Panamanian Body Art — Buy Your Loved One an Isthmus Present

This year the Newton Festival of the Arts 2016 is featuring a special demonstration by several indigenous Panamanian artists proficient in the art of whole-body painting. The artists will be bringing with them 200 gallons of condensed juice from their domestic, inedible jagua fruit to demonstrate their artistry on Newton natives. These members of the Embera tribe are visiting from the Darien region of Panama on an exchange grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. (Twenty-five Newton students will be going this summer on a reciprocal grant to Panama…twelve from Newton North to demonstrate “toast art”, while thirteen from Newton South will teach “nano-portrait painting” on the top of pins.) This obscure Panamanian creative expression of fine-motor body art is being offered to Newton residents at deeply discounted prices during the weekend of Newton Open Studios, April 9 and 10, from 9am – 7pm at the Newton Senior Center on Walnut Street. The Newton Health Department suggests that those with smooth and firm epithelia will be most satisfied. The whole-body art cover is priced at $547.92(USD) and takes about six hours to complete. An arm and a leg are $152.25 (USD) each and require 1 hour and 10 minutes to apply. Several hundred drawings of Panamanian artifacts will be available for your selection or you may bring your own design for application with spiders, snakes, blowguns, and political portraits being forbidden by the Embera religion. For more information and to make an appointment for your body art tattoo, please e-mail Linda Plaut at [email protected].