I woke up at 7:30 this morning and got dressed to go birding. I went out to the breathtaking view of an inlet of the bay, watching the sunrise with my family and eating some jamon and cheese sandwiches. Then, my dad went for a run and showed us a great dirt trail to bird on. Vanessa and I saw a lifer! It was an adorable European Robin, a small songbird in the thrush family. It was singing a bubbly song out of its orange throat, hopping through the forest like in some kind of Snow White movie.
We met Manuel the artist as a family by the main road of Getaria. He got into our car and directed us out of town and on a twenty-minute drive through picturesque, rolling mountains and farm houses. We parked and he led us to an big, old, gray garage; a large room with no heat in the chilly morning awaiting us. He showed us the bust he was working on: a the bust of a man whose grandfather had been made a bust by Manuel years earlier. He started with clay, then did the actual bust in marble, wood, or any other hard substance the client wanted. There was a huge saw in the corner (I mean it could have been used as a guillotine in its past life), and Manuel and his art partner Miguel use it to cut really big pieces of wood. For example, Manuel utilizes a lot of petrified wood he finds in the Bay of Biscay, because Getaria is so important in his life, thus his creative work. He has used one petrified trunk for two huge large, beautiful, African mermaids, an old man bust, and several other smaller pieces.
In another room of the warehouse is the equipment the two artists use to make their work, and the last room is filled with art. Miguel is working on a stone and wood piece (he does a lot of those): organs in a chapel are hollow, but he created essence, the physical essence, to them, and the outlines of the organs are hollow instead. He drills holes in the marble to break them anyway, and it looked really cool. Geometric, artsy cuts of pallet were on the ground surrounding the rock. Miguel was very patient and quiet as Manuel excitedly, and rightly so, talked about the stories about his art. There was a mix of wood and stone carvings, wine bottles with picturesque Getarian fishermen and bay views oil-painted on. There were old men and old women busts, two really cool, slightly colorful "carvings" of wood. A branch bisecting and then coming back together was made to be a man and woman: one with fish-like feet, coming together, craning their necks to kiss.
There are little knick knack kind of carvings, stones with anchovies painted on them (he gave Vanessa and I one each!!), and my absolute favorite art piece: a small stone mermaid girl, curled up, sleeping, on a skateboard. After marveling at the beautiful, interesting art for a while, we drove to a small town called Ojos where Miguel and Manuel had an exhibit. Miguel had 10-15 large pieces of art, all using and melding stone (with maybe a white stripe running through the dark marble) and wood -- wood cubes or tables made of interlaid wooden pieces; pallets to give see-through depth. He deals with time and balance, spirituality, and, my favorite, nerves, and the system of feelings and ideas. He used biology in his art! Usually rock was the nerve axon or feeling.
Manuel´s was awesome. He had the four-breasted African mermaid that he had described to us the day before; the four breasts signifying the four elements, and the perspective that she is coming out of the water. There was the ashamed woman carving; she is pregnant and unmarried in the 1940s, her hand covering her face in shame and fear. There was another carving of a woman, pregnant, with a woman on either side of her, supporting their friend it all. It reminded of the saying "It takes a village." There were busts of two famous Getarian fishermen rivals, a few wooden carvings of old Getaria ways of sorting and netting anchovies, and small beautiful carvings of people and some other thing to represent human emotions of sadness, passion, love, desire, fear.
We drove back to Getaria with Manuel once we had looked at the exhibit for a while, and Manuel had to get to a meeting. We got packed up, then walked to a wonderful restaurant. For appetizer, I ate peas and potato stew with jamon. For my entree, I got grilled chicken and fries. And dessert was brazo gitano (gypsy arm), which was really sweet bread rolled in fresh cream. Delicious!
After eating, we walked partially up the mountain that juts up right by Getaria, admiring the views of both bodies of water with the town in the middle of our view, the lizards scurrying about everywhere, and the karsts with rivulets and holes created by the water long ago. We found Manuel paintings and carvings in the rock: a woman with pink lips, a man, and a few others.
Once we finished with our short hike, we were running out of time to see the bay. We decided to take a short route: walk across a field of large rocks-- the remains of Getaria´s old sea wall. Getaria was on our left, the gorgeous bay to the right. The water is blue, but when a wave crests, the water turns to a clear green. It´s unbelievable to see. We watched it while climbing over the rocks to get to the beach. Once we got to the beach, we put our feet in the water and took a family picture, just as we had six years ago.
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