Colorado Art RanchPhoto: David Peterson
 

 

benjaminDiana Rico

Writer
Taos, NM

www.dianarico.com

Diana Rico is a critically acclaimed author, internationally published arts journalist, editor, curator, and award-winning documentary producer-writer. Her articles on the arts have been published in ARTnews, Elle, Harper’s  Bazaar, GQ, Mother Jones, and many other periodicals. As a Senior Producer-Writer for E! Entertainment Television, she was responsible for E! True Hollywood Stories on such creative icons as John Lennon, Jane Fonda, Richard Pryor, Alfred Hitchcock, and Natalie Wood; her programs have been broadcast in 70 million homes nationally and 140 million internationally. Diana has also worked as the Art & Architecture Writer of the Los Angeles Daily News; the Art Critic of NPR station KCRW-FM in Los Angeles; the Editor-in-Chief of International Documentary magazine; and the literary curator for SOMOS, the leading literary nonprofit in the Southwest. Her highly praised book Kovacsland: A Biography of Ernie Kovacs (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich), about the pioneering 1950s television comedian Ernie Kovacs, landed her interviews on Charlie Rose, Larry King, and Good Morning America.

Diana is currently at work on a novel about the Cuban-American artist Ana Mendieta. She also runs The wordARTist (www.wordARTist.net), offering premium writing, editing, and producing services to artists and arts organizations worldwide. You can learn more about her at www.dianarico.com.

About the DIA Project
FAMILY ROOTS / LAS RAÍCES DE FAMILIA examines these questions: What are the consequences of the geographic breakup of the extended family and of the split (often due to “upward mobility”) from ancestral relationship to the land? How does this split affect the younger generation? What are some possible ways that the resultant wounds might be healed and ancestral land use be returned to a place of respect in contemporary times?

In 2006 I became an accidental ex-patriat when I traveled to Lake Atitlán, Guatemala, intending to work on several documentary films for six weeks. I fell in love with the land and the people and stayed to live for most of a year. During that time I developed a gentle friendship with a twentysomething Kachiquel Mayan guardián, a caretaker of the land. FAMILY ROOTS / LAS RAÍCES DE FAMILIAexamines how my friendship with Santos helped me to reconnect with the spirits of my late grandparents, who had been farmers in Puerto Rico and of whom I had grown up ashamed in the white-collar Anglo suburbs of 1960s southern California. The text and the interwoven photographs deal with the wounds created by the geographic breakup of extended family and the upward class mobility of the younger generations, the healing power of the fecund earth, and how an unexpected intercultural and interracial connection helped me to understand, restore, and honor my own ancestral, land-based roots. 

 



  

33 IDEAS!, an exhibit of art, writing and ideas
March 15-June 15, 2010

Denver International Airport

DIA PostcardThis exhibit showcases visual and literary artists associated with Colorado Art Ranch as presenters, artists in residence, or Nomads at one or more Artposia. The artists were selected because they use their passion, skills, knowledge, and talent to ask questions and react to the world around them. The work, in turn, inspires us to ask questions and view the world from different perspectives.

33 IDEAS! is on display at the Ansbacher Hall: The Art of Colorado, on the walkway between the terminal and A Gates before the security screening. The hall is accessible for everyone’s enjoyment.

For more information contact DIA Art Program at
(303) 342-2521 or visit www.flydenver.com/art

 

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