Hoy, artista

Take Care of Your Art and Your Art Will Always Take Care of You

2012-05-25T17:40:00.000-04:00

I received this advice many years ago by writer Nicholasa Mohr. It has always remained with me because I know that, as an artist, it is the best thing I can do in order to grow and continue moving towards my goals.

This morning I spent a couple of hours reorganizing and adding pieces to my portfolio. I have a goal to get my artwork into 100 stores, and this was an important step to realize it, so I finally sat down and did it. I could not have imagined that I would use it by this afternoon.

A few minutes ago my husband came to pick it up to show it to someone in charge of grants given by the LMCC or one such organization distributing fund for art projects in Manhattan. Not only he has never done that before, but I had no idea this opportunity would come like that all of a sudden. I feel there is a little bit of magic involved in the whole process.

I was taking care of my art this morning, after all!

I don't know whether anything will come out of this, but I do know one thing: the more energy you put into making your dreams come true, the closer they will be, and the faster they will become realities. So, take care of your art and your art will always take care of you. I hope I get a $5,000 grant! And I hope you do, too!!!

Tertulias

2012-05-21T18:12:00.000-04:00

For a while, since coming back from Prague, I was feeling pretty bad. I was not myself, and have not been for a while. That's why I bought new makeup, went for walks every day, and when I felt a little better, announced the next Noche de arte, letras y vida. I did this so late, few people were able to come, but that was not the point. The point was to rescue that part of me I have been starving to death in the last few years.

In the old times, I used to be what my friend Raquel (I think it was her!) called a social butterfly. Now I am more of an antisocial cocoon. I'm almost afraid to go out in public. I feel awkward and misplaced when I am around many people. The reasons for this are complicated, but all the same they don't make sense. So this weekend I added one more element to my socialization recoup: Tertulias.

My friend Lucy defined a tertulia as a special gathering where a group of friends get together to share poetry and art. I think she said it better, but that's what I recall right now, thinking of this weekend and the two tertulias I attended. I guess if we tried to say tertulia in English, it would be salon. In the old days of East Harlem, intellectuals like Julia de Burgos would get together in apartments to share their creations, recite, live the bohemian life. While I am not great at being a bohemian, I do enjoy a noche de tertulia a great deal.

Friday night was my own tertulia, which it's been going on for two years with only about 5 gatherings, but still, it is a tertulia and we get to take over the American Wing Cafe of the MET to read and share and laugh. We laugh because whoever does not bring a poem or something to share will have to answer a question, and shy people don't like to answer questions! But this time we had a group of teachers, and 5 poets, which turned out to be great fun and also filled with tender moments. One of the teachers actually recited a poem a boy gave her when she was 15 years old. She still remembers it, more than 30 years later. Another teacher recited a Neruda poem, and the poets all brought their wonderful work to share. I read a spiritual-erotic poem with a wish for everyone present to have a passionate night of love in the next three days...!

Then Saturday I was invited to another Tertulia Night in Lucy's house. When I got to the hallway, approaching Lucy's apartment, I could hear voices, as if the night was already started. It turned out a group of musicians was there, a poet, and Lucy. The music group, a young woman singer Alexandra Castano, a young man as guitarist, I don't remember his name but I do remember his smile, and Joe Falcon at the bass, was wonderful. They began playing their boleros before more people started arriving, and it was a great concert that I wish more people get to see. I hear they are at 110 street or 103 street on the #1 platform at 2 p.m. on Saturdays... I plan to go see them again. Then it was happy birthday to Lucy (which she did not tell me about, bad girl!) and then, hmm, me. I did not know I was being featured, and filmed... and unfortunately my nose was red from sneezing and my makeup almost gone, but well, how could I say no? So I read 3 poems from Sagrario and Destellos de Sofia while explaining how I began making poetry books. It felt really good because I did not have much time to get nervous about the camera and because a lot of the people present were people I had met at some point in the last 13 years. Then everyone left, and 5 of us stayed talking about Mary Magdalene and derivative topics. It was 2 am by the time we realized it was time to leave!

The tradition of tertulias has been going on for a long time, and I hope it never stops. It is so different from a "presentation" because what you share in a tertulia, you share among friends, and you are part of a circle rather than in front of a group. People can laugh and comment, and tell what is meaningful to them without having to say anything. Spontaneity rules, the heart rules the tertulia. There is no end, and usually no beginning, since it all starts when it starts. A tertulia makes the solitude of the studio more balanced, and bearable. It provides a space to share what is created in solitude. What a wonderful privilege to be able to take part in this tradition, I hope all artists get to experience it sometime.

While I am not cured yet, I did feel happy sharing with people and was able to not feel anxiety after these two nights of art and poetry. It's a good restart. Unfortunately, Sunday was bed day with a terrible cold. I wonder if the recipe was just too much medicine. Next time, may be just 1 tertulia!

Have you ever been to a tertulia? Have you ever organized one? How did it feel?

6 Tips on How to Travel With Art

2012-05-17T19:57:00.002-04:00

Traveling with artwork is not easy, especially if you are traveling on a budget, but if you are looking forward into expanding the horizons of your art pieces, here are a few tips:

1. Small and light: Work small or make the piece divide into several smaller components that you can fit in a suitcase. When I took my work to an exhibition in Cuba, I brought a piece that expanded to about 40" x 60", but it was made up of separate parts sewn onto a cloth that I could fold. It fits in an express mail box. That was a good experience, but I also have a bad one: last month I traveled to Prague with 12 paintings on canvas, on their wood supports. I got fancy and bought the expensive ones, which means they were HEAVY and difficult to carry around. Go for the lightweight wood supports and your life will be great!

2. Avoid extra-large suitcases. They are very expensive to check into the airplane and cumbersome. Keep in mind that, outside of the U.S., people usually don't have super-sized cars and taxis are tiny. I did this when I took 11 pieces about 18" x 24" to Puerto Rico, and luckily we were able to travel by van, because otherwise, I don't know what we would have done.

3. Don't place your work in cardboard boxes. Airlines usually don't allow this for international travel. I did this once, those same 18" x 24" frames... and almost lost my flight and opportunity to exhibit. One thing you can do is cover the box with a cloth bag. Then it becomes a suitcase... I sent 3 paintings this way to another exhibition in Dominican Republic and it worked.

4. Work flat. If you can fit everything into a portfolio or roll, great! In 2010, my friend Raquel and I took our work on the road, and I wanted to make sure it would be easy to set up and take down each time we presented it for a few hours, so I bought folding easels and made several paintings on flat canvas boards. It was such a great system, I didn't even pay overweight or extra luggage for the flight.

5. Check the airline's rules for traveling with art. I didn't think of this until last month, when I was trying to figure out the best way to take 12 paintings on 1.5" thick canvases to Prague. In the end, we checked the suitcases and took the paintings as two carry-ons because the airline specified that you are not to check artwork, and if you do, you have to sign a release form. Although I had already decided to take them with me by hand because I didn't want to show up in Prague "paintings-less" if something happened... I wrapped the paintings with interleaf paper and placed them face to face (2 paintings + 2 paintings + 2 paintings) in a plastic bag, then in shopping bags (like those large Costco bags.) 6 canvases 16" x 20" x 1.5" each fit perfectly in the overhead bin.

6. Create a checklist and check off each item as you pack. You don't want to go shopping in a foreign country, I think! I forgot to pack tape for Prague, and wrapping the paintings in the interleaf papers for the flight back was not fun. They kept unwrapping themselves.

Much success in your future art travels and, most of all, have fun! That's what it's all about!

Last day in Prague

2012-05-04T08:12:00.000-04:00

We rode the train from Budapest to Prague for about 8 hours. I wrote half of the way, but the trip still seemed long. And on our way I started realizing, and regretting, that I didn’t ask for directions to the hotel. I thought I knew where it was, “very close to the Prague Convention Centre.”

We got there by Metro and that’s when I fully realized I had no idea which way to walk. I had read a review of the King Charles Boutique Hotel when I booked it that said that the hotel was right under a castle. And that was all, plus the address, of course.

We asked an official person in the Metro station that told Juan we had to go back two stops from where we were, but I knew for sure we were in the right metro, so I insisted that we look in the map. The names of the streets were so tiny they were nearly useless, but Juan managed to locate the street by chance and, yes, it was somewhere near where we were.

For a moment we thought it might be on the other side of the station, and we had already gone up and down the stairs with our two suitcases… Luckily, I saw a sign to the castle and we walked in that direction. Some time later, we saw a hotel, and I went in and asked where the street was, but the girl said it was “down” so we kept walking down the street. A hill with two suitcases and a backpack is no easy task. I was carrying the backpack, which felt super heavy, and Juan rolling one suitcase in front of him and one in the back. Soon, we were not sure which way to roll, so I tried to locate someone to ask for directions. There were some very young couples, but I didn’t want to interrupt their romance. An older man came out of a tunnel, and his white beard and hair seemed respectable enough, and he had no girlfriend kissing him, so I chose him. He smiled, pushed me by the waist in a very flirty way and asked me to follow him, half English, half Czech. I felt weird and like laughing at the same time, so I decided to trust him and followed. Juan was not far, with the suitcases. First the man indicated the way, and I didn’t quite get it, so he crossed the street with me to point straight ahead. I smile widely and thanked him and we were on our way.

Finally, we made it, but only to find out that I had made a mistake when I booked. I meant to book 2 nights and booked 3. Still, this was better than the opposite situation, and the young woman at the reception told me not to worry, we had our room. They still charged me for the room, but at least we had a room in Prague during the high season, when everything is booked. And that was a great relief.

1. This hotel was in a totally different part of the city, which led us to the conclusion that no matter which way you walk in Prague, you will find something beautiful. We were under the Vyšehrad Castle, an area apparently inhabited by artists, a gay community and working class families. The hotel is exaggeratedly ornate in its décor, but it was kind of fun to sleep under a canopy and have a rocking chair in the room. I also liked the Giant wall hanging of the Vitruvian Man, which was a cool touch in an otherwise neo-rococo style. That day we were too exhausted to go far, so we ate Vietnamese food in a nearby restaurant. It was super cheap (something like $3 per dish, and they were big…) and delicious, so we were very happy. The Vietnamese community arrived in the old Czechoslovakia during communism to “study” but really, according to our source, it was to work in factories. Same with Cubans. Then a portion of their paychecks was sent to their countries. When things changed, they had already built their lives there and stayed. There are many restaurants of this type, just like Chinese restaurants in NYC, and with the same concept of food from pictures that you can choose by number. The girl understood English, too. And we had a great meal.

I couldn’t sleep well this night. I think realizing it is time to go back got to me. I very much want to go back, but at the same time dread what awaits. I have to deal with the mural that burned, I have to finish a commission, I have to organize an exhibition of the paintings I am bringing back, and I have to fix my house and prepare for a long-term visit from my dear nephew who has been having a teenagehood attack worthy of calling some Russian troops to the rescue. And then I will go to New Mexico in August for a month or so to be the grandma of my beloved friend who will be having a baby and that’s something I can’t miss. (It was my grandma who saved my life when I gave birth, so that’s why I say grandma and not sister or mother…)

Our last day was truly a Grand Finale. We met Mercedes, a Cuban woman whose love story placed her in Prague three days before the Russian takeover, and she was stuck here during the whole communist era. She was a young student in Cuba who was assigned to give first aid to a Czech math professor who had gotten hit on the head (I think from being too tall, nothing too dramatic…) Then it all took off from there and he wanted her to visit his family in Prague, but her family said, No way, you are not leaving unless you get married first, and they got married and went to Czechoslovakia. I think they were expecting to go back to Cuba, but three days later, the Russians arrived and they made their life here. I liked the love story! And Mercedes was the most wonderful tourist guide in the world! We had tons of tours, but she was the best. Then we went to church with her, in Mala Strana. Poor Juan was stuck in the front row, getting up and kneeling, and singing. But it was a wonderful part of the Czech experience because we got to meet lots of Spanish speaking people who live in Prague and even the Dominican consul was there, so Juan spent the whole agape talking to him. Then the priest showed us the antique library. We saw thousands of ancient books, an antique Lutheran Bible and an atlas, as well as had a closer look at the frescos on the ceiling of the church. All in Spanish!

Next, we had to go pick up the paintings, and made a stop in between to eat a snack in a fancy Thai restaurant at the exit of the metro. It was delicious, but a fancy restaurant in the subway? Strange! And they even had a terrace overlooking the city. It was hot, so we stayed inside.

Paul, his wife Lenka and daughter Tereza met us at the congress center. We had invited them to dinner to thank them and say good-bye. They helped put away the paintings and then we went to a typical Czech restaurant in Old Town Prague. On our way there was a surprise awaiting us: Paul had arranged for all of us to go by horse carriage to the restaurant from the main square! That was fun, and so cute of him!

