Chile Mid-Century

Chile Mid-Century, a set on Flickr.

When my wife and I recently moved to the "south of Chile" (anywhere from the 9th region further down), we did it for the climate and the difference in the scenery. The culture here is very distinct from those of the more northern regions and we find life a little simpler because it has a far more country fill and pace to it.
As it can be said, we are extremely happy with our choice and can't image living anywhere else. To give an idea, I've been told that where we live now is very much like norther Oregon. Hey! That's funny, we always wanted to move to Oregon.
So, beyond the wonderful views and rainy climate, we find that there are other benefits to living here. One is that there is a huge German culture. Many of the people who live here still speak German from the fact that the are German. They also make great German pastries... yum...! Beyond that however, they also use some typical architecture of the German mountainous areas.
Then, on top of all that, you have the fact that, well... this place is hugely touristic and therefore, they have an incredible amount of Cabins here. Of course, most of the older hostles and houses follow the Germanic heritage, ie. Old style German farm houses. There are also, many influences in the local housing and cabins that are MCM because many people bought and built in the mid to late 60's here. Another incredible thing is, that, people have built homes that look like they are straight out of the 50'/60's, but where only built in the 90's/2000's. Regularly, you see summer cabin owners building new rentals that follow that mid-century vacation home style.

I'm trying to get more active in my blog here again, and hope to be able to share a number more of post on the MCM influences here in Chile, and especially here where we live. For more info on the local climate and tourism, you should check out my tourism site that I have. During the winter things are slow, but I should have move post there soon. You'll find it at www.jemandes.com
In the photos posted you can see some of this influence. All I can say is, if you get a chance, this is a cool place to visit.

Back in the day before MCM was a real word.

Back in the day, before Mid-century was on the minds of, well... the majority, I worked at a manufacturing plant. One portion of our plant made lockers and desk. While doing some needed market research, I came across this company. Mind you, at that time they had probably half the options they offer now. Also, I noticed that now everything is called "M/C name". Just funny, that's all. http://www.retrooffice.com/

Lantern

I'm now ebaying and have posted my first item. It's not the last thing though. I will have more to come soon. For now, I suggest checking out my wall hanging that I have listed. Hope you bid and make me...well...I would say rich, but that's really not going to happen. So, please buy "Lantern" so I can cover what I put into it.

Thanks!

Chile...My life now.

As many of you know, I live in Chile. This has not always been the easiest thing to do. You have to learn how to accept different living conditions and habits.Thing is, I'm not the easiest going person in the world, and can be somewhat opinionated. Especially when I know a better way of doing something. So, in the end, I would say that living here has humbled me greatly. That's not to say that I'm humble. Just more humble than I was before I got here. Also, I'm learning how to truly see things from the "other" persons perspective.

When we first got here, we chose to live relatively close to Santiago for convenience and due to all the necessary paper work that comes along with being a foreigner. The first town we lived in was quaint and very humble. I'm not saying that in a negative manner, just explaining the environment of the small town. Most people in this town work as agriculture workers and made somewhere between 10 and 20 dollars a day. This in turn, heavily dictated the local living conditions. We lived in one of the community housing projects. These are not looked at as being bad. It's the norm for most people and was a good way to get to know our neighbors, and integrate ourselves in the Chilean culture. Our neighbors responded well and made sure that we were well taken care of. They helped with all the details of small town living.

These included where to buy fresh fruit, veggies, and meat. Also, we learned how to move around on public transit. Not the funnest thing I've ever done, but none the less very interesting. All of this was vital to us growing as people, and we do not regret our decision at all. However, with everything good comes something umm... less good...?

This "less good" thing was the climate. While the area was absolutely beautiful in it's own right, it came at a cost to us. We come from Georgia and have rain just about every month.

