Free Preview: Playmate of the Month August 1994 - Maria Checa
It's an hour before closing, and the Historical Museum of South Florida is nearly empty, just the way Maria Checa likes it. Slowly, as if treading on hallowed ground, the Bogotá-born Miss August wanders through the exhibits and stops, transfixed, in front of a 19th century photograph of a huge banyan tree. "As a child," relates Maria with a faint Colombian accent, "I would swing from the vines of a tree just like that one and play for hours under its maze of hanging roots. This picture brings back a million wonderful memories. That's the power of great photography." Maria should know. She's a photographer herself, having studied the craft since she was 17 years old. She shoots primarily with black-and-white film and develops her own pictures, usually portraits of friends or photographs of the art deco architecture in Miami's South Beach neighborhood, where she lives. But this self-proclaimed visual artist expresses herself with more than a camera. Maria also paints in acrylics and watercolors, sketches with charcoal, sculpts and creates three-dimensional mixed-media art. Back at her studio apartment, where she has painted a tromp l'oiel sky on the wall, she pulls a painting from behind an antique armchair that she's re-upholstering. Monet, Maria's Himalayan cat, jumps onto her lap for a closer look at the bemused figure on the canvas. "This could represent me," Maria says. "Confused at times, on the fence, open to whatever comes next. I'm quite shy, so I express myself throug...
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