Love, Your Artsy Girl

"Christian" graphite on paper by Cristina Querrer I t could have been you, as you always said. Be happy , you'd say, as you gallop across the waves in your toy boat. I could have drawn your form while you were sleeping, keep you immortal. There are no pictures of us to forget or adore, only Neptune now knows the truth of you. & he will one day spring from the sea after sundry sailors & foul fishermen who scrape the sea floor with careless anchors. Each day I sketch the shouts and screams of your sirens across your Pacific sunsets. Immortal only are the waters you rode on for the nets you cast, the bounty you caught never belonged to you. You must pay it back to the gods & those inland victims of yours at every port.

"My Archipelago" mixed media series by Cristina Querrer As if it's not enough to watch the island go under or watch myself float away. It's still there like some ancient ruin left by a mighty chief. I know what it may feel like to go back to a time. People don't look or act the same: just some scattered tribe speaking an old language, broken and poor by today's standard. It's not enough to watch myself go under hopping from isle to isle in search of the sailor, some ancient mariner who always had a heart of a stray animal ready to roll out his loot to impress the King as he raped & plundered the rest for his safekeeping. This is the same history of every remote paradise. The people are left wanting, waiting for the next ship & at the same time waiting for the white man to leave their island forever.

"Pohnpei Harbor" photo by Cristina Querrer I will come back to you without men who seek your women & waters. I will not come back to teach but to talk & sing with you by your rivers & waterfalls, take each climbing curve on your mountainside as meditation. I will come back on my own terms to know the real you — not as scientist, anthropologist, exploiting ex-pat, parish priest, or trans-continental company you're used to, but as mother & artist with Pohnpei poems I left behind.

  "Incantations by Twilight"  graphite on paper by Cristina Querrer It is not reliable—                     So neither Are all the times We depended On space and time To pin our meanings Inside milk cartons They go adrift And sink down And what rises and stay Are radioactive Dust particles, ingested In disbelief Like a tsunami Or typhoon victim Shock becomes the norm As deaf-mutes We gave up signing What is language But sketchy sign-stealing This is the result: I see you At the corner of my eye A motion A dark shadow In fits of bad dreams With no clarity As for telepathy? Stop answering—decoding— Speak through Phosphene air Halt all motor imageries More than hands, feet Once touched Space widens At its center Continents divide Further Emit now Or—else— Eternal memory

Fashion design has been my first love way before I knew about Fine Art.  I am a conceptual thinker.   If there is an opportunity to design something, I'm there!

If you've lived long enough, you might have experienced being emotionally frozen, stagnant, stuck.  Madonna expresses this state of being so eloquently and the need to break free in order to love and be loved in this creative and thought-provoking music video with great cinematography. This was Madonna's deep, introspective period, I believe. When I first saw "Losing My Religion" by R.E.M., I just finished reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez's "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings" and I read that somewhere R.E.M.  took the scene from the story in their iconic video.

Just don't mix! Frida Kahlo and Vladimir Mayakovsky

A starving artist is such an anomaly.  There's many of us out there.  Some of us are able to maintain productivity regardless and continually be inspired regardless.  While others (like me) are waiting for art to happen -- and it hardly happens on a shoe string budget and the energy to produce anything because of stressing over paying the bills.  Those big canvases and art supplies aren't going to materialize itself, you know.   So, when I think about art and the elite class, those who actually buy art and sometimes appreciate it, I often fantasize running in those circles.  How would it be for once be appreciated? Sure I've exhibited in small venues, and I am grateful for it; however, that's small time.  Many came to appreciate it but hardly bought a thing.   It's also nice to have that emotional support, that everyday cheerleader in your life that supports what you do but sometimes what's needed most is the patron of your art. ...

I have for so long neglected my writing and artistic pursuits, and lately, I have this vision of starting a new book.  Don't know what the premise will be, but I definitely feel it brewing. This is a good sign.  I just have to follow all the good tips on how to kick-start creativity and get back to a creative lifestyle.  I have been concentrating on how to get my foot in the door at the college institution full-time so that I can have stability, but I now realize that the moment is NOW.  Like now is a better time than any to continue traveling.   Why wait until retirement? I want to go to Europe, an area I have not visited yet.  I will also start saving for my high school reunion trip to Costa Rica in 2015.  I always believed in order to experience a place, you actually have to live there, but there's also times where just being there can just be as rewarding. As I am nearing 50, I see how important it is to check off those things on ...

I have continually grieve over these losses.   One Art by Elizabeth Bishop The art of losing isn’t hard to master; so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster. Lose something every day. Accept the fluster of lost door keys, the hour badly spent. The art of losing isn’t hard to master. Then practice losing farther, losing faster: places, and names, and where it was you meant to travel. None of these will bring disaster. I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or next-to-last, of three loved houses went. The art of losing isn’t hard to master. I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster, some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent. I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster. —Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident the art of losing’s not too hard to master though it may look like ( Write  it!) like disaster.

First day of middle school!

Two years have passed since my last post.  My youngest daughter, who is now 11, have embarked on an adventure abroad to a tranquil and remote speck of an island in the middle of the Pacific where I taught English Composition, Speech Communication, Advanced Reading, and Introduction to Art for the whole year of 2013.  It was a sobering experience to come back, leaving my significant other behind to pursue his own dreams. http://www.kpress.info/index.php/site-map/613-com-students-create-art-on-a-large-scale-at-pohnpei-library As I adjust to Florida life once again, I embark another semester teaching at Hillsborough Community College and Pasco Hernando State College this fall of 2014, hopefully landing a full-time teaching gig somewhere sometime soon.  But in the meantime, I will be cleansing my mind, body and soul, and enriching other minds...