I am Virginia Diaz. Born and raised in Peru; we are now in Denver, and I've been here since 2005. I found it really easy to stay in Denver because of the mountains. I am an Andean girl and definitely love connecting there. For a little while, I had a job at a welding shop in Evergreen; I loved it. There's a bridge where there's no middle pole, and they left it open so that you can see the whole range. It's kind of like you leave the city behind, and “mountain mode” on. It's womby, warm and, I don't know, you just feel at ease. I don't even know how to describe the feeling that it does. It's just immense, and just feeling really tiny at the same time. So it feels like home. However, even though it feels really good to be here, there's always this calling of going back to Peru, and I'm lucky enough to be able to do that once a year. But there was this one story. And it was the first time I felt this; we were on a hike up in Cusco in the valley, and I started sobbing and sobbing. And I felt like the mountains were reprimanding me for leaving. Oh, it was so intense. It's interesting to feel so at home in one place, and then realize that you're not either from here nor there anymore. I think immigrants deal with a lot of that feeling. It always calls. 

Daily, it's a long walk with my dog in Aurora. If you walk around on Sunday mornings, you smell all the flavors in the world. I went to culinary school in Peru; I use those skills that I picked up those two years every day. So I cook all the time. This morning, I made pumpkin soup, and made some carnitas overnight. I cook a lot of Peruvian, my son loves it. 

I feel like I'm just now realizing, “Oh, I need to learn about myself.” I feel like I'm always giving. I'm a mom, I'm like 100 miles an hour all the time for others. And I'm learning to just slow down and do something for myself. So right now, it's interesting. I'm working on this body of work that is kind of dealing with this grieving transitioning period. Lots of different cultures in Peru buried their dead in these things called fardos, which are wraps of beautiful linens, and then they put them in the soil like they were seeds for the next life. So I'm working on this series of prints where I'm making these black and white, very textured bundles of the last 15 years. I'm doing one per year and just kind of carefully wrapping all that stage in my life up. I also thought about babies; babies are bundles. It’s the most feminine work I've ever felt I made; my mom used that word–she's like, “Oh, this is really feminine.” They were seed pods for another life. 

I heard while I was in the dumps one day–I heard a study that caterpillars carry their memories to their butterfly stage. Caterpillars basically turned into mush. When they're in their cocoon, they're like basically, they're like if you open one up there's just slime in there. And somehow, they figured out that in their butterfly stage, they remember caterpillar memories. I thought that was so cool. And I thought, “I'm going through that right now.” And carrying still the memories that you learn so that you can be better.