We said good bye with the promise to see all of them in NYC.

We had one last stop. The Hard Rock Café… yes, our son sort of collects the t-shirts, so we went to get one for him and another for Jean Carlos, my nephew. Oh well, it’s getting to be a tradition.

Back home, I spent the first few days very tired and very sad. This trip moved me in ways I did not expect. It made me think of what I want, what I don’t want, what I like and don’t. It made me revise my everyday life and my extraordinary life. Extraordinary as in away from a routine, and extraordinary as in all the gifts I receive everyday. And it made me think of what are the next steps in my artistic career, as well as in the design of other areas my life. I don’t think it had anything to do with the things I saw and did, but with the collisions that occurred inside of me. I had the most conflictive feelings all along, both of wonder and boredom, excitement and sadness, learning and mental exhaustion with memory loss. By the last day I was unable to remember which was the virgin I wanted to see in Prague, and was embarrassed when the priest tried to help me and I could not be sure of the name. I felt a lot of embarrassment during the whole trip for lots of different reason, a feeling I am not used to. I, who am not afraid to stand in front of 1,000 people to talk, was embarrassed all the time here. Which I think had causes beyond its manifestation. When I arrived in NYC, I just wanted to be quiet, in bed, but was tormented at the thought of all I had to do. I tried to begin, but couldn’t.

Then I did what I tend to do when I feel lost: go to the bookstore. I walked 40 blocks. I bought an umbrella for the rain. I read a book the asked, What is your purpose? Those are the epiphanies I get in the bookstore.

I am working on a life plan right now, so that the next trip I take will not hit me so hard. So I can enjoy life more fully. Whatever it is I need to do, needs to be done soon. Or at least I need to begin making some changes. The good thing is that I have most of the pieces in place and I know that this is just one of those moments that are designed by the Great Universe to push you to the next level when you have let yourself become too comfortable with situations that are not taking you anywhere. I know my lack of energy comes from not doing the things that give me energy, and compromising all the time with things that just suck it out of me. And even when I know all this, how did I get here when I was so far from this place not so long ago. Bad habits crawl back up to you if you let them. Except now, I am more aware. That is good.

One thing I know right now: I need a support team. If I want that mural and any other mural on the wall, I need the people that can make it possible without me agonizing over it. Rather than giving up on murals, I need to find some people to do what I dislike and am not good at, like measuring, cutting and installing. That way my brain will be free to create, and I will help other people get jobs, too. It is a simple thing, why have I not done it? I am not very good giving orders, and my perfectionism kills me, so I prefer to work alone and save the bad feelings. Time to get over it!

So this is what this trip was all about, and this is where it has brought me. Lots of people saw my art, and I have stats to prove it: 96 visits to my blog from the Czech Republic, a country that never before figured in my stats. Considering how many things we see without bothering to write down a website and then looking it up, 96 is very good. How does this translate into furthering my art career? I think, most of all, it shows I am willing to make the investment in my own path. It adds to my arsenal when I present myself to people through my art blog and in person. It tells my customers that I am not stuck, and that one day their investment in my work will pay off (although I hope it is already paying off!) And it tells me that the world is wide open, and all I need to do is reach out. Sales? They were not permitted at the Congress Centre, and I decided that was not the point of this trip. That part comes next, here in NYC. Two pieces have already sold just from hanging them in my living room and casual visits to my studio. I just need to actually put effort into that!

When I thought I would die, I remember feeling that it was ok, I had accomplished much. Now, if I had to die, I would feel disappointed that I still have so much to accomplish. Weird but true. So now I go to work, to assemble my team, and go forward in that plan not yet conceived. The end.

Budapest

2012-05-01T11:43:00.000-04:00

We arrived at the Keleti station in the afternoon, relaxed from the Vienna English-rich, tourist-friendly atmosphere. Soon, though, we saw no English signs, nothing that resembled a metro logo, and nobody to ask about this new place. After visiting 3 information desks, nobody could tell us anything, and I was only given train schedules for our trip back in five days. We finally asked a couple of maintenance guys about the address where we were going, and they recommended that we take a taxi. One of them kindly guided us to where we could find one. But the problem with taxis is that we always seem to have problems with taxi drivers, no matter what city we’re in, so I have come to dread the process. This day, we had a couple of missteps negotiating the price, and then went on our way to the hotel.

The Swing Hotel was a big step down from the great Kempinski in Prague! Next door, a gyro restaurant, a “Sex Shop” and an “exotic dancers” establishment, too. Inside, not too terrible, but there was no elevator and our little suitcases were heavy after the trip. Our concierge was a very serious man, who did his job without going too out of his way. Well, for 190 euros and 5 nights in a city we knew nothing about, we were willing to explore the downgrade from 5 stars to 1 star. Perhaps 2?

I won’t continue to describe the impressions of the hotel, because it was all erased soon enough, and it turned out to be a great deal after all. But that first day, we had to eat, and the concierge recommended a restaurant where they served traditional Hungarian food, and it was in a street that very much felt like our own neighborhood but in the 90s… Well, we are used to it, and after all, it felt real. No grown-up Disneyworld here, but real people coming and going with their shopping, their moves and their kids. The waiter insisted that we order some super-sized menu of Hungarian food, and seemed kind of annoyed when we decided to order more conservative platters. The food tasted good, but it was heavy food and we were so full we had to go to bed after the meal. Later that night, we started over.

The waiter at the restaurant said that we should go downtown, and pointed in the direction we should head. So we just started walking that way, and soon found a big museum, a metro station, a lot of “antiquariums” which here means bookstores that sell old books. The city looked kind of beat up, like Havana, but bigger scaled. Then we saw a newer hotel, and a Spanish Tapas bar, and felt sort of relieved that things were improving as we walked in this direction. But it was already late and we headed back.

I spent some hours before sleeping figuring out what to do in Budapest. I had a faint idea of what to see here from a quick Internet search back in NYC, but Juan had managed to get a little book for tourists that contained transportation maps, things to do, and was pretty much an advertisement of the Budapest card, which seemed like a good deal.

I decided we were going to the “Buda Castle”. Before that, we bought 2 Budapest cards at the hotel, which would get us transportation and free admission to 4 museums, and a couple of these museums were located at “Buda Castle.” The concierge told us to take a tram line, but Juan had asked him to validate the cards for 1 pm, thinking we were going to have breakfast before leaving, but breakfast was a coffee in a disposable plastic cup and a chocolate croissant, which took like 15 minutes, and it was only about 11: 30. We decided to walk near the tram, next to the Danube.

We still saw quite a few drug addicts, but the sights were getting prettier. We passed by the University of Budapest, a high school, a building that combined an old design with a futuristic one. And then we bumped into the market.

I had read about it the night before and thought I wanted to visit, but of course, had no idea where it was. When I saw it, I was in Heaven. There were all kinds of food being sold, and people doing their shopping. There was fresh orange juice and fruits, and other sections for gourmet goods, crafts and souvenirs, and lots of places to eat. Luckily I was not hungry, because I would have gotten a hunger attack in that place, so we navigated the long building with only our curiosity and not our craving. I don’t like shopping centers, but I love traditional markets like this, where you can find people selling and buying like in the old times. Also, this market was very different from the large market in Cairo, where you have to be careful not to be pulled into one of the stores and get harassed by the vendors (and in many occasions women have to be especially careful because the harassment is sexual and I can tell you that: a man with rotten teeth kissed me on the mouth… an experience I would rather not remember.) Here it is all very nice and organized, clean, beautiful, happy. We exited on the other side and saw one of the bridges that cross from Pest to Buda.

We walked across the bridge, trying to figure out where and what was the Buda Castle. The girl that sold us the croissants had no idea what we were talking about. We should have done what smart tourists do, and that is follow other tourists, but no, we tried our luck and took a wrong turn that sent us quite far from our objective. There were some stairs that we thought led to the castle (a castle is at the top of a hill, always, after all!), but they were so high I didn’t want to go up just to find out that they led somewhere else. We saw a couple coming down and figured they knew what they were doing, which led us to go up the stairs where we found a Japanese couple that informed us there was no castle there. Back down again, we tried another route, and figured out we had gone a long way from our objective when we took that left turn about an hour ago… But now were on the right track and I saw a bus that had the correct numbers on it, and, finally, we found an entrance to the fort through the back. So we entered Buda Castle por la retaguardia.

There we saw a museum and when we presented our cards… they had changed the rules and, oh, well, we only had a 50% discount. Luckily, Budapest is not an expensive city and the equivalent of what we had to pay was about $3 each. I loved this museum of Budapest history because it really was a good introduction to the city we were about to discover. We learned about its history from before the Celts arrived to the Communist Era. They had English translations in almost everything, which was great for us. In the café we had nice espresso and cappuccino and delicious cake for about $6, so liberating! And it was WAY BETTER than the coffee in Vienna. I was so relieved that now I could drink my drug of choice not only at a great price but the way it should be done. Allah Bless the Great Turks for bringing their splendid way of life to this great city!

After walking outside (on our way to the castle) and inside the museum for at least 7 hours, we were dying. So we took the bus and arrived in the center of Pest, where things were looking different. There were nice cafes, we saw the Merlin theater (English language theater,) plazas… little by little we were discovering Budapest and the contrasts it contains.

The next day we returned to see the rest of the Buda Castle. Buda Castle is really a series of buildings that have suffered greatly at times of war and only the ruins of the castle remain within what is now a Budapest history museum. It is very interesting to visit, but it might be very difficult for people who have trouble going up and down stairs. I didn’t see any elevators or lifts, but I might be wrong and it is worth asking. We went to the towers and saw all of Budapest from there. This day we walked the little old streets within the citadel, and met a painter in his studio who asked us about fairies in our countries because he is writing a book about fairies in the whole world. We told him we had none, but we have the Ciguapa in Dominican Republic and the Chupacabras in Puerto Rico, which might be a nice addition to his research. He loved history and made history paintings of battles as well as rather malefic-looking fairy paintings.

We saw the hills of Buda (or at least some hills in the back wall of the citadel) and we also saw the ruins of the Magdalene Church. We walked the whole place and then went to the Hungarian National Gallery. I saw the work of one painter that I really liked and wrote down so I could research more about him later: Csontvary Kosztka Tivadar. His paintings were large and hung between the floors of the museum, taking the space of a great wall that divided the space from one floor to the next. He created around 1907 and his paintings have a mystical element, a taste of fauvism and primitivism, and an originality of vision compared to the rest of the works in the museum.

This day, Juan said he wanted to go see a soccer game at a bar. Lucky choice for me because when we finally got back to the hotel I was so exhausted I could not get up from bed after I lay down to rest a little. The trip was catching up with me in Budapest. So I was glad this could qualify as an independent adventure and just stayed resting and reading. He told me he talked to some locals at the bar he found nearby, had two beers, and that Germany had won against Spain. The guys were for Germany, of course, being closer. And Juan showed up eating a gyro, which perfumed the room, and considering I had not had dinner, made me hungry. But I was more tired than hungry and just went to sleep.

The next day we walked on another street from the hotel toward the city center, where we discovered Ráday utca, a whole street of nice restaurants, moderately priced with outside seating. So this is where we should have walked to the first day, had I only done some research… And then we realized that we had been so near to it the day we discovered the Spanish Tapas Bar. Now we knew! This street is famous and a great place to eat.

In just a couple of days, we became experts in riding all sorts of public transport in Budapest, so we were ready to go to Memento Park, the place where they put the statues that came down when the communist government fell. This was one of my favorite days in Budapest. We had to take 2 trams and a bus that took us far into those same hills we had seen the day before from the citadel. And it kept going and going, crossing highways and buildings and houses until we got to a less urbanized place and the bus voice said “Memento Park.” We entered and the first thing we heard was music playing in an old radio, the hymns of the communist era. There was also the statue of Stalin that we had seen come down in a video we saw back in the history museum. And the boots of Stalin, giant size. Then we walked in the sculpture garden (but it has no flowers or even grass, just earth and weeds in the empty areas) and saw a series of statues. I later saw a postcard with an air view of the design. It is thoughtfully designed, both respecting the art and expressing the contrary feelings of Hungarians about this time. The statues were impressive, true art within its context. Not so much the portraits of men, but the ones that sought to express the workers’ pleas.

Then we went to the barracks. There they were showing a film made in 2006 about a secret film lab where, during the communist era, they created educational films to train spies. It explained the process of recruiting informants and how the equipment, secret messages, and other special methods were to be used and delivered. The secret lab and films it created were so secret even the person who managed the projector had to step out of the room while a film was on. It had a full time staff and used even famous actors and actresses to act in the teaching films about how to be a spy for the Hungarian government.

