Storyteller Adventures
Storytelling is one of our most fundamental communication methods. Who doesn’t love hearing a good story? The fact is, we spend much of our daily lives hearing and telling stories! It’s our way of sharing information and living vicariously through the experiences of others.
During our first half-century, we have been fortunate enough to have some pretty incredible experiences and we fancy sharing our tales. We’ve called this blog, “Storyteller Adventures,” because we wanted to share some of our incidents of travel as well as to document our journey of how Vista Tranquila Publishers came into existence and how it continues. So, what does our blog include and what can you expect to find? For sure, we’ll touch on topics relevant to bilingual life, our travels around the world, the exotic foods we try, and the intriguing people we encounter. We have astonishing adventures every day though, even when we don’t go anywhere. We’ll share our mundane observations and some truly unique encounters.
Vista Tranquila Publishers is our creation but, it’s so much more than a book publishing company. We seek to tell stories that will inspire interest, promote cross-cultural understanding, and be entertaining at the same time. Our basic premise for our business is in favor of creating shared experiences and opposed to the collection of garage sale fodder. We want to make our books and our products come alive. Once you become a part of the story, the books and the handicrafts we sell become part of our shared encounter, a type of trophy you story in your memory. Everything we post on our website will tell a story. We hope you like what we’re doing, and we look forward to reading your comments!
Day at the zoo
The “Guatemala Series” Children’s Puzzles
A part of our mission at Vista Tranquila is to recognize the incredible ethnic diversity and rich cultural traditions of Guatemala. We have a strong commitment to promoting local artists and to developing products using local providers, whenever possible. In July of this year, we launched an open art competition for Guatemalan artists to submit their work. All of the artists were given the same instructions: to create a work of art showing a Guatemalan boy and a girl with one of their grandparents in a typical Guatemalan market scene. We asked them to include fruits, vegetables, flowers, and at least one “street dog”. We did not put any restrictions on the art mediums. We invited artists to submit computerized graphic designs, water colors, oils, colored pencils, crayons, pastels, etc., in color or in black and white. At the time of the competition, we were seeking to expand our network of artists and to stimulate interests in our project. We didn’t yet know that there would be a “Guatemala Market Series” of puzzles.
To our delight, we received many, many submissions from artists all over the country. Despite having the same instructions, the variety of artistic interpretations was impressive. We invited a few of the artists to meet with us to discuss their work, and not surprisingly, there were so many interesting stories to hear and tell! Now that we had identified so many talented Guatemalan artists, we thought about what we could we do to help showcase their work. And that is how we came to the decision to create a children’s puzzle series. We soon learned that there’s a lot that goes into designing a puzzle! First, the only puzzle cutting die in Guatemala is limited to only a dozen pieces. We wanted to create puzzles that were a little more challenging so that children and their parents could share in the fun! The graphics had to be produced in high resolution and we had to send the artwork back to the artist for a few edits in order to ensure vivid colors and sharp contrast lines. Finally, the quality of the puzzle pieces is very important. We insisted on using a high-quality backing for the puzzle and an attractive box in which to store them. Check out our puzzles!
This first printing of the Guatemala Series children’s puzzles includes four art works. Each artist chose to focus on a different part of the country including market day scenes from Livingston, Todos Santos Cuchumatán, Nahualá, and Totonicapán. We’ve written separate blog entries for each one so you can get to know the artist better!
