My Tango Diaries

Hello Patrons, Clients and Friends, Thank you once again for your patience and kind words, here and on the socials. It's been a hard year, and a particularly awful month. For those who don't follow me on the social media sites, I lost my mom, her mom (my grandmother) and my aunt (my mom's sister) in the span of 6 months. One year ago, on my birthday, I lost my birth mother. I've lost two of my pets who were elderly, and while that wasn't unexpected, it was still awful. A truly terrible year. I only share all of this because I want to take the time here, on the platforms for the patrons of my art, to say thank you from the bottom of my heart. We are all separated, isolated from loved ones, scared and anxious for ourselves, our families and friends, our jobs. It's a terrible time for so many. And yet it's been my art friends, clients and patrons reaching out to me most and I'm so grateful. Art has been all that gets me out of bed some days. Because I know ...

      I've been sick for a few weeks (because the heat makes MS much worse) and feeling sorry for myself, if I'm completely honest. I was hating this year. Hating feeling sick. Thinking how could this year get any worse? It already seems almost biblical - murder hornets, locusts, COVID19, quarantine. Every year I think it can't get any worse than last year. I'm going to stop saying that shit. I lost my mom on Monday. My mom who taught me the high art of fan-girling with subscriptions to Fangoria and Creep Show. Who watched every scifi and horror movie, no matter how terrible (looking at you "Night of the Lepus" https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0069005/ ) She, of the photographic memory of anything she'd ever read - not to mention movie lines, song lyrics. We could have entire, deeply philosophical conversations using nothing but movie dialogue. She had been sick for years with a blood clot near her heart that could neither be moved nor shrank with meds. It j...

Now that I've reached the 150 designs mark (can you believe it?!) on RedBubble.com , I decided to spread out to other platforms that have different products and styles to put designs on. Society6 and Zazzle are my 2 new storefronts - though they are very limited at the moment. I also added this design, "Backwards and in High Heels", referring to Ginger Rogers doing everything that Fred Astaire did, but "backwards, and in high heels" dance quote. Also, thanks to the feedback I received from clients and connections, I've redone several of the Word Art designs to be bolder and easier to read on smaller screens (and at a distance.) Many of the designs used fonts that were to narrow or fine to show up well, so they've been reworked and resubmitted with your recommended changes. Thank you Sara, Tim and Erik for all the feedback!

Finally a trend I'm truly excited about! The return of the '20s next January! I love Art Deco, (though Art Nouveau will always be my first love.) My great-grandmother, who I was lucky to have until I was twenty, was a flapper and told me about the slang, the attitude - and the dancing! So in honor of all that I learned from her, and the return of the "Roaring 20's", I've created a new set of designs on RedBubble . Flapper Slang, Speakeasy sign, Tango sign in Art Deco design, and La Guardia Nueva! I'm still looking at the product and design offerings with a tanguera's eye though - milonga themed decor, clothes that work for dancing, and of course a celebration of 1920's tango - La Guardia Nueva! I'll have more designs coming over the next week - so keep checking if the Jazz Age and Art Deco are 'the bees knees' for you too! 

A few people have asked me how I suddenly got up the ambition to get my art store going and how I've been so productive. It's really down to one book: The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles, by Steven Pressfield. No fewer than 8 people recommended that book to me, probably more but I don't remember. I think I knew it would be a kick in the ass. I wasn't sure I was ready for it. It took me ages to get around to it. Now I'm the one recommending it to every writer and creative who will listen to me (who hasn't already read it.) It's a fast read. Pressfield doesn't waste your time, doesn't insult your intelligence and doesn't pull punches. It's what you need to read to get off your ass and do the work (to borrow the title of another one of his books.) I finished it in a few days and then started over and read it again. How you think of your work, and how you think of yourself doing that work...

At the request of another dancer, I finally created the "Things Tango Teachers Say" Word Art on RedBubble.com .  Here's the graphic - below, the explanation. Some of this is tongue-in-cheek and highlights the conflicting instruction we get as Argentine Tango students. But some of it, particularly "Just walk naturally" , are particularly frustrating bits of advice. I often heard "Just walk naturally," directed at followers , from male instructors (to both male and female students.)  The more I heard it, the more irritated I got. I don't know how much time instructors spend their day walking backwards - particularly in 3-4" high heels, but there's nothing natural about it. We can learn to do it - and do it very well, but we're not structurally built to spend our time doing it. It's not at all natural - in heels or otherwise. */Begin rant In all honesty, and speaking as a personal trainer for dancers, it's just lazy...

People who know me in tango know that at one time I designed custom tango shoes for clients. I worked with MrTangoshoes.com shoes out of Colombia to make shoes that matched clothes, shoes for hard to fit feet, custom sizing, custom materials - the works. I loved designing for clients - but I hated having an inventory to carry around to milongas and practicas to sell enough volume to keep afloat. In the end, I gave up the business to concentrate on my main (non-tango) job and personal training. As I've written in the past few posts, I'm designing again - this time accessories instead of shoes. I take commissions for custom work as I'm able and keep a steady supply of new designs hitting my RedBubble virtual shelves. It's the best of both worlds - I get to design to my heart's content, but not have to worry about an inventory to lug around. Lately though, I've really, really been missing the shoes. So I decided to do some shoe-themed designed to make myself ...