Artist Interviews: Leenda Bonillla, Artist/Collaborator/Collagist/Art Instigator

1. What was your first love in the world of art? 
That’s tough to answer. I guess when you’re little the exposure was to classics, so it was Picasso…. but it was picking up a Frida Kahlo book at my library that blew me away. School wasn’t teaching art history so I got that bio about her with pics of her life and works. However, what transcended me was Cindy Sherman… she used photography and a format I had been doing since my teen years, she taught me selfies first. 

2. What so you love to look at? 
I enjoy foreign and indie films, it’s not Hollywood. I remember my walk to the video store around the corner and I remember saying to myself, “I don’t want to see same stuff” and I spotted a movie called “Where the River Runs Black”. That genre for me, tells stories of the “other” and I can relate to them, or not. It sweeps me away with visuals and dialogues that inspire me. 

3. What are your three dream art projects?
OH… let’s see there are so many but at the moment I can think of: 
1. Organize a float at the Puerto Rican Day parade with pre, during and post colonial costumes, performance and installation. 
2. Create an installation titled “My So-Called Puerto Rican Life” 
3. Write a short play called, “Stuttering in Spanish”


4. What does MainlandMix mean for you? 
MainLAND_MIX is how I associate being bi-cultural. I am first generation born in NYC and grew up traveling back and forth to Puerto Rico. After the cocoon of youth I realized that I don’t “fit” in either stereotype of the Nuyorican or the Island Rican, hence, MainLAND_MIX.

5. What keeps you in nyc?
I knew since I was little that NYC is the only place where I can see, taste, hear, smell and find items that come from all over the world. With NYC neighborhoods being more diverse than ever it only motivates me to stay. I’ve travelled quite a bit and I can say that there’s no place like NYC, really. Though, I witness the disparity now more than ever with past socieo-economic initiatives from the previous administration. I hope that change will happen with the new one. 
It seems being a native New Yorker is rare thing nowadays. My siblings left and my parents are here and majority of my family live on the Island while some migrated to other parts of the mainland and I don’t see myself anywhere else mainland-wise.

Artist Interviews: Charlie Vázquez, Author, Poet, People-Connector, Bon Vivant

1.     What have you learned by watching Youtube videos this week?

Funny you should ask that. I use YouTube for both entertainment and research (sometimes they are the same thing!) and last night I investigated the “urban fantasy” literary genre, as people close to me have told me that my fiction could be classified as such. One of the writers interviewed explained how “the dark forests” of older literatures have been replaced by even darker urban spaces, such as foreboding alleys and subterranean environments.

This transition and the need for it fascinate me.

And that a major distinction between classic fantasy and the new more brazen urban style is that the urbanized genre permits a lot of space for sex in the plot, whereas in the older style sex was nearly taboo or just omitted. So now my imagination is really unraveling! I began writing my next novel, which is set in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and as I started out as an erotica writer and drifted away from that to explore other things, all the threads are coming back together now.

2.     How did you connect with Puerto Rico?

I connected with Puerto Rico later in life, in 2009 actually, and stayed on the western coast. During that trip alone I saw San Juan, Arecibo and La Cueva del Río Camuy, Quebradillas, Aguadilla, Rincón, Mayagüez, Cabo Rojo, Boquerón, San Germán, Sabana Grande, and Ponce. We almost made it to Juana Díaz where my father was born but didn’t quite make it. And most of those places have since become locations for a series of short terror stories I’m developing alongside the new novel.

The Puerto Rican writer Mayra Santos Febres called me in 2011, regarding her Festival de la Palabra, and how she really wanted to bring programming to New York. So I met with her and José Manuel Fajardo, the programmer, and was hired to coordinate dates in New York after the San Juan dates wrapped. I’ve since made numerous friends on the island that have helped me to reconnect to it Puerto Rico in various ways. I connected to Puerto Rico, in short, through writing and my love of literature.

3.     What is your favorite music to write to?

I like writing in silence, as much as New York City will allow me. But when I do play music it cannot have vocals. Symphonic music, electronica, I’ve used before.

4.     Describe your favorite writing and why this appeals to you (novelists).

This is a tough one because I read all over the place. But to give you an example of one style I like, I’ll refer to the great Belgian crime writer Georges Simenon. What I love about his style of writing (20^th century) is how he, with such filed down economy, can paint a scene, the characters in that scene, and the feeling that permeates it, in half a paragraph. He’s just genius.

I’ve read about six or seven of his Inspector Maigret Parisian crime novellas and novels in the past and recently came across one of his more better known “romans durs” (hard novels) called The Strangers in the House. The romans durs were existential and dark forays into the crime itself and the characters surrounding it, but also of the narrator’s psyche.

