Yogyakarta Indonesia Week 3

Yogyakarta Indonesia
Monday

Great last two days! We had our first two meetings for the wall project. We met at my hotel at 3:00 pm -- about 10 of us. The hotel I'm sure thinks I'm crazy -- last year the kittens, this year I'm bringing a bunch of artists in to have a meeting for which I cleared the furniture in the lobby so we could sit on the floor and plan our guerilla project.

The group of artists that I'm working with is awesome! I feel really honored to get to work with such a talented bunch. They solely work on the streets doing posters, stencils, and spraycan work. The group includes: Novi, Anton, Puji, Roly, Anto, Aries, Karyadi, Gedheg, and Nova; and Aries 2 (dua) is videotaping our project. Later, we met at 10:00 pm at Sam and Ade's to make more of a plan of action and the materials we'd need. One of the things I love the most about the art community here is that they're so organized in that if you decide to do a project it happens in a flash.

This morning Novi and Anton picked me up at 9:00 am and we headed over to Sam's to meet up with Roly, Anto, and Aries dua.

Then off to toko chat Spartan (the paint store). Several people there remembered me from years past.

We then headed over to the site to scrape the wall that was layered with posters, old and new. Puji, Karyadi, Gedheg, and several others joined us there later.

The highlight of the day was when I looked across the street and saw a familiar face -- Farhan!!!! I was so happy to see him. Farhan worked with me on the mural that I did here in 2003 -- Bungas, as part of the Sama-sama project. He's married now and has a 6 month-old baby!

I'd heard word that he'd done a new mural project in Jogja recently, but I hadn't seen it yet. So we headed via motorbike to see it and got caught in a downpour of rain. We had to stop twice to wait for the rain to let up. When we got there I couldn't believe my eyes -- or really, his. The mural is incredible!!!!!! Totally KARAN!

Meanwhile, Arie has been putting in many hours working on the catalogue -- Nadiah too (she did the copyedits on the Indonesian text). The film has now been printed and they're starting to print tonight! So Arie and I'll be heading over there later to check on the progress and colors.

Tomorrow, we start again at 9:00 am to paint the wall.
Until then, Salamat!