Ms. Rais’ Painting Students, I am thrilled that you will be painting murals for the Pinalito Community Center walls. I want to provide you all with everything I can to help understand the culture of Pinalito, so I'll start out sending you pictures of the village. I have access to all of my pics and the internet while I am in Guatemala, so I'm available for more questions as you all get started. With these pictures, I am trying to point out what the people wear... Notice the bright colors and the lace around the collar of their dress, and the yellows, greens, pinks and blues... I love their clothes! The men wear anything from the U.S., they love soccer jerseys and any type of polo shirt. It is really cool to have a cowboy hat, and some of them have baseball hats as well. All of the people are really short-- like 4'8 to 5'. I also wanted to show you all the landscape of the village.... Up in Pinalito, we are in a rainforest. The trees are tropical, like orange trees and banana plants, sugar cane and sometimes pineapple. Just about 200 yards BELOW Pinalito, there are pinetrees everywhere, so the people are familiar with both environments. (It's crazy how close together the bio zones, or whatever you call them, are!) The name of the community center will be "En Camino Centro de Communidad" which means "On the Way Community Center," so I am hoping to get a picture of people moving forward... Like walking up a mountain trail. I love how Diego Rivera uses symbols, like the fruit in the "Allegory of California" mural at the NY Stock Exchange. The economy in Pinalito revolves completely around agriculture, so I can imagine a similar use of oranges and coffee in the murals. Besides that, most of the people in Pinalito cannot read, so symbolism will be important.

Ms. Rais’ Painting Students, There is one main wall where I want to put like the "welcome mural" advertising what it is, and attracting the villagers to get involved. The first picture, Image 1028, is a picture of this wall; it is the side of a stairwell, therefore trapezoidal. I don't know the dimensions, but will try to remember to measure the wall when I return. There are two other buildings behind the main community center, and I would love to paint those walls as well. The whole area needs color! Again, I will try to measure these walls when I get back to Pinalito. I love the idea of including actual faces of Pinalito in the murals, or at least coming up with some way that some of the villagers might recognize themselves in the painting. Is that possible, or completely unrealistic? Color: the women's colorful Clothing: bright pinks and yellows and turquoises... Backgrounds: the mountains, kind of tropical landscape of Pinalito in the Themes: Diego Rivera, with people walking uphill, towards a goal. We will be offering reading classes and sewing workshops and agriculture and health seminars in the center, so there are several options for symbolism. I will get the dimesions to you later!