Featured Culturalist@
Tony Ortega, Denver, USA

Recipient of the Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts in 1999 in Colorado, Tony Ortega is a painter whose lifelong project is to contribute to a better understanding of cultural diversity by addressing the culture, history and experiences of Chicanos through his art. His artwork has been exhibited extensively in Denver and throughout the United States, Mexico and internationally.

Click here to see a selection of Tony's paintings

Our dear friend, teacher and director of Ay Ombe Theater, Josefina Baez, has four spaces left for her annual Ay Ombe Theater Retreat which takes place in India this year.

Join her to study the unique methodology she has developed, Performance Autology, which "approaches the creative process from the autobiography of the doer". This technique draws from sources as varied as yoga, calligraphy, world dance, music, tea culture, video arts, and healing sciences among others. Click here to learn more about Josefina and the retreat.

Members of the artist collective Atopos, based in Italy, recently returned from the Biennial Festival of Young Artists from the Mediterranean in Skopje, Macedonia. They documented their trip to the festival, with detours and stops across the Balkans in Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and several other places. In this series of humorous video vignettes for each country, they meet other artists and interview people on the streets about their culture and their relationship with the rest of the Balkans and with Europe. Click here to watch Atopos in Romania. 

For their next video trip, Atopos plan to travel from the Philippines to Europe in a Jeepney! If you want to be part of this madcap adventure, get in touch with Fran of Atopos.