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A Different Path According to the Tao Te Ching, "a good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent upon arriving." When people look at me they are convinced that I am Italian, Greek, or even Romanian. Actually, I was born in Caracas, Venezuela of Arab parents, who were both Christian. I attended a strict Catholic school where I was surrounded by cheerful nuns. I thought of myself as Latin American until I was a teenager and realized that hummus and caraotas con arroz (black beans and rice) were not part of the same cultural banquet. I now think of myself as Hispanic, Arab, North American. Tomorrow I may become something else. I view ethnicity as a work-in-progress. I ended up in Boston by a quirk of fate and it is here, in my most recent hometown, that I discovered Islam. I am not Muslim, but through my studies of Moorish architecture I developed a cultural appetite for all things "Islamic." My religious views, however, come from a totally different source. Growing up Catholic, I had a wonderful brush with Christianity and no reason to rebel. But I have always been spiritually greedy, and so the all-inclusiveness of the Tao Te Ching drew me to it because it accommodates all religious paths. Through the Tao, I could more deeply explore the wonders of Islam, particularly the unique aesthetic of Islamic geometric art which has influenced my own notion of abstraction. Much of my work as a painter and as a filmmaker is devoted to exposing the stereotypes of Islam in the Western press while communicating its tenets. As a writer, I take courage from the prophet’s own words: "The ink of the scholar is more precious than the blood of the martyr." Profile Dave’s was a small, street-side cafe, and I overheard Jocelyn talking: "The painting I’m doing is just killing me." She looked great, so I said, "Hello." I found that, like myself, Jocelyn is an inveterate "cafeist." She finds inspiration and interchange at cafes, creative differences, and cross-fertilization. Whether she juxtaposes glass and rope in a painting, or documents on video a village where Jews and Arabs invent a way of life together, Jocelyn employs her artist’s sensibility. Now, in 1996, Dave’s has been replaced by a Sushi bar, but Jocelyn and I remain great friends. She is still killing herself over the next project, and she still looks great. —William J. Martin Bio If you like this article, post it on your favorite website or e-mail it to your friends.
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