A pop-up!
Magenta for spirituality, the color of the highest flight of the heart...
It's been a long, but pleasurable process to create this book. First, I wrote the poetry throughout the last two years. Then, I created the drawings, many of them inspired by poetry written by other poets, including Luis A. Rodríguez and Stephen Cipot, whose work was a great inspiration to my own visual work. Next, I created a first version of the book, which did not contain any images and which also was bigger in size. But I felt that I wanted this book to say more about what it means to me, and decided to pair the poems with images. I soon realized that I had almost all the drawings I needed and that they each complimented a particular poem. Since I had chosen to make drawings inspired by poetry that explored the same themes I was exploring, it turned out I was also drawing for my own poems. Some drawings, of course, were created especially for this book.
It feels so good to have finally completed all my poetry murals! Here they are, including 4 additional "last minute" murals that Mr. Soto, the school principal, asked me to create 2 months before the biggest day at the school: Mano a Mano, when all the school's creations are presented in a big performance and as exhibitions throughout the building.
The murals are all painted and written on approximately 60 4" x 4" tiles. The project began last year, when the school children asked Mr. Soto to fix the bathrooms. He moved Heaven and Earth to achieve the much needed—and very expensive—renovation of 6 school bathrooms, and thought to integrate poetry and art as a reminder that creativity and dreams are all around us!
Personally, I feel this project integrates a lot of who I am by bringing together word and image. Of course, they are also meant to reflect the principal's vision for the school and the idea for the picassoesque figures came from the children's own work with the schools' art teacher, Ms. Turtle. The poetry is all mine. Here they are!
Girls, First Floor
Boys, First Floor
Girls, Second Floor
Boys, Second Floor
Girls, Third Floor
Boys, Third Floor
A pop-up!
Magenta for spirituality, the color of the highest flight of the heart...