That’s how I like my fiction. Thrilling. Not just in the tone and voice that can make it tantalizing, but the philosophical threads that keep it feeling fresh for years to come. And that’s why so many 19^th-century novelists will never go out of vogue, because life and the world keep recycling our miseries and anxieties and Dostoevsky, Flaubert, Goethe, and Melville will always have something eternal to teach us about our own humanity.

5.     What are your 3 favorite rituals to ignite your creativity?

Walking, reading, riding the subway. I do all three a lot!

6.     What did you wake up loving today?

Me desperté amando la primavera, darling. And life.

Odilia's Metropolitan Diaries by Odilia Rivera-Santos

Odilia Rivera-Santos

http://editorialtrance.com

I sit in Starbucks, watching myself disappear into myself because being public in public is exposure. I just saw Annie Leibowitz and told her I love her work. She looked startled and said "Oh, yeah. Thank you."
It must be odd to have your life out in the world like a balloon at the beach bouncing from light tap to light tap -- kept aloft by strangers. I enjoyed a morning of being the center of attention at one of those impromptu presentations one ends up doing in this cozy city of ours. I sat down, picked up the New York Times Magazine from last weekend, and allowed the magazine to lie open with big sharply-photographed faces with small print underneath. The clean unmade up faces with one of the men sporting a chipped tooth was stunning because you don't see imperfect teeth in the media anymore.
I would love to speak to Annie Leibowitz and call her Annie and it also doesn't matter. Perhaps, that will be the complete scope of our engagement on this plane -- one giving a compliment and the other receiving and back into the respective work/life spaces without exchanging another word.


My mind meandered over to anxiety. I was watching the behavior of anxiety at Starbucks -- what I perceived as anxiety, not the predictable hiccups of an overly-caffeinated New Yorker with requisite over-work and under-sleep.
Anxiety doesn't make people more efficient, or run faster, or more creative, or live longer or better lovers, but it does produce really good internal meds. An adrenalized state is all the rage for those who live a clean lifestyle of just work and more work.
Today, I was on an Artist Date, which was simple: sitting in the sun at a coffee shop in the West Village, attentive and full of a desire to sketch moments without judgment.
Does appreciation of the greatness life has to offer require comparison with the shittiest life has to offer?
Are a Writer and Photographer, when conjoined in coitus maximus, seeking the missing part of themselves? Articulating with words what the other articulates with visual imagery. I narrowly avert a long boring conversation with a woman who'd like to clamber up into my uterus and be reborn my child. What horrible imagery, Odilia!
You're terrible, Muriel.


Australian film is so beautiful -- why does it strike me as so perfect?
Australian films are so dramatic, full of events and the personalities are almost too idiosyncratic and interlaced in each other's Koolaid -- all the ingredients for an overdone drama, but the writing makes it authentic. I would love to make a film about Puerto Ricans who relocate to Australia, with an Australian director.
Scenes from The Year My Voice Broke and Flirting drift past, as the eighty-five-year-old man starts quizzing me on film.


Marty was a great movie! Remember the scene when he says no woman would want him ... cause he's fat and I forgot what else?
Yes. That was a good movie.
He doesn't think anyone will want him . . . But then, he meets a girl!
Ernest Borgnine, right?
Yeah. That's pretty good.




The old man had a lot of newspapers, like one of those New Yorkers who's consistently afraid of not catching up with the multitude of information and does anyone ever really finish reading about the last war before a new one breaks out?
Having an opinion is very important in the city, but having an informed opinion is an obsession.
A gay man with a beautifully groomed beard makes eye contact with me
Honey, you have something in your hair.
He reaches over and picks some sweater lint out of my hair and adds "I can't help myself."






People talk to me when I don't put the buds in my ear. I am on-duty to listen and talk and mull it over with people who seek company in their solitude in crowded spaces.




And when the old man asks what movie is good, I suggest This is the End
Did it win Oscars?
Probably not.




Buy my book here: Love When You Say Love

Artist Interviews: Jay Rodriguez, musician/composer

 

I met Jay Rodriguez at a rehearsal for a performance at Symphony Space with Arturo O'Farrill and the AfroLatin Jazz Orchestra, Tato Laviera, Bill Ware and a gaggle of very talented poets and performers.

 1. What was the first musical instrument you wanted to play and why?

The recorder..because everyone else had one in Kindergarten and my parents did not want to get me one.We had just immigrated from Barranquilla. I guess it was not so important in their respective minds at the time.I always did love singing and dancing.We had parties many a weekend and dancing was obligatory.