The more we walked, the bigger the city looked. After visiting Memento Park, eating and resting, I wanted to go see the river. They have river cruises, but I was not interested. I just wanted to walk by its side and see what people do there. But first I wanted to walk by Andrassy Street because the brochure said it was “the most beautiful street in Budapest.” I suspected that this meant lots of designer shops, but still had to go and check it out, and I was right, but the great thing about Andrassy was that we found the building of the Opera, and the Cathedral of St. Stephen nearby. After exploring this old part of town, new for us of course!, and making it a point to see the next day and go have coffee in the cafes of the plaza in front of the cathedral, we kept on walking toward the river.

That’s when we discovered the rich tourists’ part of Budapest! We had been wondering if Budapest was all poor because the part where our glamorous hotel was located is so beat up. Now we could see a great contrast. Expensive restaurants, cafes, well-kept buildings, beauty and sophistication everywhere. This is not where we were coming to eat, but it still was nice to see. After all, nobody wants to visit a place where there is only poverty and no hope of improvement. And Budapest is so beautiful that when you are here you want to know that someone will fix the buildings that are deteriorated and not let them rot and fall at some point. I know the consequences of gentrification for poor people, but at the same time, if buildings are not kept, they do deteriorate and eventually fall. And then there is nowhere to go either. But I was not lucubrating about this while we were walking; I was just enjoying the views. And as we kept on walking, we saw the river.

The view from the river was stunning, especially at the time in the evening when there was still light. You could see the Buda Castle and the bridge, lighted. We walked for a while, and then sat to see the people walk by. Unlike Cuba and Santo Domingo, where the malecones are more of a party place, here people walked quietly, and it was all very tranquil. There were some teenagers having fun, too, but they were also passing by. You could only hear some jazz coming from the hotel behind us and the buses and trams passing by. Then I wanted a virgin mojito from Pata Negra, the Spanish Tapas Bar.

We discovered Pata Negra on our first night and then went back for a late lunch the next day. They had no tables left, all were reserved, but they said we could sit at the bar. This is a tapas bar after all, that was fine with me. After our first meal here we were reconsidering Hugarian food. It was so heavy, we didn’t want to spend the entire trip sleeping and trying to recover from eating! So we went for the promise of lighter delicious food at Pata Negra. It was fulfilled. We had salad, Spanish/French style bread (which I was missing!!!!) and some tiny palomilla steaks and manchego cheese. And I had a Virgin Mojito, with lots of mint, very refreshing. I don’t know how so little food filled us so well, but we just could not go on eating so many heavy meals. I guess we were missing home. At least here we knew what we were getting!

The day we went to Memento Park, we also had lunch at a typical “bufe.” Bufe must mean buffet, but in the style of college cafeterias, where you ask for the dish you want and someone serves you. Then you go and pay at the register. Most bufe restaurants seem to be Turkish, but I saw the same concept at the market with traditional Hungarian food. There are lots of Turkish restaurants here and this one seemed like it could have a bathroom, so we went it. I ordered one of those famous gyros, which in Budapest are served with a burrito kind of flour tortilla, like a wrap but warm and a little toasted. And they can be chicken or lamb. I chose chicken and that was really good. Juan chose Turkish rice and chicken in sauce with vegetables. Yes, he was missing home… He loved it so much we even went back to this place the next day. We were kind of afraid of Hungarian traditional food and, after all, the Turks were here for 150 years, so it is not like we were not eating what Hungarians eat!

Food and transportation has become a theme with me I guess… Well, what else do you need when you are trying to see a city? You need to move and you need to eat in order to move! Oh, and you need good coffee of course. After the Turkish place I wanted desert, but not Turkish because I can have Baclava in NYC. I wanted something… Italian? A few blocks ahead we found an outdoor Italian café. The sun was beautiful this day, really the first glorious day of spring we got in Europe, and this outdoor cafe was perfect. I ordered espresso con panna and panacotta with raspberry topping. (Sorry Jefa, when you read this I will be guilty of reminding you of our favorite treat at Yo In Yo Out…!) The coffee was so glorious, I had to announce it in Facebook. And I don’t do that unless something is truly magnificent!

After eating, riding. This must be one of the cities with the best transportation. Once you have your map and a pass, it is all so easy and accessible. For about $7 per day or less, you can go everywhere. They even have a ticket that admits about 5 people riding together for (I think) 5 days for only about $20. Unfortunately, we didn’t know this and bought the Budapest card, 3 days for 31 euros, which is not as good a deal as it seems from the advertisements. But that was ok, tourists who choose freedom from tourist guides must make mistakes, and we loved moving freely around in this city. Though we did walk a lot, like in the other cities, and often preferred to walk instead of riding. But it felt good to know that you could hop on something pretty much anywhere and it would take you where you were going. It seemed as if every single street had a tram, bus, metro or combination of these. I am probably exaggerating, but it really seemed that way, especially in the center of Pest.

The last day we were already losing strength after so many days traveling. This day I decided to “work.” I have been visiting pilgrimage places or miraculous Virgin Marys in each of the places we visited. I plan to write about these topics for Ángeles y Milagros and thought it was a good idea to go on little pilgrimages as a way of doing research and experiencing the things I write about. This way I can write the personal experiences in the blog and more general articles for the site. I had planned to go to a pilgrimage place to see “Our Lady of Remete” in the outskirts of Budapest, but could not find an address before leaving NYC or while in Budapest. The night before I did some research and kind of figured out how to get there (with the help of google translations!), but after the long trip to Memento Park, I was not sure we should make such a long trip the day before leaving. And in the process of researching this place I discovered another, nearer place, right across that first bridge we crossed to Buda, with a replica of my favorite advocation of the Virgin Mary, Our Lady Of Chestochowa. And there were also the St. Stephen relics, Saint King of Budapest, at the cathedral. I had a plan.

It always feels strange to walk into a church where they charge to see things or it is some sort of hybrid between a museum and a church, but this is the rule in the great churches of this area at least. St. Stephen’s Basilica dates from the 19th century, is neo-classical in style, and contains the relic and treasury of King Saint Stephen. I was relieved to find out they only charge for the treasury and the view from the tower, but you can see the relics in a special chapel of the church. If you want to see them lighted, pay a few coins for 3 minutes of light. I didn’t have any coins, so I only saw the reliquary and the shape of the inner reliquary in the shape of a hand. These relics were in many places of Europe before finally being brought back to Hungary, the country of St. Stephen. I still need to learn why these countries have the tradition of having king-saints. There is another such king-saint in Prague.

For the Church in the Cave, we rented audio guides that told us about the history of the church and each of the chambers within. This church was created by Pauline monks. From it, during nazi occupation, Hungarians went on pilgrimage with the main purpose of asking the intersession of the Virgin Mary to deliver Hungary from the War during WWI. At this time, the monks took in and protected refuges and people performed rogations and pilgrimages to Spain and Lourdes leaving from here. After the Communist rule began, its entrance was covered with what seemed like concrete, but apparently the interior was left undamaged. And I was so glad because it is breathtakingly beautiful. Being in a cave (some of it man-made with explosives) the light is low and restful, the images and decorations unique, and far from the neoclassical grandiosity of the Basilica. This church is closer to Matisse’s beautiful chapel, conceived in great detail by his vision. I don’t know whose vision created this church, but it seems like it was the original creation of a specific person who conceived the place with a specific ideal in mind. Of course, there is a reference to the Lourdes Grotto as you enter, but inside it expands into something else. There was a funeral going on the last, exposed and naturally lighted chamber, and the monks were chanting, which really added to the beauty of the place. The Crucifix in the main chamber is a replica of one in Spain, and in a smaller and diagonally opposite chamber is the replica of the Black Madonna of Częstochowa, a gift of friendship from Poland, where the original is in Krakow. This little pilgrimage is going to help me explore the idea of how and why replicas of miraculous images are considered to have the same miraculous properties as their originals. We’ll see how it goes.

For our last day in Budapest, we had to rest in the afternoon because I just could not go on, but at night, revived by a miraculous siesta, we headed back to that restaurant-lined street. We had no idea what we wanted to eat, but I had been curious about a Persian restaurant I had seen the first day. When we passed by, we looked at the menu and it seemed attractive: broiled meat and salads were not unlike what I cook at home. We wanted to seat outside, but there was nothing available, but when we agreed to go inside, we did not regret it. It was great! We stepped into the tent of some sheik with low seats and tables, veils trimmed with gold, and even a belly dancer that made several appearances as the night went on. I had a secret desire of seeing dancing, but we didn’t have time or made reservations, so I had given up on that, so when the belly dancer appeared I felt this was really the grand finale of the trip. All my wishes had come true!

We stayed here until everyone else left, and then walked back to the hotel saying good bye to this beautiful city. Even the Swing Hotel was looking good by now, so cheap and so close to everything, with its #4 and #6 tram stop right in front of the door. Viva the Swing! But be brave if you choose it…

Writing on the train back to Prague, I am feeling exhausted and ready to go home. There is still one more stop and a truly grand finale. But that will be in Prague, tomorrow.

Vienna

2012-04-27T03:37:00.000-04:00

Vienna The day before leaving, Paul helped us get train tickets to go to Vienna at the Prague train station. I was a little sad to leave Prague. In fact, I had been a little sad all along, for no good reason. This trip brought memories of the past and a sort of clash with the present. I think I was decompressing from all the work and anxiety previous to leaving. I think I was also realizing that I first came to Europe in 1993, and it has been almost 20 years since that time. Nothing is the same, I am not the same, and leaving the comfort of my studio and home, where I hardly ever look in the mirror, was, let’s say, illuminating in disturbing ways. Leaving our son at home with his grandma was also challenging, although he should be o.k. and plenty of people offered to be on the lookout. If he doesn’t do his homework, so be it.

I had never thought of coming to Vienna. It was just not a city I had ever looked into. I want very much to go anywhere in Italy and Turkey, Cyprus, Jerusalem…even Budapest, but Vienna was not in my immediate plans. But once I arrived in Vienna, I kind of liked it, a lot.

Since I don’t know a word of German (although now that I write this as I am leaving I think I got a few words down…), I didn’t quite get that the train station we were arriving into was called “Vienna something” or Wien Meidling. So I was a little nervous all the way thinking Is this really Vienna? Once we arrived, however, I calmed down, since it was all so clearly labeled that you can understand even if you don’t know the language. Info is a word I can clearly understand and that’s where we headed. I asked the person at the information window. He was really nice, and he gave me detailed instructions on how to arrive at our rented apartment by subway. He gave me a map, and that was all we needed to take on Vienna.

We bought subway tickets, that are also good for buses and trams, and we went on our way. Less that ½ hour later, we were at Stephanplatz, a square in the middle of everything with a great medieval cathedral in the center. The man at the info window had told me that the address I was looking for was right behind the cathedral. It seemed I had done a great job finding us a place in the center of the city, walking distance from all the good sights!

Finding the building was semi-easy, but finding the apartment was terrible! A young guy helped us locate the building and called the number we needed to call to locate the keys. He was so kind to us he made my heart melt. I gave him my card and told him to let me help him if he ever went to NY. After finding the key, we entered the building and the key had a number 2 on it, but there was no apt 2. It took us about a half hour to realize that we needed apartment 11. Here they write the addresses differently and we had not figured out the number of the apartment. The keys also had a 2 on them, which was what confused us. Later on we realized that apt 11 had been divided into 1, 2, 3, and 4.
When we finally found the place, it was tiny but it had everything. It was like going back in time. The walls were covered with oldish wallpaper, and we saw a little old t.v. The towels were horrendous after those wonderfully soft and luxurious towels in the Kempinski in Prague, but we were in the middle of everything and were not planning to spend too much time in the apartment, so for the price, 280 euros for 4 nights in the very center of old Vienna, it was great.

We started walking in Vienna the very same day we arrived and by the last day, we felt satisfied to have seen lots of it, although this city is much bigger than Prague. We even took a trip to the outskirts to see a Virgin I wanted to write about. We didn’t cover all the museums or sites, but we made it to the Sissi Museum, where we saw the immense collection of silver, china, and table settings of the Hapsburgs, the story of the tragic empress Sissi and the imperial private rooms. It was one of the things I enjoyed the most because they provide you with an audio guide and in the process you learn a great deal about the history of the Hapsburgs and their empire. Juan, whose love of history makes him much more informed about these topics, was navigating happily, even though this museum is probably most appealing to women with its silver and dresses and interior décor. The free audio guide was a fantastic addition to the visit because it is so much easier to hear (at least for me) than to read everything on the walls. I have been reading so much my eyes are tired and have become lazy at reading museum info. After this I started renting audio guides whenever I could!

