Families do the Mambo at KMA!

The Katonah Museum of Art was transformed into Westchester's own Carnaval de Cuba on Sunday, albeit with the majority of revelers standing well under four feet tall. 

Cuba Family Day, the most recent installment in the Museum's educational series, brought laughter and a Caribbean drum beat to the sculpture garden; children practiced dance steps or chased one another in circles around the steel trunk of Matthew Geller's Woozy Blossom tree, finding refuge from the early afternoon heat in the sculpture's cool mist.

Katonah resident Desiree Sanchez Meineck, a former member of the corps de ballet at the Metropolitan Opera, led children (including two of her own), parents, and even a few limber grandparents, in a salsa lesson.  Those favoring the air-conditioning to the cha-cha-cha were invited to paint with watercolors or construct maracas out of paper plates, dried peas, and oil pastels in the Museum's Learning Center.

Another of the day's highlights was a reading by Edel Rodriguez, illustrator of Mama does the Mambo and Oye, Celia! A Song for Celia Cruz, among many other children's titles, that celebrate Cuban culture. 

Rodriguez, previously an art director at TIME Magazine and freelance illustrator for The New Yorker, Rolling Stone and numerous other notable publications, revealed insight into his creative process to an atrium packed with attentive guests.  He shared memories of the music and games that filled his childhood in Havana.

The reading was followed by a booksigning and lessons on drawing Sergio the penguin, the enthusiastic, if athletically challenged, star of Sergio Saves the Game!

Rodriguez's illustrations, the originals of which are on display in the Learning Center through September 19th, are colorful, emotional portraits of family, festivities, and his homeland. 

To include his own family more in his work, Rodriguez asked his father take a series of photographs in the streets of Cuba, which were then used as inspiration for the illustrations in Mama does the Mambo.

In Oye, Celia! author Katie Sciurba writes,

       You tell about your home—

       The land you left behind,

       The people you will always love,

       The country you will never forget…

This passage poignantly captures the theme of the surrounding exhibits—art as a vehicle for remembrance and a catalyst for new beginnings.  Rodriguez and the other featured artists skillfully cast awareness on Cuba's complex political history, while also bringing a celebration of the beauty and vibrancy of their culture to new generations.

"I travel and read my books to children about a dozen times a year," Rodriguez said after the booksigning. 

"I do it because this happens," he reflected, gesturing to the families of smiling faces and shuffling feet dancing together in the garden, "This is community."

Edel Rodriguez's work and the Cuban Avant-Garde exhibit will be on display through September 19, 2010.  For more information on Family Day events, visit the Katonah Museum's website.