Hello everybody!

Now I can dance and sing and be merry. And now I can write a journal entry about what has been worrying me for the last month and a half. I had no heart to mention it while I was still unsure of the outcome.

One of my five cats, Milonga, has been very ill. You can see her in this shot, she is the one who acts as a "mattress" for her daughter Colombina to sleep on:



My dearest, sweetest Milonga is 12 years old. If she were human, she would be about 65. So she's a granny, really, though I always call her "baby" and she positively acts like one!
About a month and a half ago she started vomiting frequently. I took her to the vet's thinking it was a virus or something. The vet knew better, she drew some blood and ran some tests. So we ruled out leukemia and the feline HIV. Phew!

I JUST POSTED THE ENTRY BY MISTAKE INSTEAD OF PREVIEWING IT. SORRY!

She prescribed a strict diet suspecting it was a case of Triaditis. What on earth is that? Yeah, I asked the same question. It's an inflammation that affects the liver, the pancreas and the intestines. All three at the same time. Poor kitty, she must have felt horrible. The diet helped at first but then Milonga didn't care for it any more. It's probably not the most tasty cat-food in the world, since it has 0 fat content. And she kept on vomiting. She lost half of her weight. She became so week she couldn't jump onto my bed. I thought she would die.

Seeing that she didn't respond to the diet, the vet did an abdominal ultrasound. That confirmed the Triaditis and also showed inflamed lymphatic ganglia. It could be a natural consequence of the overall inflamation or it could indicate a lymphoma. That would be the worst scenario.

I had to hospitalise her for almost a week so she could receive serum, anti-emetics and her antibiotic through the vein. She improved while in the "hospital" (it's a large cage, really). She only vomited three times in five days so on Saturday 3 July I took her back home. I had to give her Primperan, an anti-emetic, and a stomach protector orally. That is I had to force her to gulp them down. She started vomiting again nevertheless.

On Monday I called the vet again and she suggested interrupting the drugs to see if they actually irritated her instead of doing their job as expected. And that was that! Milonga hasn't vomited for five days straight and she is gaining some weight. She can even jump onto my bed again!

And I am jumping too, our of sheer joy! I wanted to let you all know that my baby-granny is getting better each day!

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I thought I'd never make it to a new journal entry. Phew!

This week is being extra busy because apart from my work in the gallery and my work at home, it's Culture Week 2010 in the village. Yeays! There are several activities every day from Monday to Sunday, some for the children and others for the adults. I am the secretary of the cultural association and have found myself hectically divided between the gallery, my home (I do have to sleep sometimes) and our Cultural Centre.

Who just said I'm crazy? They're right!

In spite of all that, I was able to finish a couple of WIPs, my two latest submissions to my gallery:

and

Your response has been touching and I'd like to issue a collective Thank You here, because I'll never be able to answer all your faves and messages individually. [link] Mysteries of Noon VI) has been my biggest success ever, with over 1,200 views in less than twenty hours. This had only happened previously when I got my DDs. And it was featured today in [link] Cutting Edge 23/10)

Ok, I'll stop showing off and I'll humbly go looking for some new features. What will they be about?







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Cats, rats, dogs, logs, wolves, hooves, foxes, crotches, fishes, dishes, Vampirellas, Cinderellas, extraterrestrials, intraterrestrials, trees, pees, woods, hoods, girls, pearls, boys, joys, hats, bats, hatters, matters, rabbits, habits, otters, others.

Hello, my patient friends

One of the advantages of working in an art gallery is getting to know other artists. It is very interesting to hear them talk about their work, its meaning and the physical creative processes they follow. There are always those we relate to better, more easily. A common understanding of art (and the world), shared attitudes, even a similar sense of humour.

I feel this affinity with Miquel Lligadas, a sculptor and engraver who has some work here, in the gallery. Miquel also lives in a small village, Capçanes, about 100 kms (63 miles) north from here. He has a very large workshop that I absolutely envy and a screw press similar to this one: [link] . You can see some of his pieces here: [link] the purple button on the upper centre saying "VISITA LA GALERIA" to view his sculptures and engravings. The site is in Catalan but the works speak for themselves.

I like Miquel's art and the good thing is that he likes my fractals too, especially the less decorative ones, that I am particularly fond of myself. This is a sample of what I'm talking about:



Miquel also uses flat undulating stripes, textures and dots in his engravings, so there is a formal similarity in our pieces. (Formal here refers to the forms, the shapes, not the formalities.) And we thought we could work on a project together, ultimately aiming for an exhibition. I'm very excited about it and this is the reason I mention it in my journal, though it is a long-term project and it will probably take us months to conclude. I'll keep you posted and I'll certainly show you the results.

I am also very eager to try out a technique that is new to me: engraving. Miquel will generously let me use his press to print some of my fractals on paper as engravings!

Isn't that something to look forward to? I'll probably have to adapt the designs but what I see in my mind's eye thrills me already!

So, carried away by my new enthusiasm about printing, I browsed the Traditional Art -> Printing galleries. I hope I'll be posting something there in the near future too.