My two books for this trip have been The Dovekeepers by Alice Hoffman and El cementerio de Praga (The Cemetery of Prague) by Umberto Eco. The Dovekeepers is wonderful and was a very lucky choice five minutes before boarding the plane to Prague. It is a beautiful book that takes us back to the destruction of the temple of Jerusalem and the Masada Fortress story. It contains some wonderful women characters and lots of magic folklore as well as Jewish history. It has lost of mentions of angels, so I was doubly lucky: now I can write an article as well as enjoy the story. It is one of those books you want all your friends to read so you can share it with them and talk about it, but also on you don’t want to lend them because you want to keep it in your library!

I had seen the second book, El cementerio de Praga, in NYC, but was unsure about getting it because I find the sarcasm characteristic of European male voices unappealing, and this book falls into this category of writing, although it is also kind of funny. It is the kind of book you will love if you like Saramago or even Perez Reverte (El pintor de batallas). Nonetheless, I am reading it and enjoying it as much as possible. It is an ingenious book that has plenty of historical research within the story, and uses old illustrations collected by the author to represent the scenes. It is about an old forger, and glutton, who lives in Paris at the end of the 19th century and finds himself with a split personality disorder and trying to figure out what is going on. He remembers his life helped by the second personality, and through his memories we meet important characters of European history as well as visit interesting places.

By chance, I read about his meeting with Freud the night before we went to visit the Freud Museum in Prague. This was also a chance visit because we just walked and walked until we realized we were near the museum and decided to visit (we had thought of going but not said when.) I don’t know what Freud is trying to tell me, but when we returned to the center of the city we also stumbled upon our Vienna building by chance. Is there a message in all this? I guess not.

We visited two other museums, the Albertina and the Art History Museum, which were interesting, although if you live in NYC, you might find the Met and MoMA to be good equivalents. In the Albertina there were lots of drawings by Klimt, who seems to be the national artist and an artist I didn’t know much about before this trip, although like most people who like golden things, I like his wonderful compositions with gold finishes. But his drawings were a real treat since in them you can see more of his thinking, and spy into his mind and extraordinary talent. At the end of his life, he became a recluse in his studio, and his drawings became more and more loose, and well as more erotic, which the art historians in the museum interpreted as him seeing the sacredness of life in the act of women masturbating. I am not too sure about this grand interpretation, but enjoyed the drawings and found them inspiring even if they were just what they looked like, the observations of a very talented old man who was not afraid to tell the models to act out his fantasies so he could draw them. I might be wrong, of course, since I gave up on being an art historian about 20 years ago.

But going on to more worldly matters, Vienna is horrendously expensive, and the food in not great. In fact, one of the best meals we had was a cheap box of noodles at the Volksgarthen metro station, sitting in the waiting area for the tram. And this morning, before leaving, a simple breakfast of coffee and a glorious chocolate filled croissant. I also liked a fruit gelato I had the first day while we were taking our first walk and found a street full of stores, people and fast food restaurants, but then dared to order a fancy cup of gelatos and cream and other stuff, and it was as disappointing as it was over the top. The cream was fake! In Vienna???? Coffee… too expensive, only ok in taste, and they put too much milk in it for my taste. My last was an espresso that tasted lemony, but at least it took away the taste of too much milk in the previous one. Everything tasted salty here. And my love of life does not extend to the disturbing white sausages that seem to be traditional here, or most other sausages. I went international as much as possible in this place.

One thing that was truly great in this city was the bike/walking lanes. This city is so well planned that it feels you are sort of floating through it when you walk. I did not dare rent a bike after about 27 years without riding one, but I was tempted. Except that Juan would not have joined me and then I would have gotten lost, as my compass continued to point in the opposite direction at all times.
I wish I could have seen more of Vienna, but what I saw I liked. I wish also that my father could have been here with us because he would have been delighted with the design of this city and the beauty of its streets. For some reason, it made me think of him a lot. And also of my mother, with all the shopping everywhere. There are lots of stores and high class shopping. Lots of galleries and little high end craft shops. I liked that last part, but just looked at the things from the windows. The art galleries here are a lot more sophisticated than what I was able to see in Prague, but a lot more decorative as well. Prague is wilder, younger. Vienna is more sophisticated, older in taste and population.

But there was one super special place in Vienna that blew my mind. It is a restaurant we stumbled upon after visiting Freud’s Museum. It was another Freud chance-inspiration, I think. We were going to go into a falafel place to eat before heading back to the center of the city, but the guy said they didn’t take credit cards. I didn’t know we had money on us, and we headed out to a machine, when the guy serving the food sneezed. I told Juan maybe we should look for a new place… and as we kept walking, less than 20 steps ahead, was an “all you can eat” restaurant. We saw it was serving what I recognized as Indian food, which actually turned out to be Pakistani. We sat, unsure of how it worked and the guy in charge told us to just get the food and pay later. Fine, we did that.

The food was the best food we had in the city and although we didn’t see a price anywhere, we were hungry enough to not care if we were going to be charged $30 per head for what in nyc would cost less than $10. They brought us normal water, which was also surprising since here they don’t bring water to the table automatically and even when you ask for it they bring that horrible mineral water that I drink only out of duty.

This place was called “Good Food, Good Mood.” I was already in a good mood by the smell of the food and we ate some delicious dishes from the mini buffet that serves the entire restaurant. My favorites were the spinach with lamb, and the chicken curry, and the peas in a similar sauce, with bread and rice. There was also salad with several dressings (mango chutney was the best) and a desert I didn’t try because I don’t really like rice pudding and it looked like it could be rice pudding. People continuously entered and left. You could tell most of them were students, although there were other people as well. We ate a big plate of food each, and, now in a great mood, we stood to pay and the guy said, “How much do you want to pay?” Yes, this restaurant is “Pay what you wish.” You could pay 1 euro or 10 or whatever you want. I couldn’t get over it for hours not just because it seemed like a life saver for poor tourists and students (it is next to the university, a logical choice of placement for such a business) but because the food was the best we had in Vienna from beginning to end. It is also artistic, all full of graffiti on special boards where you can leave you mark.

The concept of the restaurant is similar to the concept of the city. Here they don’t even ask to see if you have your subway card. It is an honor-based system that trusts you will do the right thing. Same in Prague. It feels so liberating to just do the right thing and have so many people around you doing the right thing. I don’t think this would work in NYC just yet, but it feels good to know there is somewhere in the world where it is normal to be decent.

It might be because the people here seem to be so old. There are tourists and seniors and when you leave the center of the city, there are immigrants from Asia and the Middle East. This is considered a problem here, because one day the ethnic majority will completely change, since so few babies are born to the locals.

In general, Vienna is a nice place to visit because of its fantastic organization, cultural offerings and grandiosity of its architecture. It seemed sometimes like a Disneyworld for cultured adults. You would need at least 3 weeks to see and do everything. But our 3 days walking around were a good taste of the city and left enough to be seen so I can one day come back and look forward to new things. A month here would be great so I can read and hear everything in the art museums. As it were, I feel like when my friend Maribel and I visited the Louvre and basically ran through it like mad women trying to see everything. I really don’t think I have visited the Louvre yet! Here I went a little slower, but it was so much that it was impossible to appreciate it all and remember.

Now I am on the train to Budapest, a city I also know nothing about, but that I am really looking forward to meeting!

Prague

2012-04-24T14:39:00.000-04:00

Before leaving New York, I tried to learn about the city that I was about to encounter, but every time I got distracted by email and the thousand things to do before leaving. I’ve always been the same, a traveler only upon arrival time. And then I throw myself into the new place with hunger and craving.
Prague is a beautiful city, and as soon as you see it from the plane, you know there is much to crave for in it. It spreads out from a center, spiraling around itself with its red roofs and white walls. Once you descend, it is no longer white, but its facades are painted in the pastel colors of the Baroque, Rococo and Art Nouveau. Inside, the medieval arches, fragments of frescos and arches surprise you and remind you that the true heart of this is a medieval one. Prague welcomes you with its ancient melodies, which it offers from the top of its towers.

Our friend Paul, the man who invited me to bring my art here, picked us up at the airport. He then drove us around the old parts of the city and showed us the most important sights, but after 8 hours of overnight travel, I was not taking in much. Still the beauty and the age of the city came across clearly.
He dropped us at the hotel for a few hours before going to hang the paintings at the Prague Congress Centre. He had gotten us two vouchers for hotels, and from the website for the first one, it seemed to be grand. The lobby was not extremely impressive, but once we opened the door to our room, we were amazed. “We have upgraded you to the executive suite,” the man had said, and I had replied thank you without quite understanding what that meant. What it meant was a one bedroom apartment, nicely decorated and full of little luxuries like a button to warm the floor while you are looking at yourself in the mirror, and a coffeemaker in which you insert little cups, I think it is called Nespresso, that makes the most wonderful espresso coffee I have ever tasted.

Paul picked us up at 4:00 sharp so we could go and hang the paintings. Daniel and Hana awaited us and had everything ready. They said that in a few days there would be a congress of medicine in the center, heart medicine. Well, the Sacred Heart of the Earth would be perfect! Apparently 2,000 people would attend this congress, so somebody would see the art.

The show looks good, although I have no way of knowing how people react to it. I didn’t think of leaving a book for comments, which anyway would have been difficult to leave there as there are no tables in the space. But Hana had seen the blog and liked the paintings and was excited about the work being there, lightening up the space of the huge soviet style structure built at the end of the communist era. A friend of a friend visited, a Cuban lady who is married to a Czech man and lives here in Prague. I hope to meet her next week.

After this, we took the Prague metro for the first time. The Metro is nice. We felt like we were in New York and could be free to travel anywhere without any problem. It follows the same principles as any other metro in the world and that made me feel very comforted. But we didn’t use it a lot, because in Prague, you can walk everywhere.

Juan (husband) and I walked so much in this city, we ended up semi-dead each day. The beauty of getting lost in a city is something that appeals to us both, and most of the time we just guided ourselves by whatever lured us in any direction. Once day I wanted to go to a museum, and attempted to use the map. Because by compass got so crazy in Prague, I would always walk in the wrong direction. We arrived on a working class neighborhood with Chinese restaurants and cheap stores and 9 euro per day pensions. It seemed like we were back in our neighborhood in New York, only the color of people had changed and there were more hills. We walked and walked, until we realized that we almost had gone beyond the borders of the tourist map. So we patiently retraced our steps and after 3 hours of walking on cobble stones, we got to the museum we were looking for, which turned out to be closed. After that, we were ready for anything in Prague!

Walking around and around day and night on stones will kill your feet, so if you ever go to Prague, bring hiking shoes or at least sneakers, which I did not. Still every new day I was ready to get lost again, and in this way take in the atmosphere of this place.

The museum I wanted to visit was worth the two trips. I had never seen such brilliant Medieval artworks, and so many beautiful Medieval paintings of the Virgin Mary all in one place. I was in search of a specific one, an icon I want to write about, and soon found it. It was supposed to have been painted by St. Luke, and miraculous, but now is part of this museum’s collection. It reminded me of a figure of a phallic god in the temple of Luxor in Egypt, that people still visit and secretly rub to ask for miracles. Objects of faith only become art when their worshipers die, or they might simply transform and continue to give out miracles to people like me, standing between faith and logic, wanting faith above all and giving in to logic most of the time. Still, I have experienced the miracle of an artwork many times, and know what a pilgrim feels when the object finally reveals itself in all its glory. I offered a prayer to this virgin so that her true essence might not disappear.

Another day, Paul invited us to join his family for dinner. Our friends live in a part of town that would be the equivalent of living in Long Island or a far away place in Queens. They live in a house, in a quiet neighborhood away from the city, but still part of Prague. On the way we saw Communist era buildings where people live closer to the metro.

Lenka, Paul’s wife, cooked a traditional meal for us. It was composed of beef covered in sauce with a lemon slice, berry marmalade and whipped cream on top, with bread dumplings on the side. I had the same dish on the first day we arrived at one of the restaurants in Old Town, but this was heavenly compared to the restaurant’s version. It is a very difficult meal to prepare, and it took a couple of days. It was wonderful! The meal began with a traditional liquor, and culminated with some handmade pastries that only grandmothers cook these days. Paul’s daughter, Tereza, even put them on Facebook for her friends to see. At this meal we also met Paul’s son, Pavel, who recently became a lawyer and is doing the first part of his practice. It was a great gift to be able to have this experience with Paul’s family, and we enjoyed every single moment of it.

