VARYA
The residence in Zapopane is magical. It’s sweltering outside, but you don’t feel it at all. There are lots of colors, especially blue, lots of dogs, shoes, and beautiful people.
But it’s great that the artists’ studio is so well-equipped that I can actually get some work done.
I'm really happy here; I just wish I had a little more time.
ROCIO
We left Angoulême with sadness, but the truth is we had a great time and formed a fantastic group of really nice new people. On the last day, we had a Japanese pasta party at my house, coordinated by Chiara, who's Italian, and Sole brought a whole karaoke kit. There were more than twenty of us, and it was so much fun. Then we hit the road: Angoulême-Bilbao-Madrid-Guadalajara! We were a little hesitant about having to go through Bilbao, but in the end, Eli picked us up, and we had a great time visiting the illustration shop, exploring the city center on a Sunday, and trying the best vermouths. Thanks!
Then a plane to Madrid, sleep, travel, twelve hours, and Guadalajara at night. I don't know how it happened, nobody knows, nobody will ever know, but trying to connect to the airport Wi-Fi with my Belgian SIM card disconnected, I accidentally erased all the content on my phone, EVERYTHING! It was chaos, but I'm getting back to normal now. Jet lag on this side of the pond is so cool because for a night owl like me, waking up at 6:30 bursting with energy is awesome, like you've switched personalities.
At the house, we're with Michel, an Italian who speaks Catalan, Guille from Lleida, Andrea from Guanajuato, Hanna from Korea, and Renana from Rio de Janeiro. It's like a small team that shares a house and also a studio at the authors' house, CAZ, which has really great facilities.
We visited the traditional Zapopan market; you can find everything there. There's a section with offal, which Varya runs through to avoid the smell, and then another section with fruits and vegetables that smells like the best fruit—a scent more tropical than concentrated tropical juice: guava.
We tried homemade pulque, a fermented agave drink, and it's incredible. The michelada is overrated; you either have to be born with it or it's really weird to mix tomato juice and beer, haha. Here's a before and after picture.
In any case, they're all about bold flavors here, not afraid of going for it. I've been blown away by the colors, the houses, the cars; I've been painting quite a few gouaches of this area.
The people are very friendly, and it's generally super peaceful to walk around here. Last weekend we went to Rio Caliente; it's intense. The water comes out of the ground like a volcano and literally burns. It was sunny and hot, and the water was very hot in one part and scalding hot in another. I thought there would be a cold part, but no, better to go in winter!
We had coconut water in bags, spicy strawberry candies, spicy shrimp cocktail (or "picoso" as they say here), cheese that a lady sells from a cart, quesadillas, and we tried a little mezcal, luckily without any worms. We were told there might be scorpions, but so far, we haven't seen any!
