The People In Your Neighbourhood: Maria Yebra
I’ve been inspired by a song I heard many, many years ago. It’s a song that I hope they still sing on Sesame Street. The song is called The People in your Neighbourhood. You might remember it too. So often we take for granted, or don’t even notice, the people around us. Each one has a story, a lifetime of experiences, and a few special talents from which we can all learn. This is the first of what I hope will be a monthly feature on interesting people from the neighbourhood.
Maria Yebra: Light Painter, Cupcake Decorator, Steampunk Enthusiast, Teacher
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| Maria Yebra - Partners in Light |
When I first met Maria she and her partner Steve were teaching a class as part of Melbourne’s Laneway Learning. Maria’s class was on light painting, which is the use of various illuminated objects to ‘paint’ onto darkness, captured on film. Under her watchful tutorage she helped me come up with this image.
Having long held a passion for photography, Maria got into light painting through a friend, who participates in urban exploration. Urban exploration is to 'explore' abandoned buildings and drains, as well as other not entirely legal to enter places. ‘I admire the decay of these buildings’, says Maria, ‘[my friend] took me to an abandoned glue factory and showed me how to light paint, and I was like “I need to do this!”’.
The abandoned urban locations supply plenty of stimulating backgrounds to compliment the light painting. ‘When you have a background that is amazing, like the women’s asylum, you can really feel the energy of the location’. But Maria notes that if you’re working with background it’s important to be minimalistic with the actual light painting, using the light to emphasise rather than take away from the location, or overwhelm the background.
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| Maria Yebra - Partners in Light |
Four years after first discovering light painting Maria and her partner Steve have cultivated their passion into a small business. ‘It started as a hobby, just a fun thing to do, but then Laneway Learning came along and wanted me to do a class, and then to repeat a class, so I thought maybe we could sell some prints too!’ The business is focused on workshops, which Partners in Light runs after dark on a monthly basis in and around Melbourne CBD.
‘The tours we do are for beginners, around the city, near the river, to the laneways where we paint with the graffiti. I couldn’t take the beginners to some of the more abandoned places, they’d probably freak out’. Fair enough too, as Maria admits she’s had some interesting run-ins while urban exploring. ‘The first time we went draining the police got us out. There was a homeless person screaming. We were there with all out lights and the police arrive. The good thing is we don’t do graffiti or damage anything. We were mid-air with plastic light swords. It was a bit of a situation’.
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| Maria Yebra - Partners in Light |
Laneway Learning also features heavily in Maria’s agenda, having recently taken on a more active role in the running of the initiative. ‘The first class I taught was about steampunk, and they asked what else I could do. I could teach Spanish, I could teach cupcake making…so they booked everything! I was such a regular I’d be there all night teaching different things’. This is all in addition to her day job as a freelance marketer. ‘I was lucky they asked me to join them. I was basically living there anyway, so why not? It’s a lot of work, but totally worth it’.
The Laneway Learning concept is ‘a ragtag series of evening classes’ that have been running in a number of partner cafes since March 2012. Covering anything from feminism to flower arranging, zombie films, art history, through to the sciences and basic feminist theory, Laneway Learning is an opportunity to learn something new, on the cheap (most classes are around $12), and in a highly sociable way.
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| Maria Yebra - Partners in Light |
Maria and the team have recently taken the Laneway Learning project interstate and are considering opportunities for the future. ‘We’re now open in Sydney [but] the aim is world domination!’
It’s this dedication that keeps the team going and keeps people turning up. The popularity of the classes has grown exponentially since initial humble beginnings. ‘It’s a passion for learning and doing something different. We have a group of regulars already, but then for every class around half are new students who only found out about Laneway Learning, because of the particular theme of the class.’
‘I think [the popularity is partly] because of Melbourne’, Maria muses, ‘I’ve lived in a number place around the world and Melbourne has a very specific style’. I can't help but agree with her, Melbourne is the perfect place to devlop a model like Laneway Learning, but it's an initiative I'd have love to have seen when I lived in Sydney. And while it's early days, Sydney appears to be embracing Laneway Learning.
It will take some adaptation, as Maria found when she taught light painting there recently. ‘The first time in Sydney, we didn’t calculate how many street lights were around the venue’, she notes. ‘They don’t have dark corners and alleys like Melbourne!’
Maria tells me that hair braiding is one class that always books out. ‘It’s so popular, but it’s the most useful class ever. I suck at my hair and I thought it was super hard, but [the teacher] does it, and you get to do it on someone else, and then someone else does it on you. It’s both of those things that really helps you grasp it’. And it’s easier than it looks, ‘people are like, wow, that must have taken forever – it takes minutes!’
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| Maria Yebra - Partners in Light |
As for what’s next for Maria, in between organisation and teaching classes with Laneway Learning – her next light painting class is scheduled for 29 October, and she recently taught a group to make fondant unicorns – she is running workshops with Partners in Light, holding down a day job, and if that wasn’t enough Maria and Steve are also currently working on a photographic series called Imaginary Friends. In the meantime, you can check out Maria's work here.
You can find Maria, her work and Laneway Learning via:
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