Our first hotel was very close to “the most beautiful square in Europe” as our friend Paul described it. It only revealed its true splendor a few days after we arrived, when all the Easter decorations and vendor stations came down and the space opened wide and free. Around you can see all the eras, from Medieval to present, in good harmony. You can see the Astronomical Clock, which is the oldest clock of its kind in Europe, a great cathedral, all sorts of shops, horses and carriages, stores, and my favorite: Kafka Bookstore.

I was amazed by the number of bookstores in Prague, and even though most books were in Czech, I still went in just to feel inside. In NYC bookstores are close to gone, except for B & N, and a few independent ones that might disappear any moment. Most of the Spanish bookstores are gone and that is always very sad to me. But here they are alive and well and beautiful. Even if I cannot read anything in them!
There are also plenty of churches, which have an additional function, which in some cases is their only function: they are concert halls. There is also the Spanish Synagogue, which is breathtakingly beautiful, but I was unable to visit (yet… I will be back in a few days…)

My original feeling was to be in Prague for the entire time and really get to know the city, but I let myself be convinced to visit other cities as well. I don’t know if I will regret this, but for now, I will not complain. I do feel that it is a good idea to spend a whole month in a city and get to know it as much as possible instead of hopping around and seeing tourist sites. But sometimes I’ve got to adapt to how normal people see things.
But this does not mean we didn’t get to do very special things that only the locals do! Thursday night was the “beer tour”. Paul had said that we would go on tour through some hidden, locals’ pubs, and see what goes on there. We met at the Prague Congress Centre, and from there we went to the Mala Strana, of “Lesser City” which I think is a bad translation of “Smaller City”. To me, it is the most beautiful part of Prague and also where the Prague Castle is located. This is where the monarchs lived throughout the ages until the Hapsburgs. We had visited it before going with Paul to the pubs, so this time we concentrated on the most important things to do in Prague: eating and drinking.

In the first pub, which only locals know because it is very old and hidden, we drank beer and ate pork chops. It is full of old men talking and drinking and smoking. The Czech beer is the best because it does not make me too drunk and is the perfect complimentary drink for pork. In the next pub we drank beer and ate free hard pretzels, and in the last pub we ate some horrendously-looking, but quite edible sausage, and what they call “beer cheese,” which is a very strong cheese that you get to mash with beer, butter and mustard. Both Juan and I gave up on that one! But otherwise I have given in to all the sinful delights of Prague.
Eating is what we have done the most besides walking. I ate a pork shoulder held on a metal rod, like a mini roasted pork or barbeque chicken. That was fun, delicious and an exaggeration that made me decide to stop the madness. But the next day we went to a restaurant we had spied in the Jewish quarter the day we found the Julio Cortazar house that is now a pub. The restaurant we saw close to it seemed promising: a series of brick rooms in a basement, lighted by candles. We went to the pub first, called Blue House, that Monday when we couldn’t go in the museum. I said, well, since we could not do anything today, let’s have a beer. Juan remembered the “Blue House” and we managed to find it. It was funny to find guacamole, burritos, South American décor and Dominican bachata music playing in Spanish in the former house of Julio Cortazar in the Czech Republic. We ordered chips with guacamole to go with the Czech beer, but if you ever go, skip the chips and drink the beer, unless you are really hungry and will eat anything to survive…

Instead, wait a few hours, be super hungry and go to Cartouche. That’s the restaurant with bricks and candles. You go in and there’s a hearth and on a grill they will cook your piece of meat. I ordered roasted duck with vegetable dumplings. I thought I would get a piece of duck French style, but… I got a whole duck cut in half in a giant metal dish. I should have passed on the dumplings, though, because “dumplings” here means a soft piece of bread that might have vegetables inside. I’m not a fan. But this restaurant knew me well enough to place some warm bread on the table, and I finally found a nice, crispy whole wheat bread that was better than any bread I had eaten here so far. The duck was delicious, and I had to eat more than it’s decent. But I’m on vacation...

There were, of course, many more things we did, but these are the highlights. I wish I could place photos in between these paragraphs but I left the cable for the camera in NYC. Right now I am writing from the train that takes us to Vienna. We are passing through forests and creeks, farms, mountains. It is not so different from traveling from New York to Pennsylvania by car, but the houses and structures are certainly more picturesque and there are more of them. And there are more people. In this country, people still value people a great deal. You can feel it in the bars, on the streets, in the groups of teens roaming the streets together and all of a sudden starting to sing some Czech song. The feeling of this country is the feeling of people having fun, enjoying what life and youth have to offer, here and now.

Our next stop is Vienna, the Imperial City. I have no idea what we will see there, because, like Prague, I had no time to look too much into it. But I kind of like to be lost in a great city, and I look forward to whatever awaits us next.

How do you continue to create?

2012-04-01T18:52:00.000-04:00

Landscape of Peace by Tanya Torres

A friend asked: How do you continue to create such marvelous pieces of work that are so inspiring and fresh? I do not mean to sound conceited by sharing this question, but thought I would answer it by removing the adjectives: How do you continue to create?

There is only one way that I have found to continue, without those famous dry spells that are so easy to get. I sit down and start.

And I make sure that I always have something already started. That way, there's no need to think. I start, and my brain starts, too.

It is the same for a painting as for a piece of writing. Although writing is less risky. With a painting, you don't want to ruin materials and add to Mother Earth's sorrows and your own, so it is better to start on paper or even in Photoshop. But be careful, you don't want to end up with a beautiful drawing on highly acidic paper (yes, its has happened...) so splurge a little and have some good paper available. I cut a sheet of BFK Rives in 8 pieces and use them on both sides, if necessary (If I mess up!)

It helps to pray, or at least trust that there are enough ideas and love in the Universe for you to get some original ones at any given time. Or create your own Zafacón de las ideas, the Recycling Bin of Ideas, where you can throw your thoughts and ideas after an engaging conversation, a visit to the museum, a surf through the Internet. When you need a last resource, there it will be.

I also do easy things when something is so difficult I can't or don't know how to deal with it. When I am procrastinating, I paint tiles. That gives me time to organize my thoughts, plan and recoup. Or I write in this blog. I procrastinate a lot, so I paint a lot of tiles and sell all of them. A profitable procrastination exercise.

Most of all, I trust that I can be of use to Divine Love through my work and passion, and that I will be given what I need to continue. That is, ultimately, what means the most to me. Once in a while a get an email telling me of someones soul healing through an image of one of my paintings. And then I know what this is all about, and how can I stop?

Regret and Redirect

2012-03-28T09:55:00.000-04:00

Sagrado Corazón de la Tierra por Tanya Torres

(Art: Sacred Heart of the Earth, 16" x 20", oil on canvas, 2012. All the new paintings coming very soon!)

Time goes fast, and I am working hard to leave everything in order so I don't have to worry about connecting to the Internet while I'm away. But I've read in many blogs and sites that an artist should take advantage of every opportunity to exhibit, so I accepted to participate in that show I mentioned some time ago. I had many doubts about it. I really didn't want to do it for a very specific reason: I no longer do that work. It is in the past, just as my illness is in the past.

But I accepted out of professional duty and last night I had the chance to... regret it.

The venue organized an artists' talk and I could not say not, so there I was. Fortunately, it was late in the day, so I didn't have to cut my day too short. But we were told to be there at 6 just to wait a half hour for people to arrive. That was not terrible, just unnecessary. But as they were presenting the artists, and every artist seemed to have a decent list of places where they had exhibited, the curator, or whoever put together the piece of paper that contained that info, decided that my only achievement as an artist was having had Mixta Gallery (now closed) and getting sick. Fine, my ego is not so big I cannot take it.

Next, the talk began, and people started going on and on about things that had nothing to do with the questions, or at least were unnecessarily long answers. They started discussing "emerging artist" and "mid-career artist", unnecessary classifications in my eyes, essential it seemed to start a conversation that I had been told would answer one question: how have the changes in East Harlem affect your work? The artists all sort of answered both to the best of our ability. Still, it was a drag.

Then someone asked where in East Harlem have you exhibited, which everyone answered vaguely and profusely, and mostly not to the point. I had made a mental list of 6 venues I very much wanted to share because I feel that they really represent my work in my community and the support I have received, but no, a man cut me off and did not let me answer to ask: So and so said that all art is propaganda, is that so, is all art propaganda?

I pushed myself to the back of my chair because the artist that had last answered felt the question directed at her (thank you Great History's Goddess!). I gave up on the talk at that point. The artist was pretty much reprimanded for her answer and the propaganda question was answered with passion by an elderly woman in the audience, although I did not really think she was defining propaganda correctly.

Next, a man decided to walk in the narrow space between the chairs and my artwork, almost knocking them off the wall. I gave up again.

Next the curator started talking about himself. I got bored to death.

Next someone asked about murals in East Harlem, but one of the artists started talking about all sorts of murals and didn't even mention the work that Manny Vega is doing pasting painted papers to the walls of buildings, so I felt it was time to say something about that and inserted also that I have some murals in the very best place where great people will see them: the bathrooms of a public school, but they cut me off before I could say East Harlem.

I quit. This is not for me.

I much prefer the audience on the street, who asks down to earth questions and tell me their personal stories as related to what my at evokes in them, without trying to show off or put anybody down. And the fun comments in my facebook page and blogs. And putting together an event with Raquel or someone fun and talented where we don't talk so much about ourselves but share the work and talk about the work and the stories behind it. That's my thing. I can't help being who I am and get restless when there is so much disharmony, lack of attention and disrespect in one small room. The hosts were great, and I thank them for their efforts, but I am not made for that kind of event.

Yes, my anxiety is rising, but I was so happy previous to yesterday evening since all the paintings are ready, I have completed a lot of the work I need to do before leaving to Prague, and I even fixed my living room and put up the paintings so people can see them when they visit. I even sold one of the paintings on Saturday just for having done that!

The lesson I draw form this experience is to go with my instinct and not take advice as rule or law. The artist needs to know how to distinguish between duty and professionalism, and natural inclination. I might never get to show in El Museo del Barrio, as the curator was the moderator and the one to read my watery bio, but I have plans to be all over the world, talking to people, and sharing my art in ways that are meaningful to the heart.

2012-03-13T01:15:00.000-04:00

It's been a while. I don't think I had taken such a long break from writing here in the last 6 years. I have been working hard on finishing several paintings for Prague, and although I still have a few more days to finish them, I am finally seeing some light at the end of the tunnel. Not that the road has been dark at all, but it has been a long tunnel. I wake up, get presentable, go up 4 flights and paint for the next 7 or 8 hours with a short break for lunch. It's ideal. I'm happy all day. But unsustainable: everything else suffers. Even this blog. So in conclusion, I am happy, everything else is chaotic.

By Sunday I need to be done because I have invited Paul (the guy from Prague) to come see the work. After that, I need to get ready to go. I have already made all the reservations for Prague, Vienna and Budapest, but still need to get familiar with what to do there, and get all the work done before leaving.

Getting the work done means photographing the paintings, creating statements for each of them, making labels, packing them, knowing what to say about each if people ask, posting them, creating a little brochure or something to give with my name and info on it to hand out. I haven't even thought of those things yet. And I am leaving in less than one month. But as long as the actual paintings are finished by Sunday, everything else can be accomplished. Or so I'm hoping.

One weird thing to prove the right/left brain theory. I was on a roll with the paintings until I tried writing an article for angelesymilagros.about.com... My brain went all the way to the left and the painting abruptly stopped. That's why I have not been writing here. Need to stay on the right brain for a while. I have forgotten all about business, philosophy of life, and thoughts on being an artist. Have my phone off most of the time, too. Not completely on purpose, though. I just forget it exists and then it is dead when I need it.

I feel a little crazy, and need to rest a lot of hours. My left hand muscles hurt from holding the brush, and my shoulder has remembered it's old pains from art school. Nothing a little yoga can't fix.

When this is all over, I will be missing it. But then I'll have to leave, so it will be a new adventure. We'll see how it goes.

2012-02-29T22:02:00.000-05:00

I am too tired to tell the whole story, but I will just say that the tiles were done, and now are not. We had certain malfunctions. The paint got burned.

I always hold lots of fears when I have a big project.And my fears always involve all the things I can't do on my own. I was always afraid that a mosaic would fall as it was being installed. or that the pieces would be mounted crooked and not match, or with the tiles, that the cuts would be wrong or that all the tiles would break while being transported, or the customer would hate the work. I had thought of this and much more, but never ever had I thought that the tiles could burn.

So I sent my friend Rosa an appology and informed her that I would not be able to complete the work before leaving for Prague, and kept on going with the Prague paintings. What else could I do?

