In my last blog post, I mentioned my letting go of original drawings from my Book of Marvelous Cats and my surprise at being a little reluctant to part with some. Time, accumulation, and changes of circumstance generally do work their effects on sentiment. In addition to parting with my drawings, I will be putting miniature paintings of felines up for sale as well.
The paintings date from 2010, when the world’s attention was focused on a group of miners trapped deep underground in a copper mine in Chile. For every day the miners were trapped underground, I made a small painting. I divided these paintings in to five sections: bats for when the miners were starving while waiting to be found, folk art bats with round luminous disks on their chests for when the bore hole that brought sustenance to them broke through, jaguars for the days spent waiting for the larger escape tunnel to break through, dogs for when the miners had to work to remove rocks as the escape tunnel bore down, and finally the birds for the flight out of the mines in the contraption named "the phoenix."
I made TIFF files of the whole collection and sent this to the Chilean Embassy. I don’t think anything was done with it, but the ambassador did give me a nice book on the history of U.S. Chilean diplomatic relations.
When the Chilean miners were rescued, they became stars for a while. I had some reservations about how they were being treated, fearing that as the news cycle ended and the focus off, the same miners would be neglected. This fear proved to be well founded. The miners lost their lawsuits, they fell on economic hard times. Some returned to the mines. I cannot imagine how awful it would be to swallow one’s feelings of claustrophobia and be forced once again down a mine shaft. The miners apparently did not benefit from the movie made about their trials, either, not even being given a bit part!
In a strange sort of synchronicity, the miniature paintings I made from that time have also been readjusted and reduced in a number of ways. They were never sold as a set. The price has been reduced somewhat. And the bold, brave jaguars? They too, were modified to appear as domestic cats. I’m still at work on them - giving them cat faces and cat ears and putting them back to work. I hope that they pay some bills.
The paintings date from 2010, when the world’s attention was focused on a group of miners trapped deep underground in a copper mine in Chile. For every day the miners were trapped underground, I made a small painting. I divided these paintings in to five sections: bats for when the miners were starving while waiting to be found, folk art bats with round luminous disks on their chests for when the bore hole that brought sustenance to them broke through, jaguars for the days spent waiting for the larger escape tunnel to break through, dogs for when the miners had to work to remove rocks as the escape tunnel bore down, and finally the birds for the flight out of the mines in the contraption named "the phoenix." 
I made TIFF files of the whole collection and sent this to the Chilean Embassy. I don’t think anything was done with it, but the ambassador did give me a nice book on the history of U.S. Chilean diplomatic relations.
When the Chilean miners were rescued, they became stars for a while. I had some reservations about how they were being treated, fearing that as the news cycle ended and the focus off, the same miners would be neglected. This fear proved to be well founded. The miners lost their lawsuits, they fell on economic hard times. Some returned to the mines. I cannot imagine how awful it would be to swallow one’s feelings of claustrophobia and be forced once again down a mine shaft. The miners apparently did not benefit from the movie made about their trials, either, not even being given a bit part! 
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