QUIMBAYA AWARDS 2006
TRIBUTE TO HISPANIC AMERICAN ARTISTS AND ART EDUCATORS

This award was established by Centro Cultural Hispano Americano in 2005 to recognize and honor Hispanic Americans who have contributed significantly to the understanding of the Hispanic American culture through the arts and education, and their achievements in the Northwest.

The recipients of the "Quimbaya Award 2006" by Centro Cultural Hispano Americano was awarded to the following Hispanic Americans:

SARA DE LUIS  was born in New Orleans, Louisiana of Spanish and French ancestry. De Luis has performed and taught the art form of Spanish dance for four decades. She began as a soloist touring with top dance companies from Spain, including Teatro del Baile Español, Madrid and was also a principal dancer with Ximenez Vargas Ballet Español. She then joined the eclectic First Chamber Dance Company of New York, which relocated to the Pacific Northwest in the mid-1970s. De Luis danced with the First Chamber Dance Company and was co-founder of the Seattle Dance Lab. Sara de Luis subsequently joined the faculty of the Pacific Northwest Ballet School in 1986, and eventually created her own company, Homenaje, to re-stage the choreographic works of the Spanish masters. Sara de Luis has been a guest artist and choreographer for opera companies, performed with the symphony orchestras of Seattle, Chicago, Las Vegas, and the New York Philharmonic, and appeared at summer dance festivals all over the U.S.
 
LUIS FERNANDO ESTEBAN received his Masters in Aeronautical Engineering in Madrid in 1969, and has been employed by Iberia Airlines of Spain and represents the Boeing Company as Technical Vice President for the past thirty-seven years. He became the Honorary Vice Consul of Spain in 1993. Through him, the agreement between the Ministry of Education of Spain and the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction of the State of Washington was signed. Spain sponsors a Center for Spanish Studies at the University of Washington to improve the skills of the Spanish teachers attending the seminars as well as scholarships to universities in Spain. Due to his efforts, Spain is sponsoring the new “Aula Cervantes” to be opened at the University of Washington soon.

As Honorary Vice Consul, Mr. Luis Esteban has worked with the Spanish Government to bring Spanish art to Washington State with art exhibitions at the Tacoma Art Museum of Miro, Picasso and Dali. In the fall of 2004 he worked with the Patrimonio Nacional to bring to Seattle Art Museum a classic exhibit “Spain and the Age of Exploration 1492 – 1792” which included some of Spain’s greatest paintings. He hosted the King and Queen of Spain who visited Seattle in November of 2004 to honor the exhibit with their presence. Mr. Esteban has been honored five times by the Spanish Royal Family with the Spanish Royal Medal “Condecoración” for his many programs in behalf of Spain and the United States, was honored with the 1997 Margaret K. Williams Pierce County Arts Commission Award, and was also honored on March1998 by the Washington State House of Representatives Resolution 98-4708, and by the Washington State Senate Resolution on that same date.
 
LAURO H. FLORES  was born in Mexico, has a Ph.D. in Literature from the University of California, San Diego, and is Chair of the Department of American Ethnic Studies and Professor of Chicano and Latin-American literatures and cultures. He holds adjunct appointments in the Division of Spanish and Portuguese Studies, Latin American Studies, and Jackson School of International Studies. At the University of Washington he has been director of the Center for Chicano Studies, Chair of Latin American Studies, and Special Assistant to the Provost. A Ford Foundation doctoral and post-doctoral fellow, he currently serves as Regional Liaison for the Ford Foundation Fellowships for Minorities Program. Flores has been visiting professor at Stanford University and at U.C.L.A. Until recently, he was the senior editor of the legendary journal The Americas Review. He previously directed Metamorfosis: Northwest Chicano Magazine of Art and Literature and has served on many editorial boards. His publications include The Floating Borderlands: Twenty-Five Years of U.S. Hispanic Literature, which won an American Book Award (1999), a critical edition of Luis Pérez's autobiographical novel, El Coyote/The Rebel, and Alfredo Arreguín: Patterns of Dreams and Nature / Diseños, Sueños y Naturaleza, selected for the Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize Notable Books List.

ENRIQUE HENAO  was born in Colombia. He has performed in 80 countries as a concert acoustical guitarist, and is a master at playing classical and jazz music, a soulful interpreter of flamenco, and a rhythmic performer of Latin American music. His instrumental and vocal interpretations have impressed audiences everywhere. He composes music and teaches promising young musicians how to make their instruments sing. He is internationally recognized, and has played with famous artists such as Elvis Presley and Julio Iglesias. Henao has performed for heads of state and has been invited to the White House and the Vatican several times. He has been a visiting artist with the Washington Commission for the Humanities. He has performed free of charge for fund raisers for a number of charities around the world, such as Habitat for Humanity, Teen Hope homeless shelter, and Clothes for Kids. Most benefit concerts he performs are associated with helping children, and to provide medical care to young cancer patients.

