I remarked here recently that the artists who come to Granada to work with me usually limited their activities to printmaking and the obligatory visit to the Alhambra. But after Chicago printmaker Cathy Naro’s visit that has changed. Cathy, with a bit of forethought and a sense of adventure, fitted everything in.
She very cleverly left a couple of days on either end of her two-week workshop, so she had some extra time. Armed with a bus schedule and lots of curiosity, she managed to explore both the city of Granada, 20 minutes down the road, and the mountain village of Güéjar Sierra (Say “Gway-har Sierra, rolling the r’s.), 20 minutes up. She was impressed by the round-the-clock street life in Granada and the beautiful alpine landscapes and the narrow, flower-bedecked streets of Güéjar Sierra. A couple of mornings later we stole a couple of hours and drove down to the Mediterranean shore where we took a long walk along the beach and had breakfast on a seaside terrace.
Early on in her visit Cathy expressed interest in my every-other-day regimen at a nearby health club (mainly for the hot pool and the Turkish bath!) and I invited her to come along. “But you’ll have to get up at 6:00 a.m.·” “No problem, ” was her reply.
She also had extraordinary good luck with the timing of her visit, as it coincided with our village’s annual Cultural Week. This included a bus tour to a world-class flamenco spectacle (Eva Yerbabuena) in the amphitheater of the sumptuous Generalife Gardens on the grounds of the Alhambra. Cathy was the only “extranjera” on the bus but she quickly made friends with our neighbors, delighted to have a new friend from “Chee-ca-go.” They invited her to the theater-in-the-plaza the following night so we all went to see our village’s women’s theater group perform a raucous farce, including trousers falling down and women playing the men’s roles. In all, one didn’t need to know much Spanish in order to enjoy the show.
On her last Saturday in Granada Cathy fitted in a visit to the Granada Science Museum, where she was delighted to find an exhibit of the work of the Dutch printmaker, M.C. Escher, which included the print at left, “Drawing Hands.”
Besides busying herself with her extracurricular activities Cathy got her teeth into solar-plate and liquid-metal printmaking in a serious way, and also improved her drawing and printing techniques. In short, she did it all, including mastering the intricate art of the siesta.
Printmaking Courses in Spain 
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