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Portrait of the artist as a hippie

Meghan Bingaling
Jan 3, 2018
3 min read

I have an early memory of my dad helping my Girl Scout troop with an art project. He'd drawn a picture for us to use as example and naturally as children, we'd been insanely impressed. All my friends were astonished by this adult and his ability to draw something that didn't involve suns squeezed into the corner or the famous double hump drawn to indicate a flying bird.

Of course, at the time, I thought I was better than everyone and I explained matter of factly to the other girls, my dad isn't an artist though.

My nine year old brain had a clear idea of what an artist was. They wore berets and listened to electronic music. They stayed up late drinking too much coffee and discussing the meaning of life. And this of course was not MY father who watched the history channel and made sure that our car was up to date on its oil change.

But really, I don't know what an artist is. Because as I've gotten older I've learned that being an artist doesn't really have anything to do with making a profit. I know successful artists who have earned a name for themselves and make a significant profit. But I also know artists who have 50$ in the bank account and moonlight as waiters.

I bring up artists because I think of my father as an artist now. Not the kind who ends up in a museum, but the kind of person who knows his way around a dark room.

During the 70s, he was a bit of nomad drifting from place to place. He wrote poetry. He slept on beaches. He studied Buddhism and I think there's a good year or two that he didn't shower. He lived in Malaysia, Thailand, Hong Kong and finally Mexico.

At my parents' house, there are boxes and boxes of photos and journals that he kept from his younger days.

It's one of my favorite things ever to go through them. I think we're all fascinated by what our parents lives were like before us. My dad's life sounds so much cooler before he had me. Sometimes I wish I could travel back and talk to him before he 'sold out to the man' and had little old me.

A lot of his photos and journals are sad though. He talks about wandering without a set goal or plan or reason for being there.

Sometimes the photos he took are of strangers. Sometimes the strangers seem annoyed or busy. Sometimes they seem curious. Sometimes I see a look of wistful longing in my dad's eyes.

I've recently been looking through his pictures of Mexico. He visited Mexico 3 different times as a nomad.

During the third trip, he visited Monterrey, Morelia and Guanajuato. At that time, he was there for 3-4 months crashing on couches and making fast friends.

In Morelia, he had two different jobs. He worked briefly on a rabbit meat farm and then also at a shop that sold doll parts.

He made basically nothing working long labor intensive hours at the rabbit farm. He described the people who worked beside him as poor, but very positive and hard working. He said that everyone was quick to make a joke even after the longest day.

I asked him a few times about how the rabbits were treated, but he never seemed to think it was very important.

During his time in Morelia, he took lots and lots of pictures. He organized them all into a cute little book and captioned them with his thoughts on the image.

I won't include all of them, but I've collected the ones that I think best capture his time living there.

Photo essay of Morelia, Mexico, 1970s