this morning i was late 1/2 an hour for my first meeting...then i was late 2 hrs (really 1 hr...because i told them i would be late one hour) to my next one.......yesterday i was late 45 minutes for my one meeting.....it's hard to figure out, really, since people are anywhere from 10 min. late to an hour.......i was kicking myself a bit today, though...as i don't want to get too comfortable doing this....aghhh!!!!!






anyway, so the first meeting today was in the colonial core, working on a museum foundation project. we've been meeting for two months already, and are just about getting it together to organize this thing. the man we are working with is an amazing artist, Estuardo Maldonado......

he also has an interesting story....he's in his 70s now, and he had been living in rome for about 50 years, just returning to ecuador 10 years ago? he has one of the largest ecuadorian precolumbian archaeological collections, as well as a collection of his own artworks.

he is from a small town near quito, but was kicked out of the house by his father when he was 14 yrs. old.....for wanting to become an artist....he left for guayaquil on the coast, earned a scholarship to study in an art school there, then.....won a prize in rome, went there and stayed....married an italian woman...then proceeded to create his life's work....painting, then mostly sculpture in stone and then studying the hyper-cube - and working with steel......

all the while, collecting ecuadorian archaeological pieces as they became available to the market (upset that everything was leaving ecuador in that manner)......and then 50 years later returns to ecuador with 6containers worth of artwork.....and is now donating it to the country as patrimony!

anyway, so this is one of the things jazz, ana maria, and i are working on.....the meeting today was with a govt. official, trying to figure out how to deal with this piece of property to create a house museum - before the other museum project we are figuring out (that's the architecture studio i took over from ana maria.....to propose a site and building ideas for an international competition)!

anyway....so then i was late for the second meeting.......

oh, and estuardo has some beautiful staircases....! there were some other amazing details with all the different thicknesses of the adobe walls......