El Polinesio is a cozy restaurant found in the Habana Libre Tryp, one of the best situated hotels in downtown Havana’s cosmopol...
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Sixty years of artistic life have been crowned with a Latin Grammy and her CD Gracias has been nominated for a 2010 Grammy.
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For Nelson Domínguez, born in Baire,
Sierra Maestra, Santiago de Cuba in 1947, winner of the 2009 National Arts Prize, 2010 au...
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Merlys Fernández,
WOMAN OF STRONG WOOD
By: Pedro Quiroga Jiménez | Photos: José (Tito) Merino
With her rigueur and patience, it takes her four times longer than a cabinetmaker to construct a bed. She sacrificed more for the audacity of wanting to get wood for herself,
and it was long before her talent convinced her prejudiced family. Merlys Fernandez has within herself the Angel of Jiribilla (in Cuba, a sort of patron saint of the impossible for artists). Impatient, challenging and communicative par excellence; she is a staunch enemy of the impossible.
Ever since she graduated - at barely 17 - from the School of Art in her native Holguín (734 kilometres northeast of
the Cuban capital), she knew her professional life would proceed by tangled pathways; first taking on the challenge of pedagogy, and later, painting.
"My work cost me dearly," she asserts. "I began with borrowed tools because at home, my parents were
opposed to what I was doing. 'Imagine, from a painter to a carpenter!' my father said; while my mother reproached
me for my 'mistaken' decision.
What was certain is that I began with that fibrous crust between the bark and the heart of the tree, mostly used to
make fences or for coal. I turned
times longer than a cabinetmaker to construct a bed. She sacrificed more for the audacity of wanting to get wood for herself,
and it was long before her talent convinced her prejudiced family. Merlys Fernandez has within herself the Angel of Jiribilla (in Cuba, a sort of patron saint of the impossible for artists). Impatient, challenging and communicative par excellence; she is a staunch enemy of the impossible.
painting. 
