3.5" x 2.5" x 1"
Watercolors & Plastic
ROMANIA

It was the first morning in Bucharest and it was raining and cold and grey. Pretty much everything one would expect. It was hard getting up but we had an early appointment and Vlad was coming with the cab soon. It was our first daytime view of the city and we were leaving town to the outskirts and onto an industrial zone. Combinatul Fondului Plastic (CFP) was founded during the Communist period as the commercial part of the Artists Union, producing the paints to fund the operation and supply the artists with materials. The current factory was constructed between 1968-1972 and is a work of art itself. We met in the director's office (padded door, lots of brown) and later, at the appropriate time, we were given a tour of the factory (lots of spontaneous art on the walls). Once 600 workers, it was now reduced to a handful. The watercolors were produced in one room, interestingly enough, by hand. I had pictured tubes running from central paint vats and machines pumping out one color after the next in quick succession, to trays on a conveyer belt. That was my vision of the future but the present was quite different. Bowls of paints, ends of paintbrushes, paint scooped and deposited time and time again, trays walked over to small drying racks. It was Herculean. And the colors - so Romanian, particularly that tan/brown. Halfway through the trip we decided brown is the color of Romania - it should be the national color, it is everywhere. Does any country have a brown flag? They might want to consider. Colibri means "hummingbird."