I think I am feeling the blow right now. I'm so tired. About 200 tiles baked, some left untouched. Nobody knows how many are damaged. A whole month of work. I have not even been brave enough to assess the damage. Will do that in April, if I'm not fired! I just can't deal with it right now. I have to make sure I don't fail with the Prague project, or I will have two gigantc blows in 2 months.

So today, I never got to turn on my phone, and I just painted and painted for about 7 hours. Almost finished one piece. And did a good part of another. Yesterday, the "day", I told my husband to forget it happened, and just went upstairs to my studio to draw 7 canvases. And did my taxes. And cooked. And wrote an extra long blog post and created a newsletter, and when I could not keep my eyes open anymore, I slept semi-satisfied for having done so much. There is always a good side to things and I an clearly see the good side of this (too much to write here...), but still, does not mean it is fun to think about it.

Now I will continue to overwork myself until on the 12th of March I can say: "I'm ready." The good thing about painting? I can control my own failures, need nobody to help, and does not require an oven. It is quite liberating. Less is more.

I'm not as bad as I might sound. In fact, after all that painting, I feel pretty good. I just don't want to do any more hard projects. I'm tired. It is time to rethink and recoup.

Thoughts on art galleries, my job as a guru, and two almost-healthy recipes

2012-02-20T12:53:00.000-05:00

My friend Norka was here last night with Justo, her boyfriend. I cooked quinoa with vegetables, we had some wine, banana-lua (banana with Khalua...) for desert and cheescake. I am afraid it was not a grand meal, but considering I had a house full of Jean Carlos and my mom while cooking, and had to make the bathroom presentable for guests, I did pretty well. Hey, at least I didn't make them fat!

Then, for the sobremesa, an advise session. I was joking that since I give too much advise, when I was trying to figure out what I was going to do with my life (which I tend to do periodically), I considered becoming an art therapist or a counselor, which Norka is looking into at this moment. But I soon gave up on that idea since I would hate to go back to college, so instead I became... "a guru!" said Justo. I'm afraid he's right, although when he posed his question I was completely unable to answer.

He is an artist exploring New York, wondering about the world of galleries. But I am an artist, living in New York, who has never quite gone in that direction. I don't feel ready for that right at this moment, and the day I'm ready, I'm not looking at New York, but at New Mexico as a possibility. I think my style would be more acceptable there. I will try both when the time comes.

I don't really know Justo's style, I don't know what he does yet, and wished I was able to help him. I gave him the standard advise: put together a cd with a portfolio, an artist statement, a curriculum; research the galleries to see what fits your style; send in your work; follow-up. Wait 10 years? That's what my friend the painter told me. I didn't tell Justo!

There are tons of galleries in NYC. There are galleries that are fairly easy to approach and exhibit at. But the problem is... the whole deal about doing a show at a gallery is, at least in my mind, the possibility that someone will be selling your work to their customers. Actively. I just don't see the non profit galleries doing that, and don't know enough about the commercial ones. And putting together an art exhibition is A LOT of work.

Then there is the problem of ignorance and vanity galleries. You might see a fancy gallery in Soho. Nice white walls, full of art. Inquire... and they will gladly tell you how much it costs to exhibit there. Hint: The galleries moved to Chelsea a while ago...

I feel inclined to do a survey among people who might know more. But I am afraid that people might not be willing to share their secrets with me. And I don't have the time to seduce anyone right now. I need to paint and get ready for Prague. And that is the whole problem with me and why I don't know anything about galleries: I spend all my time doing other kinds of projects and have not yet gambled to gain entrance into that world.

So I have utterly failed my job as an art guru! I do much better when it has to do with love problems or existential crises or being brave to face life or having fun while you are at it.

When I was sick, I said in the hospital: "I want to travel with my art". Magic words. I should have said: "I want a great art dealer who knows tons of rich people and would kill to sell my work!" Oh well, I am who I am. And when I look life in the face, I can only say what is truly in my heart. Although it is never too late. One day I will be able to give Justo a more satisfying answer, unless he is willing to share it with me once he finds out, which might be sooner. And of course, if I'm that lucky, I will pass it on to all the artist who read this blog. No art secret is safe with me!

The Menu
***
Quinoa with Vegetables
1 cup of quinoa
2 cups chicken broth or salted water
your favorite vegetable, this time I used asparagus (6 or more) and zucchini (2, take of the skin if it is bitter)
sundried tomatoes (about 6, cut in small pieces)
garlic (all you want, but I used 6 cloves)
1 large onion (cut in small pieces)
Olive oil (2 tablespoons or as much as you want)
salt
pepper
2 tablespoons cranberries
1 tablespoon or more of sunflower seeds
1 tablespoon ore more of pecans (cut in small pieces)

1. Boil the broth. Pour quinoa. Boil. Lower heat. Cover.
2. Pour oil on an extra large pan. Add salt. Sautee onions and garlic until well cooked. Add sundried tomatoes. After a few minutes, add the vegetables. Cook to your taste. Add sunflower seeds. Add pecans. Last, add cranberries. Don't cook the cranberries too long. Add more salt and pepper.
3. Add the quinoa to your vegetable mix. Enjoy!

Banana-lua
Ripe banana
Kahlua
Nice bowl
Cut the banana. Add the liquor. Mmm. The only science to this recipe is how the banana becomes something else when mixed with Kahlua...

Heath Insurance and Barter for Artists: I Have Some Questions

2012-02-11T20:46:00.001-05:00

One of the main reasons for artists not to be artists is health insurance. I know this has been the main reason why I have made huge career mistakes in the past. I have taken jobs that are bad for my health in order to get health insurance. In fact, I didn't have lymphedema before I had to sit for about 50 hours a week in 2005-2006 in order to work at a place that shall not be named in this post. Their health insurance was an HMO that, thank God, I didn't have to use for anything too serious. I felt trapped and did not know what to do until someone recommended Healthy New York as an alternative for lower cost health insurance. Still, it was exactly the same HMO with the same benefits. And the premium keeps going up each year.

Still, I was not too excited when I got an email a couple days ago about "the Lincoln Art Exchange program" The press release says that: "rather than paying for health care out-of- pocket, artists may pay through an art exchange barter system. For example, for every hour of musical performances, painting a mural or any other creative activity or service, the artist earns 40 “health credits” (the equivalent of $40) toward medical care. Eligible artists – ranging from actors, musicians, dancers, poets, writers and anyone making a living through a creative means – can access an array of affordable, comprehensive services, that include doctor visits, laboratory tests, hospitalizations, emergency care, medical and surgical procedures, dental care, prescriptions, ambulatory surgery and other services provided by the hospital. Eligibility will be based on the HHC Options program, a New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation’s financial services program that offers a sliding fee scale to low income or uninsured New Yorkers with fees starting as low as $15 for a doctor’s visit."

In principle, I think it is a good idea. But it left me wondering. If I were to need something extreme, like another transplant, would I be an indentured servant to the hospital my whole life? Is $40 an hour a fair wage when I charge no less than $50 and preferably $150 if I have to teach? What if you never actually need their services?

I think that what artists really need is real health insurance. If you are sick, you can't work. And if you are are healthy, you have to work, and not for "credits" at the hospital. It seems like a good initiative and I appreciate someone is addressing the issue... but who does it really benefit?

Any thoughts?

Mural Update

2012-02-10T12:23:00.000-05:00

Now I am only missing a few white spots. From here, it will be adding layers and details in gold with an outliner paint tube. Then cut and glue to the wall. I will also be doing the remaining walls of the bathroom with a version of the flowers, butterflies and leaves. That should be easier and faster!

Evolution Mural in Progress

2012-02-09T13:48:00.000-05:00

I know it does not look too impressive, but believe it or not, it's going well. The task of covering a large area with paint takes time and effort, especially when painting on the floor. I don't want to move it (I do have a large table right in front of the tiles) because I want to make sure that nothing moves and everything matches. The letters were incrediby hard to paint because I usually do them with a paint tube, but this time I chose to use a tiny 000 brush. I did not like the raised texture of the paint tube for the mural of a grown lady. They came out well and I had a full body stretch... 2 for 1!

The next step is painting the butterflies. That sould be the best!

[En espanol] Los secretos del SEO

2012-02-08T22:40:00.000-05:00

Querida Jefa,
Sé que haz estado laborando duro para que tu website Ángeles y Milagros sea todo un éxito. ¡Felicidades porque ahora tienes un tremendo site con muy buen tráfico! Y sé que la cosa sólo se pondrá mejor.
Estoy muy inspirada con tus esfuerzos, especialmente con todo el tiempo y esfuerzo que haz puesto en atraer más tráfico a tu website. Tengo una humilde petición: ¿Podrías darme a mi y a tus otros fieles lectores unos consejitos sobre ese tema? ¡Gracias!
un abrazo,
Tu Jefa

Como no jefa! Por algo nos llamamos jefa! Pues para empezar, hay que saber lo que es SEO, o Search Engine Optimization. No te imaginas el terror que le tenia a estas palabritas! No encontraba como entrarles, pero cuando me hicieron guía de Ángeles y milagros, no me quedo mas remedio que arrojarme al vacío y aprender.

Resulta que se trata de buscar la manera de que Google y el resto puedan identificar tus paginas de Internet. Hay frases que la gente busca mucho y que los buscadores reconocen. Se les llama "keywords". Si vas a escribir un post, lo mas recomendable es buscar primero cuales son las palabras clave que puedan ayudarte a conectarte con como la gente busca en Internet.

Por ejemplo, yo tengo un post en este blog que se titula "Poema de cumpleaños". Lo escribí inocentemente porque a veces le escribo poemas de cumpleaños en rima o chistosos a mis amigos y luego los pongo aquí. Pues resulta que miles de personas andan buscando poemas de cumpleaños con esas palabras clave. Por eso este es uno de los posts mas famosos de este blog. A nadie le interesa saber si pinto en el piso o si me gusto la exposición de Matisse, pero todo el mundo anda buscando un poema para enviarle a su novio en su cumpleaños!

La cruda realidad es que estas cosas cambian todo el tiempo pero al menos en este momento hay una manera de encontrar keywords. Se llama Google Adwords Keyword Tool. Allí puedes escoger palabras que se relacionen a tu post y ver cual seria la palabra o frase clave para el post. Por ejemplo, tu blog se llama Cascabel de Cobre. Si pongo esa frase en el buscador, me da 0. Sorry! Raquel Z (sin rivera) me da 1300 al mes. Puerto Rican music, 9,000 al mes. Caribbean Music 13,000 al mes. Download Free Music... 16,600,000. Es por eso que las visitas a Ángeles y milagros han subido tan rápido y las de este blog ni se le acercan: SEO.

Claro, este blog no tiene un propósito comercial a pesar de que tengo algunos links a mi Tes. y cosas asi. Lo escribo para mi y para quien llegue aquí. Pero si mi propósito fuera ganar dinero o vender algo, tendría que ver que es lo que busca la gente y presentarlo de tal manera que la gente llegue y vea.

Una vez que encuentres tus keywords o frases clave, usalas en el titulo del post, varias veces en el cuerpo del post y en el url del post. Leí también que es bueno usar dashes en vez de underscores en los títulos de url y fotos.

Aunque no soy experta en este tema, obviamente, esto es lo que he aprendido y me ha ayudado. Hoy estoy celebrando aquí con Julian (al único que le interesan estas cosas...jajajaj, Juan se duerme!) que mi site de Ángeles y milagros llego a casi 900 visitas. Para mi es como un acto de magia!

Así que, en conclusión, busca el ángulo del tema que la gente este interesada en buscar en Google, escoge tus keywords o frases, y ponlas en las distintas partes de tus posts. Luego nos cuentas como te fue!

Eso es todo por ahora, mañana: foto-update del mural de mi amiga Rosita. Luego de 16 hora pintando letras (creo que estoy exagerando solo por 6...) he terminado el poema!!! Ahora ya tiene cara, pelo, hojas y letras. Falta terminar todo el fondo, las flores y luego los miles de detalles dorados. Un trabajon. Y parezco un pretzel de tantas maromas en el piso intentando pintar letritas de 1 pulgada. Todo sea por el arte!!!! Cambio y fuera!

p.d. Perdonen los signos que faltan y alguno que otro acento: estoy en la pc y me canso de tanto intentarlo. Arriba las mac y la opcion+e!!!!!!

Mural in Progress

2012-02-01T20:22:00.000-05:00

I confess I was dreading these first steps of making a tile mural. The other murals on tile I have done fit on a large sized table, but this takes a whole wall, which means I have to work on the floor of my small studio. The first day I got to work (after getting my husband to cut and tape all the pieces of the image on paper...) I put down the contact paper, the tiles, the transfer paper and the image. After securing all this,I stopped and went on with other things, and expected to transfer the image the next day. Little did I know.

