Jason Harmon and Professor Mark Graham, Department of Visual Arts
The purpose of my project was to research the indigenous cultures of Ecuador through art (painting, drawing, and photography). My hope was to bring a lot of visual reference home, and to create an art show that would inform its viewer of the rich cultural diversity of some of the many indigenous cultures found in the diverse climates and regions of Ecuador. I started out hoping to help others understand these different cultures, their ways of life, and how they live, but after a two and a half week journey through the jungles, mountains, and rain forests of Ecuador, I came home with a stunning gratitude for how similar we all are. Despite different cultures, languages, foods, customs, dress, body types, we all are children of our Heavenly Father, and we all have such a great potential. We are all on this beautiful planet, and on our journey back to him.
are all on this beautiful planet, and on our journey back to him. I started my two and a half week excursion to Ecuador on April 30th, 2011. Accompanying me was my good friend and mission companion Ian Dougherty. After arriving at the Quito airport our first destination was Otavalo, where we visited, studied and lived amongst the Quichua people. We spent several days walking through their villages and talking to people. Our biggest challenge was getting good photographs of the people, because most of them didn’t want their pictures taken. We prayed a lot for help, and we eventually were guided on a long walk through some mountains, and around a big lake where we found many people who were kind, and opened up to allow us to get the images that we needed to get for the art project. We also were able to find many member families who were more than happy to talk to us about their culture, and to help us to understand their ways of life.
Our next stop was Santo Domingo de los Tsachila. Our time was limited there, but we were able to spend one afternoon in one of their communities. We were given a tour that explained their way of life, and we were able to take many pictures and gain an appreciation for who they are, and how they live. They are a people known for their knowledge of plants and achiote that they use to dye their hair red.
Our biggest, and most successful excursion was our visit with the Chachi’s. Leaving from the city of Quinende, we visited a city called Guayacana, where there is a branch of the church. We stayed with the branch president out there, and they took a lot of time with us explaining about their culture, way of life, customs, food, medicinal plants, laws, punishments, music, etc. We lived with them for two days in a small, remote village. I learned a lot from the Chacis, about the simplicity of life. Most of the families live off of less than $200 a year, and that is with most of them having families of 8 to 12 children. Their main income is cacao, which is imported to Italy to make fine chocolate. They mostly live off of the land. The amazing thing is that most every true bears fruit that is edible. It is through spending time with them, that I learned my most valuable lesson, “that although each culture and way of life is different and distinct in many ways, we are also all the same. I felt the spirit often with the Chachi’s, and learned that the most important thing that I could teach through a showing of artwork of the cultures of Ecuador, is not how different we are from them, but that although we are different, we are also all the same.
The next group of people we visited, the Afro-‐Ecuadorians were already very familiar to us (Ian and I). We had both served amongst the black people of Ecuador for at least 6 months. Although we were familiar with their culture, we were excited to get some good images of them, and to strive to capture them from an artistic perspective. A few of our challenges were that it is fairly dangerous there, and a lot of our traveling was done in a car. There are several times that I wanted to hop out and take pictures, but it wasn’t possible. Luckily we did get several great images of children, and we got to know a lot of really special people, especially church members.
Our last visit was in the Amazon jungle in a city called Puyo. In Puyo we were very lucky to arrive during a week of cultural celebrations. We missed a few key parades, but we were able to take part in a festival where 7 of their cultures were present. We saw demonstrations of their pottery making; woodcarving, dancing, singing, and we saw a blowgun competition. We also got to try a lot of typical food, and witnessed a demonstration of a woman making chicha (a typical drink made from fermented yuca that is boiled, smashed, chewed up, and spit out, then mixed with water). The people were so nice, and their facial structures were fascinating. They resembled the faces that I associate with the Lamanites and Nephites.
The last day in Puyo, we went on an all day excursion with a tour guide where we visited the Kichua people, ate their typical food, went canoeing down the river, and hiked for about 4 hours through the rain forest to several waterfalls where we went swimming. I feel like that last day in Puyo helped me to understand more of what it would be like to live in that region of Ecuador, and why it is that they live the way they do.
The time spent in Ecuador proved extremely valuable from an artistic perspective. I collected a ton of information visual and non-‐visual information in preparation for an art show which will go to several locations and help people here in the United States to appreciate the varied cultures of the world and teach them how special we all are.
It was my hope that I could prepare and be ready for this show by the end of June or July, and prepare I have, but I have been working to work to provide for my wife and daughter, and this hasn’t allowed me the time to fully finish the show that I am working on. For my BFA final project it took me a year to complete my paintings, and so to do a very good job, it is my hope that I will be finished by early next summer, and that my show will travel around the last month or so of the summer.
The challenges of the project have been two fold. One, I lost hundreds of images from a new 8 gig card I got for my camera (the card has glitches, so I am still in the process of recovering those files). Second, It has been a fun challenge to take what I learned and experienced, and to develop it into a cohesive show that will best help others to learn visually from my experience. To overcome this challenge I have been thinking and praying about exactly what to portray, and the most telling seems to be peoples faces. I will have a variety of things in my art show, but my paintings will mostly focus on the special faces of the people that I encountered from the varied cultures of Ecuador.
I am so grateful for what I learned and experienced in Ecuador through my ORCA grant. It has been a special culmination to my education at BYU. Over and above my project and research it was so special to testify to the people in Ecuador of the restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Everywhere I went I had special experiences that will bless me for the rest of my life.