June 29, 2005 — Yesterday I met Judy Hopen of St. Louis. We got to talking about Mexico, and she asked if we had ever been to the surreal Las Pozas of Edward James. I said yes. (See my blog entry entry by clicking on the link.) Kelly and I had also walked over to the nearby town of Xilitla, which I also blogged about.

It turned out that Judy had gone down there six or seven years ago with an Outsider Art tour. They had had dinner one Saturday evening in Xilitla, but she was feeling a little queasy and decided that sitting in the restaurant wasn’t for her. She went and sat on a park bench in the zocalo, or central square. Being Saturday night, the place was popping.

She pulled out a little kit of face paints and pretty soon she was painting kids’ faces. Then some sassy, sexy teenage girls noticed that she had black-light face paints and a little black light, and so she ended up doing a lot of teenage faces. The girls were going dancing later that evening at a club with black light, so they were quite thrilled. Judy said she did their faces in more of a Hindu style than she had used on the little kids, with a lot of dots.

When the rest of her group emerged from the restaurant, they found Judy surrounded by a jovial crowd in the plaza. It’s a night that she remembers very fondly.

I immediately thought that I’d like to take some face paints when we go back, but then I gave a moment’s thought to my artistic ability and decided to pass on that idea. Judy had another suggestion — she pulled a little bottle of bubble-making stuff out of the back pocket of her shorts, and explained that she is also a bubble lady, and that this stuff makes bubbles that don’t pop immediately but can last for hours and attach to each other. So you can make all sorts of things with them. You can get this at toy stores.

Now that’s an idea I might pick up on. She said it doesn’t leave any residue.

Judy doesn’t speak a lot of Spanish, but it doesn’t matter! What cross-cultural fun!

I hadn’t heard of outsider art before. I didn’t know if it was art to do with the out of doors or art done by people who are outside mainstream society. Judy had mentioned that her group had stopped at a Mexican prison (not your usual tourist stop) and bought art from some of the prisoners there. I poked around the internet a little and found out:

Outsiderart.info had this definition: Outsider Art… Art From Outside The Art World.