Ask a New Yorker: I am with Julian, who I met through Craigslist. He is a talented graphic artist who will be doing some t-shirt designs for Ask a New Yorker. Julian, how long have you lived in New York?
Julian: I got here at the end of September 2007. So, it has not been that long. It’s been overwhelming sometimes and pretty crazy. I like the city.
Ask a New Yorker: Where did you move from?
Julian: From L.A., where I lived for 5 years. I am originally from Bogota, Colombia, South America– another foreigner in the United States.
Ask a New Yorker: Welcome to the city. What don’t you miss about L.A.?
Julian: The superficiality of the people. The driving two hours, the laid back living style. It’s too chill for me. I needed a city. It been good for me, it’s like a roller coaster that goes up and down, a great experience.
Ask a New Yorker: How would you describe Bogota?
Julian: It’s a little tiny New York City with everything in it. It’s a little portion of what New York represents. We have a lot of crazy people coming from everywhere. We have a lot of art. We have a lot of beautiful people.
Ask a New Yorker: Have you ever been to a bull fight?
Julian: I hate them. It was traumatic for me because my grandfather took me to a bull fight when I was a little kid. I saw the atrocity in front of my eyes and I just wanted to cry. I cried like I never did before. I asked him if we could leave the place and he actually said yes. I was pretty scared. I was more angry than scared from what I was looking at.
Ask a New Yorker: Have you read One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez?
Julian: Yes, they made us read that book in school and it was the most boring thing, at that moment. But then I understood as I was going through it myself.
Ask a New Yorker: It’s about long distance love.
Julian: Yes. I totally know what that is all about.
Ask a New Yorker: What’s that all about?
Julian: I’ve always known what that’s about. I have more than a girlfriend–she is my inspiration and my best friend. We’ve been together practically my whole life even though we’re not together.
Ask a New Yorker: And where is she?
Julian: At this moment she is in Colombia but she lives in Argentina.
Ask a New Yorker: How do you stay in touch with her?
Julian: We do all kind of tricks. We talk on the phone. We talk on Skype. She texts me. We talk on messenger and she emails me, and we do Facebook. It’s hard. Actually, we decided to take this to the next level and finally be together when I moved here. She is now my partner. We work together. So we talk crazily lately, insanely, more than ever before. We are on the computer all day long. She’s learning stuff about how to use photo shop because I’m a graphic designer.
Ask a New Yorker: Well I hope she can join you soon. Where do you live in the city?
Julian: I live in the “Dominican Republic”… Washington Heights. It’s a little weird. It’s a little different. Chinese people speak Spanish up there. It’s got a little ghetto vibe but not everywhere. It’s the city. It’s urban. It’s different from what I was used to before where I was living in Long Beach, California, two blocks away from the beach in a huge house and a huge back yard. Now I live in a building. Everything is concrete around me I have no grass. Last summer I spent in my back yard sleeping in my tent with a bonfire next to me. But I’m starting to get used to this whole concrete jungle. The city has all the moods that can set you in a way that you are not aware how it happened. Your mood is going to change as the city change during the day which is crazy, unlike California where everything is flat. If you wake up happy you go to sleep happy.
Ask a New Yorker: Your last thought reminds me of a passage from E.B.White’s book Here is New York. It goes like this: “Many people who have no real independence of spirit depend on the city’s tremendous variety and sources of excitement for spiritual sustenance and maintenance of morale. In the country there are few chances of sudden rejuvenation-a shift in the weather, perhaps, or something arriving in the mail. But in New York the chances are endless”. What are you most passionate about?
Julian: I’m an artist. And that’s pretty much all I want to do every day of my life. It seems weird to me because when I finished school I moved back home and got a project that was not very creative. I was just working with retouching images. I’m an artist but I was not creating art work . I was getting frustrated. Then when I moved back to California I got onto wines, which is another art, but not quite the direction I wanted to go. So for a long time I was in a kind of limbo. I stopped painting and stopped designing on computers. One day I took it back and now I’m just trying to get better and better every day. I love going to museums. MOMA is by far my favorite museum it’s the best museum I’ve ever been to in my life. I’d love to set up a tent inside and have a bonfire. It’s very inspirational for me. I’m always trying to reach for a higher level.
Ask a New Yorker: So you do graphic design logo work…
Julian: My career is the prostitution of the art world because I have to please the client. This is a little frustrating at times. I would like to have the freedom just to create art. I’m a digital artist and I love my tools. But it’s my job and I have to deal with that.
Ask a New Yorker: When was the last time you cut your hair?
Julian: Probably before I started college.
Ask a New Yorker: As the new artistic director for Ask a New Yorker, any parting words?
Julian: This is the most important city in the world. It’s called the capital of the world. There are lots of things going on here, funky, sexy, everything you can think of is going on in New York City. If you don’t believe me, Ask a New Yorker. JULIAN ZULUAGA recolo@yahoo.com