2. What gig convinced you of your viability as an artist?

I had been studying under Tito D Rivera...and after a lesson.. Paquito D Rivera took me with him to sit in at Mikell's back in the day.I was 14 .Slide Hampton hung with me and drove me home after the hit.I played, MOMENTS NOTICE, a blues ?, and EL DIA QUE ME QUIERAS.I was never going to be the same..I also remember getting to playing Lead alto with Victor Venegas,Candido and Marco Rizo for a big band..around that time.and in 8 th grade I remember scoring the gig with Vicente Pacheco (singer with Wilfredo Vargas ).I was on call with Milly Jocelyn and the merengue scene..i would go from gigs to my performing Arts on 46th many a night..ha...

3. . What has been the most surprising aspect of your trajectory as a musician?

I must say.a few... co founding the Groove Collective back in the early 90's (growing up within that ensemble as musicians and as people )-we were in our early 20's,working with ,Gil Evans,Prince/briefly-Miles ,playing and 

recording with Ray Barretto.

4. Who would be in your dream band? (Musicians dead and alive)

Dream band... Kenny Kirkland,Elvin Jones,Jimmy Garrison,Jaco,George Duke,Trane and Miles,Lester Young,Coleman Hawkins..Bird...and some mo..( Bruce Lee, Batman,the Dali Lama..ha.. ) just incase .all of us just playing one big fat universal note ..

The truth is I feel sometimes that I am already living a dream..so I don't usually dream much..I am constantly inspired though...

 5. What country would you like to live in for one year and why?

Either India- Because i love the music..and have studied Bansuri..and Indian theory ...and Harmony within the line...exquisite...!

or Colombia - because i am from there ,yet I did not grow up there.and could perhaps make a difference within myself.....I figure it would help me understand those things and tendencies within myself...I have been feeling that way every since my fathers passing 3 years ago..I brought his ashes to la Laguna de Luruaco in Barranquilla..where he played as a child..very moving...in my minds eye ..i heard drums in the distance..as I held my little boy Nile in my arms...and spread his ashes onto the lagoon.

6. What is your favorite music to nap to?

I can't sleep to music...it makes me think too much...when i was younger I fell asleep to Alejandro Duran, La Cumbia Soledena,the Fania All Stars, The Ramones,Bob Marley,Stravinsky.. Bach...The Beatles,Stevie Wonder,Marvin Gaye..Ascension,Giant Steps, Billy Holiday, Bird..WBGO...ha..

 I guess If i have to choose it must be BACH..! Nothing is clearer and all encompassing....Bach....sleep Bach....it brings order all....in my mind and heart..

 Now I need..what I like to call Sound Space...not because I don't want to hear music or anything..but because I have enough sounds and things in my mind's ear.... Silence within is truly Golden...

Art is my Homeboy by Odilia Rivera-Santos

I was born in Arecibo, Puerto Rico and moved with my family to the South Bronx at age six. To learn English, I began to keep a journal in which I recorded details about the neighborhood, snippets about books and film. After I mastered the English language, I wrote reviews of books and films as well as recording everyday life. Since elementary school, my education has been firmly rooted in the liberal arts; music, literature, visual art, and film have been a constant in my life.

I received a BA in Comparative Literature and Creative Writing from Smith College, studied geology, sociology and literature at Vassar College, creative writing, screenplay writing, nutrition, exercise physiology and literature and philosophy of the Baroque period in Spain at CUNY, educational psychology at Touro, holistic studies at The New York Open Center and The Swedish Massage Institute, and taught many subjects as an college adjunct. I am a nerd.

I did direct service as a teacher, job readiness counselor, liaison between social workers and clients on public assistance, as a health advocate, teaching health literacy and nutrition classes, and as an advocate/teacher for undocumented immigrants. I also worked in a homeless shelter for recently-released male prisoners. The experience of making a contribution to New York City, a place that has given me so much, was both spiritually and artistically fulfilling.
I consider the aforementioned work my MFA in writing.


At present, I am a freelance writer/editor/translator/Wellness Coach/Nutritional Counselor/Singer/Film Producer/Social Media Management Specialist and I love my work. There is nothing I'd rather be doing. Do what you love and the movie will follow

Art is my homeboy.

I chose to work with Eddy Duran because he is a very talented, determined writer and Pale Blue Light is a show with tremendous potential -- it highlights human relationships within the context of our beautiful frenetic city and Hip Hop culture, the subculture which dominates culture around the world.

All we need is your participation. Please keep art alive, actors, writers, set designers, those people who run around with kidnapper's tape, directors and producers doing what they do well.

Please donate to the greatest cause there is: ART. Pale Blue Light, a new series about the Hip Hop music industry, NYC, culture, and the life of a family.

WATCH PALE BLUE LIGHT: http://www.latinorebels.com/2012/11/30/pale-blue-light-promises-to-be-hip-hops-next-stop/
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