Happiness is … Art on fire

What is Happiness to you?

That’s the question my friend Sydney Valiente posed on Instagram a few months ago.

She took the responses and turned them into an exhibit, working alongside a young artist named Alexia Rodriguez. They collaborated for months and Alexia crafted a wall full of mixed media art, celebrating the ways that cats brought happiness into her life.

Saturday, I rolled down to the show at Confluencia Creativa Galería with my 2-year-old daughter Greer in tow. We were the first ones to arrive and were immediately prompted to answer the question for ourselves.

My earnest little Greer told Sydney right away that happiness is “taking deep breaths.”

Amen.

We walked into the exhibit, which included a room full of smiley face balloons and fun art on the walls, created by Sydney and Alexia.

I peppered Alexia with questions about her process, walked Greer through a short illustrated story Syndey had created and then was lucky enough to be the first person to purchase a piece of Alexia’s art.

I went back to my life.

Sydney disposed of the wheatpaste .

Monday morning, when I arrived at my neighborhood café, bica, Chef Charlie asked me if I was coming to the bonfire that night.

“What bonfire,” I asked him.

“It’s been on the calendar forever,” he told me. I said if I could get the kids situated by a decent time, I’d try to stop by.

Around 7:30 p.m., I pulled up, and chatted with friends for about a half hour before catching a piece of wheatpasted wood out of the corner of my eye.

There it was, a sea of smiling faces staring back at me, lit up by the flickering glow of flames as my friends charred marshmallows on twigs.

My mind flashed back to the morning prior, when Sydney posted on instagram that she had dumped the remaining art beside a bonfire, ready for someone to send the temporary artwork to its final resting place.

I truly couldn’t believe my eyes. The chefs took the hunking piece of wood and placed it on the flames.

This was always Sydney’s intention for the work. In fact, when I texted her and we completely freaked out about the eery coincidence, Sydney told me that she loves to burn her art.

“It started as a way of not lettting my mom see what I wrote in my journals, but then it developed into something I do to kind of signal an ‘on to the next project’ for me,” she told by my text message on Tuesday morning. “It actually felt weird not being there to burn it, but I didn’t have time when we dumped it so I’m really glad that you were there for that moment. Sounds weird. lol. It just feels better knowing you were part of the process of what that was before it was firewood.”

According to the artwork, Happiness is stomping in a puddle. Happiness is a butterfly. Happiness is Sunshine on your face.

Happiness comes and goes. One second its here, the next second its up in flames. You never know where you might find it next. And when things are really going well, it can feel like happiness is following you around.

Hope this brought a smile to your face.