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The trees are raining. The roofs are raining. The bridges are raining down into the river. My car is raining. The iron railings of the staircase leading up to my appartment are raining. The doorways are raining. My eyelashes are raining. My umbrella is raining all around me. The bushes are raining. The stones are raining into the puddles that surround them. The poppies are raining. The dogs' tails are raining. The blades of grass are raining. And high above, though not so very far away, the clouds are raining.






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Some of you may have noticed the line below my username that says "a greek gal living in spain". Yes, I was born and grew up in Greece, and only moved to Spain when I was 25 years old. So Greece is much more than a memory, it's a reality in my mind and in my heart. And though I never went back to live there -at least not yet- I'm still a Greek and have my roots in the rocky soil of that small, dear country.

So what is happening in Greece has a deep effect on me.

It is with sadness and consternation that I follow the recent events there. Three people died yesterday in the riots in Athens, a cruel, stupid death they did not deserve. There are always extremists who take advantage of the popular unrest and carry things to an extreme from which there is no way back. I deeply regret those meaningless deaths.

On the other hand, I understand the popular unrest. There have been several massive demonstrations in Greece lately and yesterday's general strike was the third in just three months. The demonstrators carried banners saying "Let the bankers pay for the crisis they provoked". And I agree.

Governments the world over are trying very hard to re-float the economy, the neo-liberal economy, at the expense of normal working people. It was our money, the tax-payers' money, they used to bail out the banks when they collapsed, victims of their own greed and speculative excesses. So we paid to save a corrupt banking system instead of thinking out ways to replace it. Now we (the Greeks, the Spanish, the Irish, the Americans, people the world over) have to pay again to save this corrupt socioeconomic system. Salaries are frozen, pensions are reduced, the VAT tax is increased and tens (hundreds?) of other measures are taken to preserve the monster of shameless benefit for the richer.

What makes me wonder is why people all over the world are not demonstrating. The anger of the Greeks is justified. Only a month ago the European Union calculated 30 billion euros were necessary to save the Greek economy from defaulting (and causing a domino effect that could hurt the rest of Europe). The necessary measures were not taken immediately, Mrs. Angela Merkel, the German PM, did not dare vote the decision in view of the upcoming elections in May. In the meantime, the continued uncertainty and vicious speculation inflated the sum to 130 billion euros! Standard & Poor's, the credit rating agency [link] warned that the Spanish economy would follow suit if Greece defaulted, followed by Portugal and Ireland.

Standard & Poor's! The same agency that backed Lehman Brothers before it went down, dragging the American economy with it. How reliable are their predictions? How "objective" are they?

Those people have the power to influence the markets and distabilize nations and we don't even know who they are. They are private agents, we never voted for them and we cannot influence or censure their actions. Yet they determine our destinies. Is this the socioeconomic model we really want to preserve?

And all along inmense sums of money are still being transfered to the infamous tax havens. Bankers retire with multi-million euro/dollar pensions even as they demand reductions in worker's pensions. And the show goes on...








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In mid march I was interviewed by a local magazine, "Temps de Franja" ("Times on the Strip"), on my artistic activity and also on my job as an art gallerist. The Strip is a narrow strip of land that belongs to Aragon, a Spanish-speaking province, but retains Catalan as its native language, because it was part of Catalonia till the middle of the nineteenth century. The interview was published in their April issue and it fully covers the two central pages of the magazine. It is in Catalan, the language spoken in the North-Eastern part of Spain, and I haven't translated it to English yet.

There was a warm response from the people who know me in the area and also some interest from others, who don't know me yet but would like to establish contact. This comes at a moment when the county authorities are offering local artists help to promote our work and to find a permanent facility for exhibitions, workshops, conferences, etc. We still have a long way to go but the initiative is important and highly appreciated.

As a result of all the above, I was asked to write a short article on Realism in Art. Hopefully, it will be followed by a second article on Abstraction. For the time being I am working on the first one and this is my final draft:

"Realist Art, if we can call it that, shows a determined will to look at the world straight on. It is a type of art that focuses on physical reality, the exterior world. But the human being has a complex mind, which engages with this external physical reality and wants to make sense of it. And further than that we have a soul, a spirit, a subconscious and the capacity to remember. We accumulate knowledge that we then relate to other pieces of knowledge, our own and that received through cultural transmission. We critically -and emotionally- contrast our vision with that of others and construct our own ways of seeing, of looking at and understanding the world. And then we look for our own way of transmitting these constructions.

To examine nature, whether as a natural landscape or a painted one, to study objects, flowers or fruit in what is known as a Still Life, or indeed to study a person, a model, is a way of engaging in an act of comprehension of the world. Both the exterior and the interior, since a good realist artist should never forget that -as Goethe said- reality is no more than a symbol. Put in this way it may seem an exaggeration but, if understood precisely, it means that every imitation, no matter how exact it may be, needs to have this symbolic capacity to a certain extent. The capacity to reveal other worlds interwoven with the appearance of this one, which we take to be real. All the complexities of our minds work this way too, as does the labyrinth of tradition, which is nothing more than the accumulation of these revelations from all the works of art over time. An achievement of a humankind set on understanding itself and the world around us."

