With the blessing and support of her four grown sons, Anita
Storck took off in her van to paint and draw the world, saying goodbye to family
and friends from her home base in California. She lived, as she described it,
“a gypsy life,” traveling and making friends wherever she went.
She spent four years on the road, traversing Europe and North Africa, going
as far east as Turkey.
Setting her sights back in the New World, she arrived in Antigua,
Guatemala in 1977,
“just passing through.” But something must have soothed her gypsy
heart because before
long she began growing roots within her neighborhood and the community at large.
It is not unusual to visit homes in Antigua and, upon commenting on a particular
painting, find out that Anita Storck did it. Residents could always count on
her yearly art
exhibitions. Her last show in Antigua, at age 86, was held at Proyecto Cultural
El Sitio in
December 2003. She not only created lovely artwork — she dispelled the
generally held
notion that artists are temperamental. One would be hard-pressed to have found
a more
pleasing, genial and truly beautiful spirit.
For years she made the weekly trip to Guatemala City to teach
art to orphaned boys
living at Mi Casa. Closer to home, she organized a neighborhood women’s
co-op, teaching
members how to use left-over material to fashion hot pads and other handicraft
items;
countless others were recipients of her generosity, and, of course, there was
the annual
Good Friday neighborhood alfombra, to which she contributed year after year,
designing
something beautiful that brought pride to the whole block.
Feeling the tug to be closer to family, she moved to California
in 2001 but never lost
touch with her friends in Guatemala. From her memoirs, More than a Thousand
Words,
she sums up: “A happy life with sparkling hills of good memories of family
and friends
– of my childhood – and the joys of my own sons. True, there are
some sad valleys – as
in all of life – but thus we appreciate the daily happiness of being alive
and healthy and
sharing the pleasures of life with family and friends.” • —TKB
