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We got a preview of the exhibit earlier today and spoke to the artists as well as the exhibit's curator:

Elizabeth Calzado, CURATOR
"It was a challenge in some way at first. To think about how two techniques as different as they are could be brought together in a smooth way. And I think what helped is that they are both figurative, most of them, Pilar also has an abstract element but all her practice goes around form and investigating form and Manuel as you will see, most of them are objects that we are familiar with and his family, he portraits a lot of friends and family, and Pilar the technique about embroidering its a domestic technique and in that sense everything started merging."

"In that sense, I believe, the exhibition helps putting down the image of the consecrate artist like the unreachable figure we've always had and brings them among us as individuals as people that feel that have a family that have a normal life."

Pilar Cordoba, ARTIST
"Well the main subject of the pieces is the body the human body but I also have other pieces, that one are, one is an optical illusion because I like geometric forms so I did this piece of an impossible chain."

"I can see that people here are interested in needlework it's not very common but I have found also very bright and very vivid colors here and people are intrigued with what I do because it's very specific."

"The process there is no machine involved in the needlework. I do it all by hand but there is a computer because I use a software for the cross stitch. I select an image or I draw it and I say OK I want to transfer it to this gridded fabric, so depending on the sized of the fabric and of the square because at the end my work is like pixels so this software helps me create a chart guide for future reference. So i have the chart I print it. That's the only part I do by computer and then I start stitching and everything is by had and it's very, it takes a long time. It's a long process to create each work."

Manuel Mathar, ARTIST
"Well I start drawing like all the children and never stopped since 25 years I am dedicated only to painting."

"The themes is my friends, my family, I am very interested in the people and that's why there is a lot of human presence in my paintings."

"Normally I have a camera and they use a function they take a lot of photographs with a burst.When I saw something they have interesting to me they take a lot of pictures maybe 40 or 50 and after that they use the computer to sow all the photographs and make a little edition of some part of the photograph that would make it interesting and after that they use it to make a painting."

"In Europe normally I think they have some cliches from the painters or artists from Mexico and I think in America, Central America, and South America it's different because the countries share a lot of the same problems and so it's more easy to understand my painting in Latin America, and Belize too well I hope so."

"I would like to see a lot of people here and I would like to talk with the, with my bad English, to Belizean people and I expect to come here tomorrow at 7 o'clock."

The exhibit opens tomorrow night at the Mexican Cultural Institute in Belize City.