It may seem that I have been gradually distancing myself from fractal art to focus on painting, photography, etc. The impulse to do so has to do with the need to project my understanding of the world to my work. Fractals mean nothing to me if they cannot contain this very personal view of reality, not just physical reality but the symbols we unavoidably use to interpret it. Pretty, decorative fractal forms are nothing in themselves. I still have to find my way of filling them with humanity, our doubts and fears, our vanities, our cultural baggage. For they are -to my eyes- those symbols that go beyond exact imitation to speak of the abstract interweavings of meaning and significance.








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Another poem by Federico Garcia Lorca, also from his "Romancero Gitano". The mixture of traditional themes with an avantguard style is one of the main characteristics of his writings. This poem is about the death of a gypsy child at "the forge" (a symbolic place where death forges destiny) and his journey across the sky, led by the Moon (the night, the owl, the Moon, all ancient symbols of death). If you are interested, you can listen to a recitation of the poem in Spanish here: [link]

                    The Moon came to the forge
                    in her petticoat of lilies.
                    The child is staring, staring.
                    The child is staring at her.

                    In the moving air
                    the moon stirs her arms
                    and shows, voluptuous and pure,
                    her breasts of hard tin.

                    Run, Moon, Moon, Moon!
                    If the gypsies came around,
                    they would make with your heart
                    necklaces and rings of white.

                    Child, now you let me dance.
                    When the gypsies come around
                    they will find you on the anvil,
                    with your little eyes closed.

                    Run, Moon, Moon, Moon,
                    for their horses I can hear.

                    Child, now you let me be, do not tread
                    on my crisp pallor.

                    The rider is getting closer
                    beating on the drum of the plain.
                    Inside the forge, the child
                    has closed his eyes.

                    Through the olive grove they came
                    the gypsies: bronze and dream.
                    Their heads upright,
                    their eyes half-closed.

                    Hear the call of the owl.
                    How it calls among the branches!
                    Across the sky goes the moon,
                    holding the child by the hand.

                    In the forge the gypsies weep,
                    they weep and cry out loud.
                    The wind is mourning, it mourns.
                    The wind is mourning over the forge.








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Federico Garcia Lorca, [link] one of the most prominent and beautiful Spanish poets, was born near Granada in 5 June 1898 and died at the dawn of 19 August 1936, executed by one of Franco's squads. He was buried in an anonymous mass grave, the exact location of which is yet undetermined.

The "Sleepwalking Romance" (Romance Sonánbulo in Spanish) is from his book Romancero Gitano, published in 1928. I recently started to re-read his works and the poem included here is one of my favourites. Though, to be honest, it's very hard to choose favourites since his writings, poems and theatre plays, are all excellent.

Green, how I want you green.
Green wind. Green branches.
The ship out on the sea
and the horse on the mountain.
With the shade around her waist
she dreams on her balcony,
green flesh, her hair green,
with eyes of cold silver.
Green, how I want you green.
Under the gypsy moon,
all things are watching her
and she cannot see them.

Green, how I want you green.
Big hoarfrost stars
come with the fish of shadow
that opens the road of dawn.
The fig tree rubs its wind
with the sandpaper of its branches,
and the forest, cunning cat,
bristles its brittle fibers.
But who will come? And from where?
She is still on her balcony
green flesh, her hair green,
dreaming in the bitter sea.

--My friend, I want to trade
my horse for her house,
my saddle for her mirror,
my knife for her blanket.
My friend, I come bleeding
from the gates of Cabra.
--If it were possible, my boy,
I'd help you fix that trade.
But now I am not I,
nor is my house now my house.
--My friend, I want to die
decently in my bed.
Of iron, if that's possible,
with blankets of fine chambray.
Don't you see the wound I have
from my chest up to my throat?
--Your white shirt has grown
thirsy dark brown roses.
Your blood oozes and flees
around the corners of your sash.
But now I am not I,
nor is my house now my house.
--Let me climb up, at least,
up to the high balconies;
Let me climb up! Let me,
up to the green balconies.
Railings of the moon
through which the water rumbles.

Now the two friends climb up,
up to the high balconies.
Leaving a trail of blood.
Leaving a trail of teardrops.
Tin bell vines
were trembling on the roofs.
A thousand crystal tambourines
struck at the dawn light.

Green, how I want you green,
green wind, green branches.
The two friends climbed up.
The stiff wind left
in their mouths, a strange taste
of bile, of mint, and of basil
My friend, where is she--tell me--
where is your bitter girl?
How many times she waited for you!
How many times would she wait for you,
cool face, black hair,
on this green balcony!
Over the mouth of the cistern
the gypsy girl was swinging,
green flesh, her hair green,
with eyes of cold silver.
An icicle of moon
holds her up above the water.
The night became intimate
like a little plaza.
Drunken "Guardias Civiles"
were pounding on the door.
Green, how I want you green.
Green wind. Green branches.
The ship out on the sea.
And the horse on the mountain.





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