A visit with an Artista

drawing
Originally uploaded by BillieS.

My friend Meg invited me along with Joseph and Gary to go to Queretaro to meet the artist Margarita Fick. I had seen her marvelous cut paper work here in San Miguel so how could I pass up on an opportunity to meet the artista.

I've taken the liberty to show you a little thumbnail of her amazing work because when I say cut paper you might be thinking about when you were in school and you folded paper and cut a string of paper dolls or some other design. No, no, no, this isn't the same. Maybe the same concept but Margarita is an artist with a vision that she expresses with the scissors as well as other media.

But back to our quest to find Margarita. We piled in Meg's car and off we go to Queretaro. Of course, anytime you go to Queretaro stops at one or more of the big stores is required. Gary and Joseph needed a hose to water the garden....Home Depot. Meg needed a vacuum cleaner....Costco. Fortunately for me, we didn't need anything on this trip but at Home Depot I did scope out ceiling fans again for the new room. The hose and vacuum cleaner along with a few other items filled up the trunk. We decided that before we went to her house we should have comida, so across some parking lots to a shopping center and Sanborns.

Margarita had told Meg that since we were not familiar with Queretaro and Queretaro is a big city with some major highways, it would be a good idea for us to take a cab to her house. Meg had been there once before but not as the driver. So we hailed a cab outside of Sanborns and off we went. We had Margarita's address and phone number and the cab driver said he knew the area and he had a map so he could find the street. Sure enough after one stop for directions, we found the address. We asked him to wait until Margarita came to the door and he said no problem.

No one answered the doorbell but a dog with a strong bark. Mmmm....could we have the wrong address? Was it 25A or 25? So we tried 25. A lovely woman who spoke wonderful english came to the door. She told us that Margarita lived in 25A and that she wasn't home. She said maybe we should call her cell phone. We had her home phone number but not the cell. The nice neighbor didn't have it either. Then Meg remembered that Margarita gave the cell phone number on the message of her answering machine but we didn't have a cell phone to call her from. The neighbor went and got her phone for us to use. After listening to the answering machine several times we finally were able to get the right cell phone number written down. Margarita answered her phone and said she would be back to her house soon. All this time the cab driver had been so kind to wait and help us figure out how to reach Margarita. We thanked him and the neighbor for their kindness and sat down on the curb to talk while we wait for Margarita.

Margarita arrived in a flurry, put the dog into the garden, ushered us into her house and offered us some te helado (ice tea.) Her kitchen and studio are on the first floor and the walls are filled with her colorful paintings and the tables covered with commissioned work in progress or work about to be shipped.

Margarita is a warm, witty woman with a charmingly slight accent when she talked with us in English. She started drawing when she was a child and also worked with her family making the wonderful cut papers that you see fluttering in the wind for fiestas. But as so often happens life takes us to different places and Margarite was in her 40's before she returned to her love of cutting paper and refined it to fine art.

Margarita is a self-taught artist and she explained to us that her inspiration comes from her dreams and also from her prehispanic heritage, from memories of her childhood, funerals and fiestas. I also see a rich overlay of feminine issues especially in the paintings she had hanging in her studio.

Her work is being discovered not just in Mexico but also in the USA. We came to see her work but none of us could leave without buying some of this amazing art. I wanted two pieces but I will have to wait until November before she can make them because she is preparing for several exhibitions. But they'll be worth the wait. You can learn more about Margarita at her website.

This was a wonderful afternoon with a truly amazing, original, creative artist.