When it's hot, we have AC, when it's cold... central heating. None of which we have in this region of Chile. When it is hot outside, it was even HOTTER inside. Rain...? There is rain, but it all comes down in 3 of the 12 months of the year. Notably, it is quite different from what we are used to.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining about where we lived, just explaining the difference. These differences helped motivate us to look for a different area to live. Well...we found it. What do you know, we ended up in the south again. Just on the other side of the world.

Now we find ourselves in the 1oth region of Chile and about 13hrs from Santiago on bus. The climate is a moderate climate. It rains here quite a bit, almost everyday.

There are some weeks however that it doesn't rain at all. These are rare though. Another interesting aspect is that in the summer months, we have about 14 hours of daylight each day. By 6am it is completely lit outside, and it sets at 9:30pm or so. We live between two beautiful volcanoes, and yes they are active. There are waterfalls, cows, alpaca, sheep, horses, lakes, salmon, trout, rock climbing, trekking/hiking, snowboarding, and boating all in a 15 mile radius of our home. On top of all this, there are beautiful rolling hills/forest all around.

Our new house is in the middle of a farm that was settled 150 years ago, more or less, by german settlers. In fact, our little house is one of the original homes on the property.

It has been remodeled and has an addition that brings to the total size to about 785 sf. One portion of the home still has the original Larch tree wood shingles on the outside.

These shingles are interesting because larch tree wood is unique in the fact that when moisture is applied to the wood actually gets harder not softer.

The inside of the house has a "big" (by Chilean standards) kitchen, 3 rooms and a nice size living room. In this post you can see the living room and the outside, but the rest of the house we are still organizing as we just got here Tuesday and I didn't take photos of it.

One great thing about the inside of this house is, it has aged wood flooring in the majority of the rooms and real wood paneling for the walls. This creates a beautiful interior for our style and fits well with my designs.

Another plus is that I have the space to build more furniture and sculptures. Some of what I will be building soon are master and spare bedroom beds, desk, lamps, sofa, occasional chairs, and bathroom furniture and fixtures. So, of course keep an eye open for my new projects. For now I just hope you enjoy the photos of our new house and the surrounding scenery.

So in good Chilean... Chao (pronouced Tauuu...)

My wife and I had thought of using LP covers for wall art. In Chile though, there's just not that many cool vintage LP covers. So... my other idea was to use old posters of musicians. This seems to be even more difficult to do. Seeing as though these are not just hard to find in Chile but in the U.S. as well. What does one do then? Make some yourself right.?

That's what I'm doing. I'm designing some vintage looking music posters of different genres like Rockabilly, swing, jazz, and lounge. Once these are all designed I am going to investigate the possibility of doing screen printed versions. One off's each one for my own personal use. If I never get around to that, I'll just have them digitally printed. I'll let you guys know how it turns out. This isn't a short term project. I project this to take many months.

While not MCM, it's still cool!

I wanted to share with all you folks the wonderfully cool sofa my wife's aunts have for sale on Craigslist. The sofa is located in the Metro Atlanta area. They have a small booth in one of the Antiques malls in Kennesaw, GA. While they aren't focused on mid-century modern per say, many times they find cool 50's and 60's stuff. Follow this link to see the ad.

Doodles

As some of you may have noticed, I have put up some new images on my Flickr and my Facebook. They are just something to keep me busy for now. The drawings don't have much reason behind them other than the fact that I hadn't drawn for a while. To be quite honest with you, I thought that maybe I had forgotten how to draw. I'm trying not to use solid fill in the images as much as possible. I just feel that cleaner hatching lines gives it a somewhat more respectable illustrated look. As always, I hope you like them, and let me know what you think.

Follow this link to see more.

At Long Last!!!

At long last is right! It was only 2 years ago that I told my lovely and patient wife how I could save us money by building a credenza myself. I promised that for the same amount of money that we would spend in one of the "department stores" (Quotes used here because, in small town Chile S.A. there aren't any TRUE department stores.) I could build one that was not only better quality, but looked better too.The other part of the statement said something about how it would only take 2 months. Oh, well... the past is the past and now I have a finished credenza. However, that's not the end. There is a little bit of a story that makes this piece so special to us. This is how it goes...