EDUARDO MENDONÇA was born in Brazil. He is a recording artist, vocalist, composer, percussionist, guitarist, and musical arranger. Mendonça traces his lineage to a royal African family bearing the hereditary title of Mamabeka (“prophet of the royal court”). His grandfather, who secretly maintained the Mamabeka title, is pictured in a rare book, property of the Instituto Geográfico e Histórico da Bahia. He has performed as featured musician in many venues in Bahia - Brazil, including command performances for Brazilian President João Baptista Figueiredo and for Pope John Paul II. Eduardo had the honor to play for the former South Africa President Nelson Mandela. He also performed in trios elétricos such as Dengo da Bahia, Papa Léguas, and Marcos Medrado, and toured locally and internationally as vocalist and percussionist with the folkloric troupe, Exaltação á Bahia. In 1991, Mendonça was featured in Paul Simon’s documentary music video, “Born at the Right Time.” Eduardo is a voting member of the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences (Grammy), has been nominated for the Best Brazilian Male Singer in the U.S. in the 2005 Brazilian International Press Awards, and he is winner of Aspasia Phoutrides Pulakis Memorial Award 2005 for his significant contributions to the Brazilian Community and the community at-large of the Northwest.

TOMÁS OLIVA was born in Havana, Cuba and it was there where he discovered his love for art. Some of his works include "Frida carrying a marble player" a 10 feet tall granite piece at Andres Institute of Art in Brookline New Hampshire, "Frida Inquebrantable" a 10 feet tall limestone and steel piece at Cementerio de Carretas in Chile, "Frida" a 10 feet tall granite piece at Adichunchana Giri School of Medicine in South India and "The Way" a 10 x 8 feet Honduran mahogany door at St. Andrew Catholic Church in Sumner Washington. Oliva's themes are the Homage to Frida Kahlo and The Marble Players.  Since 1987, his work is being inspired by William Shakespeare's Sonnet 66.  His influences also include artists Edvard Munch and Kate Kollwitz.
He has been a Plastic Arts professor for 22 years. He began teaching at the Academia San Alejandro in Habana until 1992. He moved to Mexico City to teach at the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana de Ciudad México. In 1994, he began teaching at Cooperative Educational Services, Tacoma Art Museum, Children Museum, El Centro de la Raza, CONSEJO, Pratt Fine Art Center, Seattle Central Community College, Olympic College, and has been teaching at Art Corps for the past 6 years.

RUBEN TREJO was born in a Burlington Boxcar in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1937, and graduated from the University of Minnesota and has been teaching at Eastern Washington University since 1973. He is a lecturer on Chicano and Mexican art. His art work reflects the dual cultures of the Mexican-Columbian and American-European worlds. In all of his works, he expresses the history, our multiple histories, where they intersect and where they divide. He has exhibited his works at many national galleries and museums. For Codex for the 21st Century, one of his art pieces exhibited with the Smithsonian’s traveling exhibition, Trejo was commissioned to make a piece that—along with other artist’s work—collectively represented the symbolic gathering of the lost books of the Americas, those burned by colonial administrations during the Spanish conquest. The work fulfills the obligation of the commission: the viewer can assume the role of archaeologist, discovering a new language while engaging in art and culture. He received the Northwest Regional Foundation Grant, Premio de la Raza, CEP from Eastern Washington University, the Trustee Medal from Eastern Washington University, and was the Award Winner, of the 28th Spokane Annual Competition.

AWILDA VERDEJO, a dramatic/spinto soprano who was born in Puerto Rico, studied music at the Juilliard School in New York, and now lives in Seattle. She’s gained great fame performing in opera houses all over the world. Her signature role, Aida, won the attention and admiration of Prince Charles when she performed it in Verona. She has won acclaim in a host of other Verdi operas as well. She has performed the title role in Puccini's Tosca at the Viennastaatsoper, the Festspielhaus in Salzburg, in Munich's National Theater, Mexico City, and many others. Verdejo has sung the Spirituals: “The music captures and expresses what freedom meant to the Negro in slavery.” “These songs are called Negro spirituals because that is how African-Americans were referred to during the slave period of our history.” She has performed with such conductors as Leonard Bernstein, Pierre Boulez, James Conlon, Guiseppe Patané, Daniel Oren, Jon Robertson, Julius Rudel and Michael Tilson Thomas.