This is an email from Oscar Villegas, about what's happening with Spain.

Dear fellow coaster artists: I have been totally delighted to participate in this project and I send everyone warmest regards from Spain!!! We actually inaugurated the first exhibition here on March 5th in Salamanca. As everyone probably knows, this amazing city has been named European Capital of Culture during 2002. The cultural programs for the year are great and I was glad that the Coaster Project was presented there on this special year. There is also an amazing Rodin show and they placed the statue of Balzac in the Plaza Mayor which looks fantastic. FYI, you can read about all the activities at www.salamanca2002.org

The coasters were up at a place called "Carmen Bar" as we were unable to schedule something at the University as we had originally intended. This Bar is pretty cool and -like the place in Hoboken which Heejung mentioned- it functions as a cultural space as well. Yolanda Moreno, who installed the coasters, also organized a special parallel project throughout the week in which she asked people that visited the show to make their own coaster in order to exchange it for the one of their choice from our project on the closing night. Everyone loved the idea and came up with other very interesting coasters. Yolanda will send us pics of the whole event soon...

I am preparing everything for Madrid and Chinch„n. I very much look forward to the openings, particularly the one in Chinch„n which is a very special city just south of Madrid (FYI: Orson Welles had willed to be burried in Chinch„n as he was absolutely in love with it!!). Anyway, I'm involved in several projects for this city and my greatest hope is that it will become one of the important cultural satelites for Madrid in the near future. I would like to extend an early invitation to all of you to visit it some day and I hope to keep in touch with everyone about activities I will be developing there!!

Please find enclosed the poster image that was created by Alejandro L„pez, a great friend and graphic artist from Cuba. We made postcards with this image to promote all the Coaster Project events in Spain. Posters were made for the exhibition spaces as well.

Thank you to Orlando, Caroline, Heejung, Pauline, Neta, etc.. for your messages and good luck to all.

Yours, Oscar Villegas