The next day I went upstairs normally and sat at the computer for a while to answer emails and all that office stuff, and then had to go downstairs. When I began to walk down the stairs, the pain was almost unbearable. My thighs were sore as if I had been exercising for hours. Squatting is not recommended for people who are out of shape...

Then I got nauseous, etc, etc. and had to go to sleep the whole day. So I could not sleep at night and worked at something else from the computer downstairs. Today, I finally got to the drawing, squatting some and sitting on the image some. I can already foretell the pain that awaits me. If my arms are informing me correctly, I will have to feast on painkillers tomorrow.

But a promise is a promise, I don't say no after I say yes. Two more of these... plus painting. If I survive I will certainly be in better shape and ready for yoga class. If I don't, well, you can give your condolences to Juan.

I just wish I had nothing else to do!

Learn How to make a tile mural with this tutorial.

Candy-Para Clary

2012-01-30T22:57:00.000-05:00

Te acuerdas de cuando corriamos a casa despues de la escuela para ver los ultimos minutos de Candy? Aqui va, por todo lo que nos perdimos!

Cómo añadir páginas a tu blog

2012-01-24T20:38:00.000-05:00

Hola Tanya querida, espero que estés bien. Yo por acá con mucho trabajo, ya lo habrás visto.

Por otra parte ya ví tu blog con más detenimiento y me parece súper organizado y así me gustaría modificar el mío; de hecho ya lo intenté cambiar como me dijiste, pero me manda a plantillas y cuando las aplico no me da el resultado deseado. Existe alguna manera manual para hacerlo? quisiera abrir varias categorías para organizar el contenido; para que cuando lo abran puedan ir a ver las fotos de los libros, los eventos, las invitaciones, las fotos, las semblanzas de autores, etc.

Te mando un abrazo muy grande y espero que el invierno pase pronto : )

Querida :)! Gracias por hacer una pregunta tan chévere. Tanto, que hasta fotos saqué para poder explicarte. ¡Aquí va! ¡Mucho éxito con tu página y fabulosas obras maestras!
p.d. ¡Que la gran-diosa de la historia te oiga! Creo que ya te oyó porque hoy estuvo bellísimo y me fui caminar por Nueva York, y el frío se calentó por un rato. Thank you Great History's Goddess!!!!

Entra a tu "dashboard". Haz click en "Edit Posts".

En el menú, al lado de "Edit Posts", haz click en "Edit Pages".

Estas son mis páginas en el blog "tanyatorres.blogspot.com". Puedes comparar lo que ves y lo que no ves.

Para añadir una página, haz click en "New Page".

Ahora ve a tu blog.

Haz click en "Design" en la parte de arriba a la derecha.

Donde dice "Pages" haz click en "Edit".

Marca todas las páginas que quieres que aparezcan en el menú de páginas de tu blog. Las que no marcas, no aparecen, pero están disponibles para enlazar. Haz click en "Save" y mira tu blog. ¡Listo!

How do I start with Etsy?

2012-01-21T10:52:00.000-05:00

"Hi Tanya!
I hope you are doing well. I know you are always busy, but I have a question(s) for you about Etsy, whenever you have a chance. I went to the site and read the info they have. I'm not registered yet.
I'm thinking about making simple necklaces with glass heart pendants (I have tons of those hearts), and sell them there. I see people have a store, does that mean a page with all the items the person sells?
How many items of the same to list? Tax? What are circles? And everything else you think someone new at this needs to know. Thank you so much. I learn so much from you!
Love,
A Lady With a Big, Shiny Heart"

Hi Sparking Heart! I will do my best to answer these questions. I an kind of new to Etsy, too, but I don't find it to hard to do. I guess the first step to Etsy is making those wonderful hearts. Have a bunch of different designs ready so when you finally list, you can have at least a whole page full of beautiful necklaces. I always feel a little disappointed when I go to a "shop" and find 3 listings, or 2. Not that I am not guilty of this once in a while, but you know how it is, we always expect others to be better than we are!

Anyway, enough cheap philosophy. Let's supply answers; What is a store, or shop? You got it! A page with listings. That's your shop. All you need to do is sign up and create some listings, and they will appear automatically on your new page when you publish them. You are also able to create categories. I have things like "Art Tiles," "Prints," "Greeting Cards," "Poetry Prints," and "Originals." But there is no need to have many different things. The best thing is to start.

How many items of the same to list? I list just one. When someone buys it, I re-list it. I have also bought from shops that have the same listing repeated in different places. This helps "fill" your shop. But unless you are selling tons of things in a day, you can probably re-list and save money. As they say in Spanish "para muestra un botón", all you need is a sample to sell something.

Tax? You will be able to assign the tax rate for the state where you live in the "Shipping and Payment section" in the menu under "Your Shop: (name of shop)" at the very top of the page when you sign in. If you have already assigned a tax rate in Paypal (which we all need to have before having a shop in Etsy,) this will not "double" the tax, so don't worry about it. You will also be able to create shipping profiles that you can assign to your listings. The best thing is to spend some time filling all these sections before launching your shop, so you can do your listings fast. Lucky for you, Etsy has greatly improved the process, so it will take you half the time it took me when I started last year!

What are "circles"? Hmmm, I have not yet figured this out! I know people add you to them and it's like you are comrades with them. I guess it helps your status in the eyes of your buyers, but there must be a better reason for them!

Etsy says: "Your circle is a great way to stay connected with other members of the Etsy community. When you add someone to your circle, you can see their stories on your activity feed. Learn more about Activity Feeds. There are many ways to use Circles. Some people you may want to add to your circle might be: friends, family, Etsy shops you like, or Etsians whose style you admire."

Some people are very active and add a lot of likes, others just a few or one every 10 years. Anyway, you have the option to see just info about your shop and yourself if your circle is too active. The great thing about Etsy is everyone is super polite and kind and peaceful. So it is a safe place to be in a circle!

Everything else:
Etsy must be the only place in Internet where you get sales just for listing them. I think I've had only one order from someone I know! Well, I have not had a lot of sales since I don't really do much to promote my shop, but ...

This brings me to the next point: Promote your shop! The main reason why I don't have a lot of sales is that I don't promote. A friend, Olga Ayala, told me that for a long time she did not have many sales since she was quiet about her shop, but when she began sharing her listings in Facebook, she started generating a lot more sales. My approach has been a little more direct. I post my pictures in my Facebook page and profile, and a lot of people have ordered this way. There is an "Etsian" called Flor Larios that has a great connection between her blog and shop and it seems she does great. Some people are literally making $100,000 just selling in Etsy.

Etsy newsletters are great for learning, one little post at a time. They give the same recommendation at least 5 times a year: take great photos. I scan my small paintings (It can't get more detailed than that!) and photograph large paintings outside in daylight. I only have a great camera (Nikon D70) and the help of my husband to hold the pictures. No staging for me, but I guess it would be a great idea for jewelry.

Finally, keep if fun, and sooner or later you will be an expert. Promote in a blog, in your Facebook profile and business page, and any other social network you belong to. Send informative and meaningful emails to your list, and let people see you in person, too, if you can manage after doing all this. Good luck to you and all of us trying to live "como nos da la gana", the way we are meant to live!

Wishing us all lots if Love and Freedom and Joy and Art!

(En español) ¿Cómo traigo visitas a mi blog?

2012-01-19T11:05:00.000-05:00

"acá tratando de... seguir una vocecita que me dijo hace poco "saca tiempo para tu sueno". Me lo dijo tan subliminalmente que se me ha pegado en la cabeza como una psicosis.Jajaja Esa fue una señora que se llama Tanya Torres. Y sé que sí, que es verdad, que me estanco y se me hace difícil salir del estancadero. Bueno necesito un tip. Que hago para atraer gente a mi blog? Escribir en mi página facebook y anunciarlo es una , lo se. Ya lo hice pero no tuve éxito. Enviar e-mails ya lo hice y nada. Crear un evento es otra, lo estoy planeando. Bueno creo que debo darme a la tarea de escribir un mensaje semanal hasta que les azote en la cabeza y se anoten. Pero también creo que necesito un entrenamiento para bloggers, no sabes de uno? Bueno si me das uno de tus tips te lo agradeceré."

Querida Azotadora:
¡Qué bueno que se te metió ese mensaje en la cabeza! ¡Es que es lo mas importante del mundo!!! Y si no haces realidad tu sueño,

quien lo va a hacer por ti? Es por eso que se lo digo a la gente, porque yo antes de vivir mis sueños era muy infeliz. Lo bueno es que ya empezaste y que estas en camino. O mejor dicho, lo estas viviendo porque incluso el proceso de pensar en vivir tu sueño es parte de vivirlo.

Hablando de blogs:
Yo soy una estudiante tan mala que mejor no me apunto en nada. Pero soy muy buena lectora y todo lo que haya por aprender ya está escrito (o te toca escribirlo a ti...) Por eso, te recomiendo que hagas lo que yo hago. Cuando estoy tomando café por la mañana antes de empezar a trabajar, me pongo en la computadora y escribo en google: "art business". Leo absolutamente todo lo que me encuentro, 5 o 10 minutos cada vez. Es increíble lo mucho que se puede aprender con este método, y es gratis. De vez en cuando compro alguno de los productos de los mejores escritores, si pienso que puedo aprender mas allá de lo que ponen en sus blogs y artículos. Pero para serte muy sincera, casi todo lo aprendo leyendo posts. En mi caso, escribo "art business" o "art marketing" porque es lo que me interesa aprender, pero la verdad es que los conocimientos son los mismos si escribes otra frase con "business" o "marketing". Las estrategias son más o menos lo mismo.

Hay varias cosas que puedes hacer para traer mas lectores a tu blog. Las has intentado, pero te falta una clave: repetir. Y repetir. Y repetir. La gente que esta en facebook por la mañana no es necesariamente la de por la noche.

Debes postear contenido de calidad en tu blog a
l menos una vez a la semana. Sí, la calidad
es lo más importante.
Si a las personas les gusta lo que tienes que decir, pueden interesarse en leer más o asistir a tus talleres o tomar un curso. Pero tienen que conocerte primero, saber qué haces, tener confianza en ti.

No es lo mismo ordenar un libro por Internet que verlo en la librería, donde lo puedes hojear y evaluar. Pero si ya conoces al autor, ni lo abres. Lo llevas y ya. ¿Te acuerdas de ese libro que mencioné hace unas semanas? He visitado el blog de la autora muchas veces y he visto sus posts en otros blogs. Al fin algo me hizo comprar el libro. Como que le tengo confianza, como que siento que lo que ella dice tiene base y me puede ayudar. Pero me he leído muchos, muchos posts de su blog para llegar a esa conclusión.

Hay otro chico que leo que es bloguero profesional y su blog se titula "The Art of Non Conformity". Escribe sobre "travel hacking" y sobre vivir "como te de la gana". No soy tan viajera, aunque si soy un poquito travel hacker ya que al menos uno de los pasajes a Praga me lo compre con millas de mi tarjeta de crédito. Ese tema no me apasiona, pero vivir como me dé la gana, ¡ja! Ese sí. Todavía no he llegado a comprar sus productos porque se que no los voy a usar en estos momentos y tal vez ya estoy avanzada para lo que describen, pero te lo recomiendo a ti porque creo que es el curso Empire Building Kit te puede ayudar con esto.

Y un ejemplo de la vida real. ¡Quién sabe si fue lo que me creo este business wish! Mi papá es un fanático del billar. Vive billar, respira billar, juega billar, ¡ no me sorprendería que de vez en cuando duerma en el billar! Por un tiempo escribía una columna de billar en un periódico local allá en Puerto Rico. Después de un tiempo, publicó un libro sobre cómo jugar billar. Cuando lo anunció en su columna semanal, pasó algo maravilloso. Un día fuimos al correo a buscar cartas y cuando las vimos ¡eran muchas! Un montón de cartas con cheques adentro. No recuerdo cuánto costaba el libro. Pero cómo nos disfrutamos ese maravilloso momento. Por qué tuvo éxito: sus lectores le tenían confianza, lo reconocían como experto porque el les había dado contenido de calidad semana tras semana por al menos un año si no más.

Escribir calidad es el primer paso, pero distribuir la calidad es el segundo. ¿Te acuerdas que me dio por mandar artículos por todos lados? Mandé a Empty Easel, mandé a Sage Woman, escribí más aquí. Escribir en otros blogs me trajo trafico, y me ayudó también para el trabajo en About. La gente que disfruta de lo que escribes en otros blogs se anima a ver el tuyo y se anotan en tu lista.

