<![CDATA[SALINA ALMANZAR - Blog!]]>Fri, 13 Mar 2026 13:18:34 -0700Weebly<![CDATA[Weeeee're Back...Kind of...]]>Fri, 13 Mar 2026 19:12:45 GMThttps://www.salinaalmanzarart.com/blog/weeeeere-backkind-ofHello friends!
In 2024 I planned to make more blog posts and be more active in my personal practice. I suppose part of that became a reality in a way! Shortly after my last post, I was greeted with the most exciting news: I was pregnant! 9 long months with the biggest belly and most heartburn ever, I welcomed my little dude whom shall forever be Mr. Baby to the public. We share a birthday and a face (he looks shockingly exactly like little me) and now we also share every meal and nap. Needless to say, I spent 2025 very pregnant and then very tired from labor and raising Mr. Baby. We're almost at a year now and I cannot be happier (or sleepier).

10ish months in and I'm reflecting on what creativity looks like these days. Last year most of it was focused on nesting: I painted all of Mr. Baby's baby shower decorations, I painted a mural in Mr. Baby's room (both Eric Carle's Very Hungry Caterpillar themed), I showed a very vulnerable painting about my first pregnancy loss, I have my first playful felt sculpture on view as part of Lancaster Art Network's Arcana exhibit at Zoetropolis! (go check it out!), and I tried (and kind of failed) to participate in Inktober during some long sleepless nights. It's been good to keep the creative juices-maybe not flowing, trickling? But as Mr. Baby becomes more of a total person with a personality and interests, I'm excited to include him in my making AND figure out what my new normal is for making. I think some of it is also the recent couple of warm days reawakening my desire to be less of a hermit. 

Stage one of my creative thaw will be blogging again! I like sharing my thought processes and am not always up for the short form ways social media enforces so I think this space will be active again. Stage one and a half will also be more social posts that look more like a digital sketchbook of what I'm inspired by lately. I find that I don't share that enough and while my hands aren't always drawing, painting, or sculpting, I am always saving inspiration and I like when other creatives share those things so I'd like to give that a try. I miss old-Tumblr and Pinterest for this reason! BUT I think I can make it happen here and on IG in some way. 

Somethings I'm taking away from what I've learned in my "Year of No" and in my "Year of Gestation" is moving slow, being playful. and just starting however imperfectly. I share this so you all hold me accountable and help me embrace my silly more than ever! No pics to share this go around, but in the spirit of sharing what inspires me these days here is my parting Funspiration Station list: 

FUNSPIRATION STATION
This week I am inspired by: 
]]><![CDATA[Meditations on Cultura]]>Tue, 08 Oct 2024 23:39:35 GMThttps://www.salinaalmanzarart.com/blog/meditations-on-culturaIn honor of Latino Heritage Month I'm sharing a series of poems I wrote back in 2019 thinking about my family, my heritage, and identity. I've been writing and rewriting these over the past 5-10 years now and I like to revisit them to see what has changed, what has stayed the same, and what phrases or lines are still echoing in my head all this time later: 

I 
Imagine this
Arms stretched
Legs too
Holding on
To homes I've never met
The strain
As these islands drift ever further
Pulling muscle from bone from soul

II
The first poem I ever wrote about home
Was about my grandma
I wrote: 
"CAFE! Grandma screamed so that we all knew it was ready" 
Something about the smell
Something about grown-ups laughing
While I sat and observed
I read it out loud
And the love drunk smiles of my titi's and tio's 
Told me it was magic
I don't want to leave this memory

III
Ay vece que me siento tan sola 
Sin historia
Sin cultura
Sin significado
Como hay un cuento que yo nunca sabré
Como hay tan grande una historia
qu me va a romper mi espalda

IV
I imagine you
Blue suitcase in hand
Standing at the bottom of the ramp
Looking up at nineteen floors of bring and glass and steel
Sometimes smiling
Sometimes teeth clenched against the wind you didn't predict
Sometimes crying silent tears
And I wonder if you knew 
What was coming? 

V
In the end 
All I have
Are lazos de sangre
And that's enough

VI
In the end
All I have
Are lazos de sangre
And that's too much

VII
It will take a lifetime 
To find the intersections
The carefully placed knots
The twists
The interlocking 
The weaving
The unraveling
Of hilo and veins and blood
That make up
Lazos de sangre

VIII
If we are measuring
I am
One quarter Dominican
Three quarters Puerto Rican 
If we are measuring
I am American
(though this is a technicality
an imposition)
If we are measuring
I am the third generation to be born
In the United States
If we are measuring I am 
Of Spain
And Portugal
And Taino
And Cameroon
And France
And Ghana
And Mali
And Italy
And Andean
And Benin
And Ireland
And Senegal
And Sweden
And Northern Africa
If we are measuring I am 
the daughter of Omar Almanzar and Maritza Santos
Of Atabey and la Virgencitya
Of Lugos' and Cruz's and Montilla's and Rivera's
And names lost to the bottom of the ocean
And names lost to the stars
And names only love can unravel
And I am one hundred percent
Salina Mayloni Almanzar

Meditations for Aurea
I
How much have lost
Crossing el charco? 
And how much still
Is lost
Waiting at the bottom
Of the ocean
For one of us to go back
And fetch it
I am curious what the implications are
I am curious if
I can 
Handle it
Has my body evolved so much so that my fingers
Can't recognize
The feeling of a familiar
Tongue
Stone
Home

