsyled@sbcglobal.net.

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According to the Artist:

“Enclosed are samples of my work from the past 3 years. I work realistically, in fact I work from life. Paintings and drawings of different genres were done from one point of view. Illusionary space became predictable. From cubism I got the idea of multiple points of view and the use of the cubist grid for composition. The oval was a format used by the Cubists. I made drawings of different genres using multiple points of view. Now I’m making still life paintings in the same mode.”

Gordon Pagnello can be reached by phone, (415) 487-9948, or e-mail at gordonpagnelloartist@hotmail.com.

View more of his artwork at his Website: morsegallery.com.

Says Wildermuth of her art:

“In this world there are many places to see and many ways of seeing. I paint combinations of landscapes from around the world, which are not usually seen together. The separate landscapes are brought into a close relationship that unites them into a single expression that can’ t be seen in the natural world but rather refers to the world of imagination or memory. I choose to paint these invented landscapes to reflect and remind myself of the places I’ve been, as well take my memories of these lands one step farther into the land of wistful fantasy. These combinations cause me to reflect on the sacredness of our natural places and the curiosity to see even more of this great wide world.”

Current news about the artist:

She recently got married and spent a few months traveling around South East Asia. After she returned, she began a new series of landscape paintings based on those travels. She explains her process for this series in her blog at http://wildermuthreyes.posterous.com.

Additional work can be found at www.wildermuthart.com.

Alexander Voitsekhovskiy is currently having an exhibition in Boston at 20 Estabrook Rd. Lexington, MA, 02420.  It opened Friday, December 10th, 6pm- 9pm, and continues Saturday from 1pm- 7pm; Sunday, from 10pm- 7pm.

The Artist was born in Moscow in 1964.  He worked as an emergency room doctor for ten years.  His hobby of drawing left him and many friends with a large collection of sketches.  Unannounced to him, his friends set up his first exhibition in 1994.  His work was an instant success and he continues to earn international recognition.  He has held exhibitions in St. Petersburg, Russia, the United States, and elsewhere.

He lives in St. Petersburg with his wife and two children.

You can see more of Alexander’s artwork at www.petrovichbook.spb.ru (Russian)

Statement from the artist:

“My intention is to provoke the multifarious nature of personal identity in the struggle and balance between truth and charade. Used theatricality—more specifically the tensions between the self, persona and audience—as a framework for transformation, I want to reveal and rework the conventions of role playing. The exaggeration of action, costuming and expression pluck the body out of the norm and recapture it in a moment of transition from veracity to illusion and back again.”

“In my current work I have appropriated and altered the icon of the self portrait to re-examine when the relationship between self and persona becomes convoluted. Repeatedly showing my own body, in moments transformed into iconic characters through costuming, suggests that personal identity can be distorted by variable persona. However, these moments are juxtaposed with the exaggeration of raw and basic human nature through the consumption of food. Cake is not only a symbol of decadence, but it also mimics and underscores the moment when the natural is disguised and transformed by culture.”

More artwork can be found at Alex Luke’s Website: http://www.alexluke.com/index.html.