Meet Lydia Cruz | Writer & Illustrator

We had the good fortune of connecting with Lydia Cruz and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Lydia, we’d love to hear more about your end-goal, professionally.
If I could choose anyone’s career to use as a kind of roadmap for my own ideal professional evolution, it would be Maira Kalman. The diversity of her work, ranging from books to embroideries to stage productions to installations and the way in which she combines memoir, history, and Questions is truly inspirational. I would love to have the freedom to pursue projects of this variety and of her fascinating specificity (she has a book called Girls Standing on Lawns). Right now, I draw and I write, but I rarely combine the two disciplines. In the future, I hope to find a way to synthesize both mediums in a way that feels natural to what I am interested in doing. It would be great to be paid to do these things.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
Much of my work, and my life, these days is predicated on Waiting. Time, especially post-lockdown, is often a tangle, zipping or trudging by in a way that has always been a confusion for me. When I was in my early twenties and just starting to draw I spent many hours painstakingly sketching out my illustrations, carefully penning them in, slowly erasing the pencil marks. It was an act of intense of prolonged concentration. It was successful, producing compelling work, but it was also exhausting and after a few years I began to avoid drawing, too spent to muster the energy I knew would be required. This is when I began doing blind contours, quick drawing where I look only at the subject and not at the paper while I draw. It was exhilarating, the surprising lines and forms, the immediacy of the finished piece. In those early days I was also studying for a degree in writing and most of the pieces I was writing were long form, written and edited over months. This too began to wear me down. The time, the amount of energy I knew a new project would require. Now, ten years later, I know the precious way I approached how I spent my energy, the overwhelm I felt at overextending, was rooted in a yet to be uncovered chronic illness that I would learn meant I did, in fact, have very finite energy and the consequences of overspending took longer than the average person to recover from. This condition, a genetic connective tissue disorder called Hypermobile Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, took a nosedive during the first lockdown and has completely changed the topography of my days. My mind and body fatigue easily, and I must do my best to protect my joints, one of many things compromised by my condition, while I work. Sometimes this means wearing a neck brace while working on a larger piece hanging on my wall. Often, it means working in small bursts, taking lots of breaks, stopping early because if I stop when it hurts, it’s already too late. In light of this, my work has evolved in the direction of Brevity. I draw things I can finish in one sitting. I write short pieces. But sometimes I will start something and not finish, letting it hang on my studio wall, unsure of what it is or what to do with it. Because I must manage my activity so carefully, I am loathe to throw pieces out, or to redo them. So I will wait, looking at them across the room and, eventually, they will reveal themselves to me. Sometimes it is later that day, once it was six weeks later. My body is the same. I rest, I do my exercises, I wait. And after many months, sometimes I begin to see improvement. I am working on a collection of essays, many of the pieces short, but as the book as a whole has continued to come together over the past two years, I am, intermittently, being given new pieces of moss with which to chink the walls. I am fortunate to be in a situation mostly free of hard deadlines, where I am able to wait, picking up new pieces like lakeshore stones as I make my way slowly down the coast. I don’t have much choice in my approach now, which has its deep frustrations and discouragements, but it is good to remember the beautiful things I have found here and the things waiting for me, as I wait for them, in the future.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
Ooh ok for a weeklong trip. In Greeley, we would definitely have to grab a lunch at Weldwerks and evening drinks at the Speakeasy. I would take them up to Laramie, where I grew up, for a day and eat at Sweet Melissa’s, hangout at Night Heron the used bookstore, walk over to the thrift store of my childhood, Nu 2 U. Another day would include coffee and treats at Bindle Coffee in Fort Collins where I have my residency. Hope down to Loveland for some pinball at The Flipside. And one day in Denver with lunch at the Areyto food truck (my dad is from San Juan and this Puerto Rican food is legit), pizza at Cart Driver for dinner, and drinks at Death and Co.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
Sooo many people, so I’ll just list some names : Tara, Raul, Liam, Jake, Jo Ann, Katherine, Daniel, Jenn, and Andrew, for just a few. You know who you are.

Website: www.lydiacruz.com

Other: https://www.patreon.com/lydiacruz

Image Credits
Seth McClain