Painting!

As a child, making arts and crafts was a way to pass the time and make something.  When my family moved to Florida I found myself in a new environment and immediately learned that I was different. I was alien to the majority of the people around me. Within a year I was blessed with my art teacher, Mrs. Houdeshell.  She introduced me to all art mediums and I quickly learned that creating art produced attention. I gained acceptance, admiration, and praise for my creative class assignments and artwork.  In my preteen head I concluded that with paint, brushes, clay, images, and bright colors I could inform and tell others of the place I was from.  As a consequence I would no longer feel alienation. I thought, “people just don’t know where I am from! I will paint it, sculpted it, and I will dance it”.  At the same time I replenished the empty space inside, longing for family members, festive holidays and parties, swimming in the warm ocean, speaking and being understood.  My new language, loved by all, became the tactility of the paint and the possibilities of color that produced an image of both physical and emotion experiences.  Sense, art has become a way to continue to revisit moments, experiences, and celebrations of the world I am situated in.

I need to remove myself from the world to situate myself in it.  It is like praying in church, going to a Holy place, a quiet space to release and recharge the soul.  My experience as a human being from a small festive warm island and my need to share its warmth comes out through the brush.

How do you celebrate your Hispanidad (being Latina/o) on a daily basis?Janice as a Latina identifies herself first as a Mother.

I always begin my morning with Puertorrican Cofee Cafe Crema. It takes me back to my childhood comute to school and passing the Cafe Crema factory in Caguas Puerto Rico. The aroma of cafe Crema in the air... yum tum! Also the memory of my grandmother giving me my first taste of it with  A LOT of milk. I have been drinking it sense the age of  7, even after we moved to Florida my grandfather would send it to us from PR.

Tania

Selfies

How do people choose to represent themselves? Are portraits important?
How do you celebrate your Hispanidad (being Latina/o) on a daily basis?

The Selfie portraits may give way to discuss how we construct or deconstruct our identities sense I am asking the portrayed to initially portray themselves to me via a “selfie.” Portraits primary goal is to signal and individual’s presence and by using the history of portrait painting I can introduce viewers to my process.

My process is self indulgent, a necessary act, to remove myself from the world as I become free in my Latina American experience.

Emma is Perubian and Canadian!