Respecto a eventos, no se mucho de eso. Si es un evento en persona, es lo mejor. Asegúrate de pedir tú los emails, pues la gente se va a casa y se olvida de tu tarjeta de presentación. Claro, no todo el mundo, pero la mayoría. Lo de conocer a la gente en persona siempre es numero 1. No hay nada como el contacto humano, la calidez de un encuentro. Pero por Internet, no se si los eventos sean tan efectivos si no se tiene una lista grande y una gran tribu de seguidores. Mi estrategia es tener presentaciones

en vivo
de mi arte cuando es posible. Y también me ayuda postear en el blog y en Facebook lo que voy haciendo.

Es extremadamente importante contestar todos los mensajitos que dejan los amigos y fans. Cada persona es muy importante porque sin eso no hay más nada. Así que yo le agradezco a cada persona su mensaje. Si algún día se me quedan algunos sin contestar, me perdono y si puedo, les escribo más adelante. Pero intento contestar todo. Te advierto que no es tarea fácil. A veces paso más de un par de horas al día en esto. Especialmente porque escribo demasiado! jajaja! ¡Mira que testamento te estoy escribiendo a ti!

También es importante comentar en blogs y dejar link a tu blog. Mi mejor ejemplo es Espacio Asiray. Mi amiga Yari me tiene en su blog y adivina... Muchas veces es el máximo conducto de trafico. ¡Sus lectores me visitan a mi también! ¡Algo bueno debe ella haber escrito ahí!!! Un día una amiga me dijo: Si no lees otros blogs, nadie te va a leer a ti. Bueno, no es 100% correcto, pues yo comento en muy pocos blogs y casi nunca lo hago con la intención de atraer tráfico, pero si es una estrategia para atraer trafico. Lo que pasa es que a mí no me gusta esta estrategia porque me parece hipócrita. Así que eso depende da cada cual.

Por último, aunque seguramente hay más, mucho más, el tip máximo para atraer trafico es el SEO. Suena bien complicado y yo he tenido que aprender por la fuerza. Pero el otro día cambie algunas frases en mi otro blog para ver qué pasaba e increíblemente los hits subieron ese mismo día. SEO se trata de usar frases clave que la gente esta buscando en Internet.

En este blog el post #1 es "Poema de cumpleaños". Por pura casualidad di con una palabra clave y la gente llega buscando ese post. Pero el propósito de este blog no es atraer trafico o vender cosas, sino el puro desahogo, cultivar mis propios sueños y ayudar a mis amigos en los suyos, así que no pongo mucho esfuerzo en esas cosas. El otro blog pronto será mi website y solo tiene mi arte y escritura acerca de las piezas, así que ese es el blog que me interesa promover más pues es mi trabajo artístico. Por eso fui a Google Adwords Keyword tool y busque frases relacionadas a mi arte. Así encontré la mejor manera de escribir los títulos para que la gente los encuentre. Tal vez Oil painting sea demasiado general pero "Exotic ladies" o "Tile painting" funcionan mejor para atraer gente a la página.

Eso lo aprendí con About.com. Lo que me lleva al ultimo punto de este "tip" extendido. ¿Cuantos años llevo escribiendo Hoy, artista? Como 7. ¿Cuantos hits mensuales? Como 1,200. ¿Cuanto tiempo llevo escribiendo Ángeles y milagros? Desde noviembre. ¿Cuantos hits mensuales? Va por unos 2,600 o más. ¿Por que? Porque la gente va buscando ese tema. Mucha, mucha gente quiere saber de ángeles. 1,000,000 para ser mas exactos. Muy poquísima gente quiere saber de lo que escribo aquí. La mayoría vienen por casualidad y se van. Los que se quedan tienen una conexión personal, profesional o espiritual conmigo. Y, realmente, ¿cuánta gente quiere saber cómo se ve mi estudio por dentro? Solo gente especial! jajajaj! Así que mi consejo es: Mantén tu nombre en tu site, pero busca una frase que la gente este poniendo en google todos los días y añádesela al nombre de tu blog como una especie de eslogan. Eso te hará resaltar más.

Después de este mamotreto, espero que no te hayas desmayado. Recuerda: si trabajas solo 1/2 hora al día, al final del año tendrás muchas horas invertidas y muchos éxitos alcanzados. A veces toma más tiempo. Hay cosas que uno logra después de mucho tiempo. Lo importante es disfrutar el proceso. Si no lo disfrutas, es mejor no hacerlo y buscar algo que disfrutes en la mayoría de sus facetas. Yo con los blogs me disfruto todo: escribir, contestar, poner fotos, whine! De todo. Es una adicción. Si no se siente así, se convierte en un trabajo, y quien quiere trabajar? Abajo el trabajo como diría Laura, la amiga de Raquel. ¡Arriba el disfrutar de cada momento de la vida! De eso se trata. ¡A escribir, escritora!!!

Happiest Day of 2012

2012-01-18T17:49:00.000-05:00

A few days ago, I finally got my mind where if found the ideas I needed for the food paintings that are going to the East Harlem Bilingual Head Start. I have several salads turned fish and a cheese dog, which will not be a hot dog, by the way. They are fun and I am happy with the designs, but because I worked with a very light pencil, they are not worth scanning and posting here. So that's the nine little canvases (9" x 12") The three bigger ones are for Prague.

My husband helped me cut and put together the designs for my friend Rosa Velazquez's bathroom. Her bathroom is now officially started! Well, I began this project a while ago, but the design process took a longer than expected and then Christmas and the New Year and the Three Kings arrived, so we had to postpone it. Now I expect to be painting the tiles by next week.

In the scanner...

is this 9" x 12" canvas of Mother and Child, a painting I begun after painting all the reds on the food paintings. It was inspired by the Virgin and Child of the Church of the Nativity in Jerusalem, which I saw while watching a video of the priests fighting with brooms in the church. Yes, Orthodox and some other denomination were actually fighting with brooms, wish I could remember where the video was posted. Luckily, I saw the beautiful painting and didn't entirely waste my time watching such things!

Why this was a happy day? I feel I gave a good push to the work that has been keeping me up at night, and now I know everything will be done before leaving for Prague in April. I am completely scared to death and don't even want to think about it, but looking forward to it!

I am also looking forward to going to Albuquerque in August... but that's a secret story for now and has more to do with the drawing than with anything else...

Art and Business Resources for artists

2012-01-16T11:18:00.000-05:00

I am not getting paid for this! This is what I actually use:

overnightprints.com: Do Not order the cheap printed cards, they scratch easily and are generally not worth it. The greeting cards were also a disappointment. But the offset postcards and business cards are excellent. UV coating is really nice. I use them since 2003.

Epson.com: Printers, scanners and papers: For many years I used the C84, then the C88+. Now I have the Photo 1400. I just can't see myself letting go! The papers are the best.

Dickblick.com: For many, many years I faithfully visited Pearl Paint on Canal Street, Chinatown, where all artists go. But around 2005, they began being out of stock far too often, making me go around the city in search of what I needed. So I finally began to order exclusively through the Internet. Best thing? I don't have to carry 100 pounds of art supplies in the subway! When I feel like going shopping, I go to their store on Bond street. Two manageable floors instead of 5 and an old elevator at Pearl. Of course, if you are a tourist in NYC, DO NOT miss going to Pearl. It is required!

UADC Long Island City, NY 11101 Office: 718-786-9056, 718-786-5601
www.printandmat.com uadcinc@gmail.com
I order my mats, backings and clear bags from them. The prices are so good that even when you have them ship them to you, it is still worth it. A photographer recommended them and I have saved hundreds of dollars in mats ever since. They also have decent, inexpensive frames.

Etsy.com This is a super place for supplies and interesting materials. This is where I found the Sun and Moon glaze as well as the necklace and ring kits I have been exploring lately. Also, I found a great seller for transparent bags for greeting cards. You can buy small quantities for very comfortable prices. Just type what you are looking for in the search box and choose "supplies" before you search. I never thought etsy would be such a great resource.

mosaicartsupply.com and mosaicmercantile.com
This is where I buy my mosaic pieces. Mosaic Mercantile is higher quality, mosaicartsupply is cheaper.

USPS.com I recently got tired of going to the post office, so I invested in a little scale and some stamps. I also ordered their free priority mail supplies. So much better and faster!!!! And... no fees like the postage services. In fact, you get a small discount for using their shipping services online.

thehomedepot.com: I have spent so many hours of my life at this store that I dread the name. Luckily, now they ship for free, so I will do my best not to spend more than 2 hours a year at the actual store. By the way, calculate your tiles with this excellent tile calculator. One of the great discoveries of 2011!

ebay.com: I don't use ebay too much, but I found they sell the tie tacks I use to make pins for the best price I have been able to find so far.

uline.com I try to recycle every single box I get from the mail, but once in a while I need cardboard for packaging or other shipping supplies. Excellent service, good prices.

Hope this is helpful! If I think of anything else, I will keep adding to this post.

Further Thoughts

2012-01-12T14:27:00.000-05:00

Butterfly Secrets by Tanya Torress, Acrylic on tile, 6" x 6", 2011

Sometimes I write a post, people respond to certain things in it, and I stay thinking about what I really meant or wanted to say.

When I created Battle Body, everybody liked it. I mean everybody. The best artists I know, people who are not artists, church people, art critics, reporters... Most of my press cuttings are about that work. I got a two page spread in the main Puerto Rican newspaper. People invited me to present the work in great places. And then I quit for a while, got severely depressed and quite crazy, reemerged as a new person and here I am, writing about how I am going in a different direction.

The problem is that as soon as you succeed at something, people will start placing labels on you, will want to keep you in the same square box.

One day a young woman was so excited to meet me, I was doing great things, bringing a workshop to little kids in the Hatian Batey in Dominican Republic. She wanted people to meet me, she was a big fan. But then she found out that, during that same trip, I was also going to have a show in a museum. She hated me after that.

I think that is what I was feeling behind all the words I wrote for the previous post. The feeling that I don't want to be what people think I am, but what I am now, for now. No promises about next year.

But at some point between successful and crazy, I felt myself craving the attention all this was giving me. I did not like that about myself, so I decided it was time to quit. No more talking about this theme. I put away Battle Body. I would make the occasional mention, if it was helpful to another human being, but until Friday, the pieces were in my basement.

What was there left to do? Only one thing: go forward. Reinvent. Destroy, and create.

There is the motto my friend Raquel and I live by: "Hacer lo que nos dé la gana." It means "do whatever we want" in a disdainful but happy tone, meaning we don't care what others want us do. And she is a Sociology Ph.D. who prefers to live a New Mexican adventure...

So that's what I do. And it actually works. People actually like my non-cancerous work! It's a miracle!

The lesson is: Do what you want, when you want, the way you want. After all, you have to live with yourself, and your art. I would sincerely never place those Battle Body pieces in my living-room. They are museum pieces!

For me, I paint Mary Magdalenes, goddesses with green hair, muses, and even mermaids. And Eros and Psyche, the Three Kings, little birds, moms and babies. And it makes me so much happier when people order a print or a tile than having a fancy show of the Battle Body series. I know it does not quite make sense... but it is the truth.

One more thing about creating happy art. If I were sad, if something really terrible had happened in my life, I probably would be processing things differently. But when I look around me, I can only see the good, and the beautiful, and the miracle of this life I live every day.

Yesterday my son turned 14. His grandma brought a cake, I texted him to come with his friends, and a bunch of teens filled my apartment with their joyful, free, careless presence.

That's the happiness I am talking about. It has nothing to do with me. It is an atmosphere that permeates all. And although, this too shall pass, I will not look beyond. There is just too much to feel right now.

Battle Body

2012-01-06T09:39:00.000-05:00

An old friend called me last week to invite me to participate in an exhibition. He wants the Battle Body images. For some reason, I have mixed feelings about showing them. I am showing them, no issue with that, but it feels strange to unearth that work, after so many years.

It made me think about my current work, how on the opposite side of the spectrum it is, how it seems I have had an about face in terms of my images. It has not been completely unconscious. I have wanted that, even if it costs me prestige in the art community. I am well aware that my current work lacks conflict, pain, which seems an essential ingredient of high art. But that is not what I want to put in the world right now. I feel I add more to people's lives if I give images of post cancer as an experience of learning, evolution towards peace, love, joy, a different truth of living than the one you perceive while in the hospital, while bald and in pain and under the influence of morphine.

My life and view of the world are so different now. They have moved away from the body, and into the imagination and the ideal. Most people can't conceive of that world yet. That's why I make it my job to show it.

Still, Battle Body is a testament, what you leave behind when you die. I can't bury it, it is good work and what turned me into an officially professional artist. People still ask to buy the books, all gone. I can't bury it if it might help someone. So I show it, even if it is so far behind now.