Jump!

Sarasota artist Mara Torres, a Puerto Rican transplant from the devastation of Hurricane Maria, and Hoboken poet Danny Shot, a first generation American and child of Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany, chose “resilience” as their theme. 

Mara’s statement: The inspiration came from an image that impacted me, an image of a family walking towards an airplane. Not just a family walking towards an airplane to go to Disney for the first time, but an image that probably documented their last steps HOME. The little girl… her innocence, her happiness, that’s what got to me. I wanted to work on her image, creating transparencies as if her body was leaving her body, the same way her body was  leaving her home. I wanted to create some sort of abstraction, like the abstraction of life I saw in the image. 

Danny’s statement: [Mara and I] spoke about how difficult it is for the adult generation to resettle in a new place, yet how the new life can be filled with possibilities for their offspring. The poem explores the hope, anxiety and sense of wonder parents may feel as they marvel at the innocence of their skipping child.