DiarySue Williamson
Thursday, October 30
So I've been in New York for almost a month now and my time here is coming to an end - my younger daughter Kate is expecting her first baby on November 3 and I certainly want to be back in Cape Town for that!
But this morning I have a meeting with the HarperCollins editorial and design team about the new book I have been writing about contemporary art in South Africa. I've been waiting all month to have this meeting, to discuss the look and feel of the book with the designer and art director. I would have loved to sit down with the designer and go through the book with him page by page, but it's just not going to happen.
In a few weeks the entire book will be sent to me in Cape Town as a printout and I will have the opportunity to make changes then.
This afternoon I have a lecture scheduled at Columbia University at the invitation of art historian Zoe Strother to talk to Susan Vogel's class of students studying contemporary art. I'm talking about my own work, and three students have been scheduled to ask questions at the end. The students have had to do some research and have their questions ready, so the questions are quite honed, and I have to concentrate hard.
Susan Vogel's clothes are incredible - on our way out to a post-lecture supper at Mexican restaurant Zarela's, she covers her beautiful celadon green stitched jacket with a magnificent full length coat in grey and white piebald felt.
Friday, October 31
Halloween. It's a huge holiday in New York. Costumed messengers with sunflower petalled faces cycle around town, lines stretch around the block outside costume stores, and armies of children dressed as witches and fairies carrying little plastic orange pumpkins to fill with treats are everywhere.
Penny Siopis and I have been invited to a student party, but instead we head downtown to watch the gay Halloween parade in the Village. Apparently the recession has caused a number of sponsors to cancel floats, but there still seems to be an endless procession of floats, each bigger and more outrageous than the last. Priscilla, Queen of the Desert times 100 and on speed.
Finally heading back uptown, every subway station has been taken over by a wonderful carnival spirit.
Saturday, November 1
Open my email this morning to find my daughter Kate's baby has already been born. Early. Probably while I was in the meeting at HarperCollins on Thursday. Oh, dear. So wish I had been in Cape Town at the time. But the photo of the little newborn Tess melts my heart.
My first project for next year is to make a new work for the Havana Biennale, in March. Next year's Biennale will mark the 50th anniversary of the Cuban Revolution. This will be my fourth time on the Biennale, and this time, I want to make a special work that addresses the Revolution.
Earlier this month, I bought an amazing book of old photographs of Cuba at the Metropolitan Musuem of Art. It's calledI Was Cuba. I really wanted to meet the man who had this remarkable collection of images, so I tracked him down on the web and found he lived in New York. Ramiro Fernandez. We met over coffee last week. Ramiro's family left Havana when he was a small boy, but members of his family still live there.
Today, I am going to meet him at his Chelsea apartment, and then we are going to do the gallery rounds. His photos are kept in dozens of grey archival boxes on a set of steel shelves. I could spend hours looking at them, but time is short and the galleries are many.
Not that we spend more than about two minutes in any of them, except for 303 Gallery's installation of Doug Aitken's Migration - a series of enormous plasma screens placed like highway billboards down the centre of the gallery show Aitken's film of North American wild creatures like a bison, an eagle, or an owl, confined in a series of motel rooms, knocking over lamps, muddying carpets - 'animals trashing hotel rooms' as one listing describes the film. The fascination of the film with its Hollywood-style production values is observing the animals in extreme close-up in their claustrophobic surroundings.
Tuesday, November 3
I'm back in Cape Town. And here is a photo of baby Tess.