II
What does it mean to read myself into you? 
What does it mean that I only know you through the words past|passed down to me
Through the cloth
of my mother
of my father
of my father's mother
of my father's father
I remember most clearly your voice
The way you would seem to sing
When you saw us
Like music was the only way
That you could make me understand
Love
Cariño

III
I want to feel the way your voice sounded when you saw me
I want to feel the gentle brush of your fingertips on my face again
The way you held me like nothing else mattered
I wonder if you predicted this? 
If the hours of planning to trade
One island for another
To cross el charco
To settle in where everything is cold and gray and hard
If you knew all along
That someday 
Someone would pull on an hilo
And reveal the lace that is our 
Lazos de Sangre

IV
I made this so that 
It was worth it
So that the things that were shed
To hide a little bit better
Were lost for a reason
I always imagined that behind your closet door
The one you would disappear behind
To fetch treasures to 
Tuck in my hand as mom and dad guided us out one last itme
I imagined that all of your secrets hid there
That maybe you're still there
Waiting for me to come back
That the last treasure you will tuck in my hand
Will make it all make sense

V
When we look back will we be satisfied
With how we honored you? 
In the end everyday was Christmas for you
Everyday was an excuse to listen to music
To dance
To sing along
Even if you didn't know the words
Or maybe you did
I worry we discounted your beautiful mind
To make it easier
To see you transform
To see your cocoon harden before you burst free from this life

VI
In the end all I have are Lazos de Sangre
Y nada mas
For five years
I have said these words over and over
It has transformed from a lamentation 
To a hymn
Y nada mas

VII
La lengua de mi mami senti
Como 
Marbles 
In my mouth
Smooth 
Round
And so ready to choke me
I want so badly to replay every memory where you sang to me and
Understand
Translate 
Something

VIII
What happens, then
When layers 
Of mistranslation
Misunderstanding
Missed opportunities
Missing you
Distort who we are
Who I am
Who I have built myself to be
What happens, then 
When a diaspora
Re-places
Meaning
Reimagines where we are from
Meaning
Comes back together
Meaning
Rematriates
What happens, though
If we can't 

IX
There is a story I remember
Of Tainos drowning
A colonizer
To prove that he wasn't a god
I constantly wonder if I am drowning myself
In the same way? ]]><![CDATA[Play as a Part of Studio Practice]]>Tue, 24 Sep 2024 20:39:14 GMThttps://www.salinaalmanzarart.com/blog/play-as-a-part-of-studio-practiceI've been calling this year my year of no. Meaning, I have said no or been forced to say no to opportunities due to health issues, prioritizing mental health or just simply finally feeling comfortable to opt out and reclaim my time. Since I graduated college, I've held multiple jobs and gigs and once was very proud of myself for always being busy. I come from a family of overachievers and hard workers so it is more familiar to me to be busy and work all the time than it is to have leisure. In my year of no, I've rediscovered play in a way that I haven't in a very long time. My day-job/bread-and-butter is being the Assistant Director of the Center for Creative Exploration at PCA&D and I am happy that a good portion of my job is encouraging people to tap into their creative side. Often this means there is space for play and modeling play for creatives and the creatively curious! Just this past Friday, I spent my day working from It's Modern Art as part of the Peep Show with Executive Director of Center for Creative Exploration and long-time creative collaborator Natalie Lascek. We co-created a space that encouraged play as a vehicle to talk about the importance of funding the arts and advocating for the arts. 
Natalie crafted a giant mouth that was our creativity creature and I created a zine about arts advocacy. We spent the day wearing satin red gloves and rewarding participants with knowledge (our zine) and a little alien friend. The whimsy of the project was both in the performance and in witnessing people stop and agree to be part of our weird experiment. Like most things I find myself doing in the play-o-sphere, adults said they would come back when they had time whereas kids could stop and jump right in. In my year of no, I am trying to be like the kids and jump right in. 
Picture
In that spirit, I wanted to share some un-precious water color sketches I made. I say un-precious because often I overthink my work, wanting every bit to be meaningful and precise. Instead, most of these watercolor sketches were more visceral in the sense that I had a thought or sometimes half a thought and went for it. Many of these were made as I was recovering from my miscarriage and just needed to do something with my hands. 
Picture
This year of no has also been part of a larger cycle of me reclaiming my childhood self. I've been doing more things that young me would want to do including embracing angst, obsessing over owls, and bringing bright and bold colors back into my work. My murals are generally colorful and bright, but my personal work wasn't for a while. 
Picture
What I've learned in my journey through play is the following: 
  • Embracing play is embracing ambiguity
  • Embracing play and ambiguity leaks into areas of my life where I can afford to be more loose and less anxious about outcomes and control and that is good for me
  • Embracing play means I get to try new mediums I otherwise wouldn't try AND I get to experiment with how mediums interact
  • Embracing play also means I can do other creative things like start line dancing! watch more cartoons! play video games! literally play with my nieces! These acts have not only brought more joy into my life, but they've reignited my desire to make in a whole new way
  • Embracing play also means I get to take myself less seriously. As an enneagram Type 1, oldest daughter with generalize anxiety disorder, I know I need to take myself less seriously lol
  • Embracing play has allowed me to connect with others and be more forgiving. Not everything needs to be perfect
  • Embracing play has also allowed me to advocate for myself and my time. Saying not thanks and holding that boundary to keep my play-time is imperative
Picture
Take this as your sign to get a little weird! Start drawing even if you don't know what you're going to make! Find a felting kit and get stabbing! Play with paint just because it feels good gliding on paper! Learn a dance on YouTube! Schedule a play date with a friend! Go out and play!
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