This is an assemblage box I recently made for my show in Cafe Mia that is supposed to go up in June 1st. I am making a series of cigar boxes and I have been playing lately with these playing cards I found with the characters of the Shakespeare plays. I love this duality of the Jack of Hearts. This piece is called "Reserva Real". I thought it illustrated the concept of "neighbors" really well.

For Illustration Friday today I thought about small change in my pocket, 5 pesos might be a small amount (about 50 cents U.S.) but back when I was 4 years old (about the time this coin was circulating in Mexico) it could get me so many wonderful things, a balloon or maybe a lollipop, back then I thought my Dad was the richest man in the world, he would give me 5 pesos every sunday and I could spend it in whatever I wanted. And at the same time I also thought my mom was really poor cause whenever I asked her for something in a store she would say she didn't have any money, so even back then the world seemed like a strange place.

This collage is about the way money can be an important part of life, it can define people and the things they're able to do, if someone crazy has a lot of money and has a crazy idea, it may very well get done sooner than later. This is the way wars work, I think... it's almost always about money in some way or another.

The Stories they tell us to make us feel safe.

I made this painting a couple of years ago, it's called "Niños Heroes" or Heroic Children, It's about a story that is on the Mexican history text books (which doesn't mean is true) about these children soldiers (13 to 19 years old) that defended the Militar Academy in the Chapultepec Castle in Mexico City in 1873 from some bad guys (the American Army) and the story goes that they chose to die than to stop fighting them. I think the school system and the government tell us these stories to make us feel safe about our government in Mexico and trust that they would defend us with their own lives... maybe they did back in 1873....

I used a very old 5 000 peso bill with the illustration of these brave soldiers and I wrote their names in between.

Safe for Illustration Friday

When I was a little girl I used to feel that the safest place was in my mother's arms, and now that I am a mother, I feel the safest place is with my daughter and son in my arms.

This week's theme for illustration friday is CAPTURE. The first thing that came to my mind was a caged bird, but even more dramatic... a bird with his wings sewed shut.  This is a quick card made in a menu from one of my favorite cafes, Cafe Mia I love the gelatto! it's 5 x 5 inches.

I plan to leave this in one of the tables in the cafe as "found art" to find out more about found art, you can go here.

I used acrylic paint, pastel crayons and black marker, also I used a postal stamp from Mexico with a design of an iron gate, adding to the feeling of capture. The eye is a lens from a disposable camera... (I find inspiration everywhere!)

Clean (1)

This week's theme for illustration friday is CLEAN. When I was a young architect just out of college, I was working with an architect that designed very modern architecture, he asked me to design an elevation for a new discotheque we were building, and the sketches I came back with were, for his taste, very "scenographical" meaning, they looked too busy, like a theatre set. You see, in architecture slang, "clean" means simple design. (I think), this is a drawing of the way the final design of the elevation looked like, or at least that's how I remember it, you can see the finished project here:  varshiva nightclub 

I like the way the sky looks so "dirty" it could also work for the "opposites" theme of last week. This sketch was made with pencil and acrylics on watercolor paper.

Clean (2)

The cleanest soul there is, the virgin Mary of Guadalupe. This is a detail form a painting I did called "494" It's acrylic on canvas with yellow tin foil.