This piece starts with me thinking as if I was still living in the States. Sure hunny, (my dislexic spelling of my wife's pet name, which really is honey) all I have to do is select some really good cabinetry/furniture grade plywood and then I can get started. I should have this thing done in no time. Ha!!!! Furniture grade plywood is, in small town Chile anyway, construction grade plywood but thicker. It's thicker so that after you have sanded off all the unfinished ply's you still have some kind of support. Fine, I got the wood purchased, but that was just the start of all the fun.

About the time that I got ready to start working with the wood I had bought

I went to pick up a few tools that I needed. Mind you that many things (most farm/plowing equipment and furniture) are still made with hand saws, hand drills, and gerbil driven table saws in this area. No, really! The tools that the two local furniture makers use are what my 1950's vintage woodworking books show as modern. Any who, I, being completely naive thought that, well, power tools are a dime a dozen and if I don't like the price I'll just buy online at discount right?! I mean, you only have to wait a few days more anyway. Yeah, right! Those are two things that don't exist here. Options, and cheap. So I bought what I could afford. I built this piece with a circular saw and a borrowed drill. A hammer drill at that. Here tools are 2 to 3 times the price of what you find them in the states.

Even still, I had the opportunity of having providing our neighbors with rumor mill material. Being the only foreigners in this small town can draw some attention even though you don't mean to. See, the house that we are renting was, at that time, and still is today (2 years later) getting a 100 square foot expansion. This meant that I had to do my woodworking in the carport. No big deal until I started fitting the credenza together. All they saw as this long rectangular box and so like any normal person would assume, I was building a coffin. Why a coffin? Why not?

That definitely drew some attention. Funny thing is, I couldn't for the life of my find any furniture clamps. So, I used my wife. Yep. Good thing she likes to read. She sat on top of the sheet of plywood and I shaved the edges with my good ole Stanley hand planer. Yet, no one thought that was strange at all. The construction of a plywood box had our neighbors passing by our gate to see what was going on. Go figure.

Originally the concept was for a chest of drawers that would be low lying as our home was originally more of a studio concept with the bedroom and living in the same open floor plan. In fact, the need for my wife to have a place to put her panties is what started this project to begin with. Imagine my surprise when one day I see her packing all her stuff in one of our pieces of luggage. I was sure she had had enough of this project and living here and was going home. However, my wife loves me and was only re-organizing her stuff.

Since then the credenza has been destined to be a buffet for the kitchen area, a normal credenza, and an electronics cabinet/entertainment center. I think now it will just be a credenza, and we don't know where it will go in the house. Looks like I built it just a bit to big. What can I say? I guess my eyes where bigger the our house. Not to fear though. We will definitely use it, even if I have to save it until the day I die and get buried in it. You know, the whole coffin thing doesn't sound so bad after all. Who knew...!

It's been a while, and...

As the title mentions, It's been a little while since I've posted, but this post doesn't mark a come back. Yet, that is... I have many things that I want to share with you folks. I've interviewed a very nice artist I found on Flickr and I really think that she deserves to have her interview posted. Not only all of this but, I have other things that I've had in mind for a while and want you all to see.

However, first I must explain that I haven't just been lazy. In fact, I've been very busy. Not at all with art or design, but with other important things. As some of you know, my wife and I live in Chile, and this provides for some unique opportunities. One of which is being able to enjoy the satisfaction of helping build homes for those who have lost their home in the earth quake that we had here in Chile a few months back. So as I said, I have not just been lazy.

Once all this is done, I hope to get back to the blog a bit more, but we will just have to see how life goes. For now though, in a few free moments that I had and with some scrap materials I had laying around I painted the art you see here. It's not on a finished piece of board, but then again, I did for the joy of doing it, not to create a super refined piece of art.

Hope you enjoy it.

Eric