No one really knows too much about Carlotta Bailadora. Rumour has it that she was a member of the famed Palladium Dancers at the apex of the Latin Craze, the 1950's. It is said that "El Rey de Timbales", himself, the late Tito Puente, gave her the stage name that she proudly uses to this day. She boasts to have won three consecutive titles for "The Shapliest Legs" at the Latin Quarter Nite Club from 1958 through 1960. Even more tragic, then, was the loss of her right pinkie toe in a mambo mishap that fateful eve of the Battle of the Bands--the legendary "Tito, Tito, and Machito Rumble of the Rumberos" at La Conga Internacional Discoteca in August of 1962. Her art, she says, is born of frustration and longing for her preferred art, her dance, gone forever. She hopes to convey through her posters the excitement of life in an era defined by smoldering, syncopated , son montunos and scintillating swing music.
Carlotta's giclees are a luminous reflection of the dancer's heartbeat made visible. Instinctive with rhythm and sensuality, she brings to her art of music and nostalgia a style as vivid and pulsating as the music that is the inspiration. Enter her nocturnal world, where the Big Bands still rule...SWANGO ART...
The Process--The images are initially drawn in oil pastels and inks, next they are scanned into the computer and manipulated within a software program to add the graphics. Then each poster is printed one at a time, on a giclee printer. All the work is done by Carlotta in her home studio, in s/n Limited Editions of 50 on Hahnemuhle Photo Rag.
