I didn't make it in time for the beautiful proposal about coffee and art in last #tcsp. However, as with topics that leave a little hornet's nest in your head, these thoughts have not failed to unsettle me. I said to myself then: if you want to write it, go ahead! Maybe someone else will have something to share with you about it.
Arts and guarapos (and terrace!). The origin of some connections
I have already spoken about this café on other occasions in this same community but it will always be the most genuine reference I have for the birth of many interests in my life. Besides, not only the café but the center where this café has its service has been the same one that has allowed me to develop several aspects related to art and related to the environment. Both things I can say form a fundamental part of the substance of my life. And all this with lots of coffee of course.
In another post I told that I had had the opportunity to help in the formation of the artisan unit of the Unidad Medico Docente Las Garzas, in Lecheria, Anzoategui state, in my country, Venezuela.
Some of the most significant experiences in this sense took place on the terrace of this unit that serves as a extension of the cafe. There you can also consume some drinks and meetings involving culinary activities are held regularly when the coffee shop becomes too small for this.
The photographs that you will see in this post were made during some experiences of this type which involved theater art and paper art.
This café-terrace connection usually occurs through recreational and educational activities, particularly on family Sundays and vacation plans.
On those occasions you can not only taste the drinks and snacks offered by the café but also have an experience that leaves something deeper. In these experiences there is always a lot of art as well as eco-social awareness.
As I usually do in my city, I meet with botanists, artists and people who are involved with ecology.
We impart education, but also spend happy moments with cups of coffee in hand surrounded by nature.
The old argument
There are those who argue that craftsmanship is not art. What no one doubts is that all art requires a good dose of craftsmanship. In general, the centers that educate in art spend almost all their time in familiarizing the student with the craft of that art, that is, with the technique, with the way of dealing with the material tools and means that art implies.
For that reason it does not make me noise when some craft store proclaims that this or that thing they do is art, because I understand that, if it is not consolidated art in the sense in which it is formally understood by the academies or formal systems of art, it is the birth of art or possibly the birth of a great art.
Basically, it is the same thing that happens with digital art in which I am making incursions. To be sure, there is a tendency not to consider digital art as art, because the media it employs, that is, its tools and materials, are still foreign to conventional art systems.
In this photograph, cut bottles and a basket of cane. They have beauty, there is an aesthetic will and there is technique. Isn't there art?
And isn't cooking an art? It is simple art in the kind hands of the people and great art in the hands of the professionals and popular culturists.
Here is a detail of the first not failed chair I wove with rush and vetiver.
Just take a look at these perfect fried eggs made on the terrace by the never well weighted Petra, weaver of the Unidad Artesanal. The same woman who weaves vegetable fiber fabrics to produce beautiful objects and who also makes exquisite ginger and mal ojillo teas.
But we are here to talk about coffee and to talk about coffee and art and I have something to say about it.
Discussions about art are complex, I understand that complexity as a theorist in the area, and I know that they are often crossed by emotions.
But there are some things to consider without a doubt about art and people: the presence of art is inevitable in our lives, it is inevitable that we make subjective judgments about art, and the art we like the most is the one that touches our soul (even if it makes us suffer or is not perfect).
I will add another one that is important to me when it comes to coffee: it does not have to be professional, I have to like it (and sometimes it is not that it is good, but that it satisfies my state of soul at that precise moment); it has to have a heart.
In this photo you can see the most beautiful latte art, made by a nice young lady in one of my favorite cafés... It gave me a full and emotional laugh!
I must say goodbye, and I want to leave the picture of the last coffee I had at Artes y Guarapos.
I know these connections may look a bit frayed, but I guess that's what reality is also a bit like.
A hot coffee surrounded by flowers, a refreshing tea while listening to a song, having something beautiful and useful to do: the beautiful connections of life.