Inspired By
My Olla: Colors of Mazatlan
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Every house or apartment I have ever
moved into had white rooms. Oh, I just remembered, that’s not totally true. One
was shades of putrid pink. Sooner or later, I transformed every wall in every
house with colors of my choice.
Several months ago Gogi, my
landlady, was sitting in my living room visiting. Gogi is Mazatleca but she
spends most of the year in Sun City, California, where her daughter lives. I
asked if I might paint. “Sondra, you may do anything you want,” I heard her
say. I did. I know those are the exact words she used. Immediately I saw the
colors dance around the room.
My
friends in Harlem have teased me for years about how whenever I had visitors, I
managed to put them to work on major house and garden projects. “How can you do
that?” “Did your friends know you had
fifteen yards of bark chips in your driveway before they arrived?” “Did they
have a clue that you had ripped out the carpet and had boxes of wood flooring
stacked in the living room?” “Why do they keep coming back?”
My olla, my traditional clay bean
pot, has a marvelous array of warm, light-reflective terra cotta hues. Easy as
it was to make my color choices, getting to the job was more difficult.
Physically, I couldn’t do it. I needed help.
Kathy, from Pender Island in British
Columbia, a friend through sixteen years of mutual projects, and I were sitting
in my living room, phase two of Project Olla. I held my olla in my lap. “Let’s
use this light color for the main walls and this darker shade for trim and at
least one wall. We’ll paint all the walls the same two colors. This place is
too small to use more colors. Oh, except for the door. I see blue on the front
door.”
“I can see blue,” Kathy agreed. “Let’s go buy paint.”
Mazatlan is a city of over
eight-hundred thousand people and an equal number of vibrant colors. I have an
unlimited choice of paint (pintura) stores, including Sherwin Williams. I chose
Comex, a Mexican paint company with a tienda on every other corner. I bought
brushes, rollers, a lighter shade and a brighter shade.
Despite the fact it was afternoon
and 96 degrees in the shade, my friend and I began slinging paint. We started
in the kitchen. With the lighter color. Only the lighter seemed much brighter
on the wall than it did in the paint bucket. Once begun, finish the job, right?
That is the way I was taught. Goodness, the room seemed, well, intense. I
returned the next day and hung pictures and set furniture in place. Ah, the
room quit dancing the samba and settled down into a welcoming and cheerful
dining area.
The following day we returned to
Comex to buy a gallon of white. I wanted to mix white with the paint left from
the first gallon, the “lighter shade”, to tone it down a smidgeon for the
remainder of the walls.
Now, what happened could have happened in any paint store in any
country. Even Sherwin Williams in Havre, Montana. The man misunderstood what I
wanted and shot colors into a gallon of white to duplicate the same bright and cheerful
terra cotta. “No,” I sort of screeched. It took four persons to find a solution.
I walked out with a gallon of the color I wanted. Pretty much. Plus a liter of
dark blue for the door.
Kathy tackled the blue door and I began painting the “lighter-light”
terra cotta, close to salmon. The darker paint is tangy, like tangerine. I
painted a blotch of each, side by side, and hey, this works! We finished the
door and painted a first coat on the hallway and bedroom. All the furniture is
crammed into the middle of the rooms so we can drag ladders around the
perimeters. We sleep at the resort where Kathy is staying. My bed is piled high
with pillows, baskets and books.
The third “paint day” I unlocked my door, heart in my throat.
I want to like the results. My rooms welcomed me with a warm glow. Today we finish. The rooms are brighter than
I had intended. But . . .
I love the jubilant effect. My neighbors like it. I hope Gogi
likes it. She said I could paint it. “Do anything you want,” she said. She
did.
Sondra
Ashton
HDN: Looking
out my back door
October 30,
2014
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