Art and Life, an inseparable stew
Another profile of Chicago’s ethnic news media
Esfuerzo de Amor
By Angela Evans
Sunlight streams through the windows of café Macondo in Chicago’s Lincoln Square. Beams of light dance across the warm, neutral shades and rich red tones of the walls, and on Spanish language posters. On one wall the shelves are jammed with books that tell about Hispanic culture via music or film or jewelry.
It is fitting that the creator of arteyvidachicago.com should choose this place for an interview.
Amor Montes de Oca is a smiling, spirited woman. She is small with thick, cascading dark hair. She is dressed simply in a black turtleneck, jeans and a plaid scarf tied snugly around her neck. Something about her is subtle, yet knowing.
Oh, and Amor stands up to greet you with a friendly hug upon first meeting.
The labor of her love the past two years has been the Hispanic arts and cultural calendar of events website, aptly called arteyvidachicago.com.
What began as a simple endeavor to offer a comprehensive listing of high-quality events for Chicago’s Hispanic community, has evolved to include: artist galleries, links to various Hispanic organizations, music reviews and the brand new book reviews— with more on the horizon.
Montes de Oca, 38, came from Mexico City a little over 20 years ago and Chicago has been her home base since then. She studied fine art at DePaul University and is now a photo researcher for educational publishers. Though she also considers her website a full-time job as it requires most of her free time.
Since Montes de Oca has always been involved in the arts one way or another, she found that she was always recommending events she thought worthwhile to people in her circle. Because she was always scrounging through various websites and publications to identify such events, she decided she could put it in one place that it would be available to more people.
“They wouldn’t be discouraged to not find anything if the information was not readily available…Instead of going to 10 different websites, they could just go to one,” she says. “The purpose was to connect the organizations with this programming to the audience.”
Many of the organizations that host cultural events are catering to a niche audience, she says. And because the organizations are usually small in nature, they often don’t have the budget for marketing to reach their intended audience, she explains.
The worst-case scenario occurs when these organizations have to cancel events due to this lack of audience, she adds.
And so, she decided she would do something.
She wanted to help musicians avoid empty nightclubs and gatherings. And she wanted to make sure the community was aware of the organizations holding exhibits and lectures.
The connection between programming and the audience seemed to be missing. And so, she put the two together, giving birth to arteyvidachicago.com.
While Montes de Oca describes her website as “one-man band,” she did receive help from a few key individuals.
Her husband, David Derr, a graphic designer, helped her with the logo and other design elements. The technical person who developed the format for the website made it easy for her to use as well as very user friendly. Catalina Maria Johnson, Ph.D., writer and host/producer of “Beat Latino”, rounds out the mix with her contribution of music reviews.
As for the website’s appearance, the maroon color of its background is immediately attention-grabbing, while the smaller boxes housing illustrated logos or words of affiliated organizations on each side of the homepage pose as interesting, complimentary details to the layout of the page.
“That’s something that ran parallel to the richness and diversity of how art and cultural events can be,” Montes de Oca explains. “Also, it parallels with the richness of the Hispanic culture- it’s so vast and vibrant and significant as well as diverse. So I wanted to be sure that it was attractive to capture the attention of the Hispanic community, but also any other community that had any interest in world culture. It’s not for Hispanics, it’s for everyone.”
Leo Suarez, 25, owner of Macondo, is friends with Montes de Oca and has collaborated with her on marketing plans for the café and various musical events. Suarez says Montes de Oca stands out because of her willingness is to help out, even with things that have nothing to do with her. “She always has tons of ideas,” he says.
When Macondo first opened, Suarez says they had people coming in mentioning, “Oh we read about you guys on arteyvida.”
This is how Montes de Oca is made aware that the connection has been made. Verbal confirmation at arteyvida promoted events. “I would like to think that maybe they would not have gone had they not received that information from my website.”
Web visits boasting an increasingly steady 70 percent reader return rate also provides a good indication.
On one occasion in particular, a gentleman came up to her at a Les Nubians performance she helped set up. The man was explaining to Montes de Oca how grateful he was for her putting the show together, because it was sort of perfect timing. He was searching for an anniversary gift for his wife, read about the show in arteyvida’s newsletter, and so bought tickets for the event. His wife was surprised and they attended the show with a slew of their friends.
Montes de Oca was flattered to hear this. She thought it would make their anniversary even more memorable if the couple could meet the artist personally. So she took them back stage. She recounts the couple taking pictures, hanging out and having a good time. Montes de Oca expresses how glad she was to be allowed the opportunity to make their experience that much more memorable. She credits the website for this.
Montes de Oca has a strong vision for developing her website, but time is her biggest hurdle.
She recognizes the importance of pacing herself with the website because she does not want to compromise the quality of the product she is providing to her audience.
Maintaining the website has not only impacted the community it serves, but it has also directly affected Montes de Oca herself.
“I am well-informed,” she chuckles good-naturedly. “It serves two purposes, it helps me as a person and as an art patron and fan know what’s going on. As well as, I attend a lot of these events myself. I’m even more motivated to go. I take my family. It gives me an opportunity to take my son and show him something cool, something new.”
Hopefully, future voyeurs to arteyvidachicago.com will also discover something cool, something new, just as well.
(Angela Evans is an intern with the Community Media Workshop)
