Meet Maria Ortiz, also known as the “Long nail Goddess”, an exceptional woman who treats her salon more-so as a temple rather than just a salon!
Maria Ortiz, the owner of the Zeyne Beauty Salon in Newark, New Jersey is a wonderful woman with a technical skill of maneuvering the finer aspects of pedicure that far surpasses quality technical services to the point that her activity is more in accord with contemporary art rather than a high-quality clerk service!
Beyond being an exceptional pedicure technician and an obscure but thoroughly welcomed artist, Maria Ortiz is also a highly charismatic and complex person who uses her work as a form of a medium with which to spread love, acceptance and even emotional support to those in need, effectively giving soul and spirit into her work and art, which many of her customers identify it as a spiritual experience!
Her salon has transcended its function as a service biro, and has more closely attuned to a form of a sanctuary for people in need of support, having the customers call themselves as a part of a sisterhood in which they can freely express themselves without being judged by society!
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By Mihail Bonev
Maria Ortiz, after prolonged work as a pedicure technician in her own salon called the “Zeyne Beauty Salon” in Newark, New Jersey, decided to move her work in a new sphere of activity after becoming a virtuoso technician, as her technical skill would be wasted if she simply continued to offer clerk service, however high-end quality it might be.
As such, she started doing a contemporary form of art during her pedicure sessions, during which she not only works on the nails of her customers but also talks and “mingles” with them about their personal life, their issues and their struggles, managing to reflect both the sadness from her client’s troubles in life, but also the joy which they express when talking how they’ve either overcame them or are doing their best to do so in an intertwined amalgamation of spiritual art, with which she reflects the mood, character and even the soul of her customers into the procedure, as every session is unique and every procedure tailored accordingly to the primordial spiritual essence of the customer, methodically captivated in the design of the nails.
With time, as many customers became regulars, the whole process became a form of a modern sisterhood in which troubled people go to the Long Nail Goddess’s Salon in order hang out with other members in this modern form of a sanctuary, while collectively enjoying Maria Ortiz’s art, directly reflected on their nails (which at this point for many customers has become a direct extensions of their artistic and spiritual expression rather than just “prettied up nails”).
But such is the case with the Zeyne Beauty Salon not by chance, but by the genuine empathy, tolerance, and inclusiveness which the salon generally vibes due to the exceptional ability of Maria to not only psychologically assess her clients and their needs but to also be the best listener she can possibly be.
Many of her customers are women who have gone through a genuine impasse of life’s hardships, things like losing a close family member, dealing with a recurring health issue that if certain life circumstances are met can become terminal, or are literary recovering from cancer as we speak.
Maria Ortiz, as a true empath and a contemporary artist with exceptional character assessment skills has made a form of sanctuary in which women which are either actively going through a trying time in their life or have undergone such an arduous process and need time to recover, gather together in her temple to share both their joy and sorrow, as well as to receive the blessing of the Long Nail Goddess;
As Oscar Wilde said: “The genius of a society is measured in the amount of eccentricity which its populace foreshows”, Travis Hoefle used this opportunity to interview and document this little sanctuary of localized genius, as even their motto says that “they were made to shine rather than blend”, as accepting your authentic eccentricity is definitely a personal strength rather than the opposite.