Observations

On harmony.

A couple of weeks ago , I had a talk of a group of graduate students, and one asked me what was Harmony for me.

It has such different meaning for each of us…it can be Harmony even in a work that looks at a glance chaotic…or just in a choir singing…

I remember one of my children playing on the floor with a truck . He was 19 months old at that time. I was looking at him, and suddenly he turned his head around and gave me the most spontaneous, loving, beautiful smile that I could think of…no words, just seconds of unpremeditated, unforced, and natural pure act of pure of affection.

To me that was what harmony represents. It is not about the permanent and neatness, it is about the connection between spaces or individuals even if it last the length of a breath. It is the start point for a more lasting an genuine relationship…

The Japanese Concept of Ma

Many years ago, in 1990, I went to a lecture giving by Japanese architects and I learned the meaning of MA, and how important was for them in their own practice.

I have been incorporating this notion in my own works.

The Japanese concept of Ma is very wide and relates to all aspects of life. And it is not only about negative spaces, we have a tendency, in western cultures ,to reduce meaning...

One of it significance is a pause in time, space within space, space in between, an interval, gap or emptiness in space. I felt connected right away with this meaning because my works start from emptiness...going from layer to layer, space to space, creating a presence... therefore existence. The utilization of space and light to create sensory areas, the relationship of form and no form, empty spaces inside walls, where the meaning is in the inside, no the decorative fixtures.

And the relationship between us, not only related within our own space, also family and daily living.

May not be in the line of your favorites subjects, mine either, but …

A friend asked me to study a young artist's work, to see if I could add something to help her…because she wanted to get her masters in Studio Art and she was rejected from three schools that she applied in the USA…

It seems the schools couldn’t understand her theme, and subjects, even although were done with exquisite refinement.

When I saw her portfolio, every work was based in fairies and about fairies. When I observed carefully her pieces, I saw a very interesting type of beauty. I met her in person I proposed her to” re arrange” her compositions. She accepted this idea. She decided with assertiveness, that she didn’t want to be an illustrator.

So, I used the same sentiment that I have for me, whatever the subject is, one can transform it, meeting the subject on the shared domain of our humanity.

Patience and visual intelligence are learned behaviors, not natural talents.

I suggested to start adding elements of this world…a representation of a pear cutting half and letting the fairies free, from inside the pear…the representation of a mouth of a person, (even although is cliche ), the fairies coming out from it… a representation of a child opening a doll house and finding the fairies… Each time, I added a human connection with her subject, until she started to feel comfortable and she proposed other ideas.

Two years later she was accepted in one of the best schools in England.

What I did, anyone who had studio training could have done it too, there is not magic here.

What it called my attention was that nobody reviewed her portfolio associating the fairies with the Victorian Era. Fairies were a popular theme in Victorian England. Richard Dadd, Joseph Noel Paton…etc.. were painters of this re-enchanted world...  Artists drew on Shakespeare's plays and British folklore for inspiration. It was a time of magical enchantment. It was their way of escaping sadness and of subverting the strict religious, social, and cultural practices of the day.

I thought then and now, that actually the subject wasn’t a problem, but the lack of understanding of the subject was the problem.

The Night of the Pencils

In September 1976, 10 students were abducted by security forces in the city of La Plata near Buenos Aires, Argentina. It is called the Night of the Pencils because they were between 13 and 18 years old. Six of the 10 were never seen again, their fate is still unknown. I grow up with violence, the disappearance of human beings, street battles, and home invasion. I want to investigate visual ideas involving human losses by violence, bringing hope that this never happen again and healing, joined together by our common humanity.

I think as a mother. My children bring light and color to my life... I need a connection with that notion, and the profound importance of these absences. I want to show loss by showing presence.

On Language Violence

How does language itself commit violence, how does it inflict sorrow, or causes injury?

Language Violence has penetrated our flesh in a way that we have become almost desensitized…but if one is the receiver the situation changes…

There are many ways to harm an individual….,

for example, repeating over and over words that inflict suffering…

Most of people describe, this act like a physical feeling,” I become sick”, “I felt that he throw a punch”, “slap in the face…and more…

How we measure, the pain that children and adults, suffered and need healing from vindictive and hateful language violence.

How we navigate the duality of some words…that are hurtful for many individuals but not for other ones…

Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire   

1944 First time the power of violence language enters to court: New Hampshire versus Chaplinsky decision is cited, and it is called the Fighting Words Doctrine.

“Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire."       

 Facts of the case (from Justia Us Supreme court)

On a public sidewalk in downtown Rochester, Walter Chaplinsky was distributing literature that supported his beliefs as a Jehovah's Witness and attacked more conventional forms of religion. Chaplinsky called the town marshal "a God-damned racketeer" and "a damned Fascist." He was arrested and convicted under a state law that prohibited intentionally offensive, derisive, or annoying speech to any person who is lawfully in a street or public area. On appeal, Chaplinsky argued that the law violated the First Amendment on the grounds that it was overly vague.

Unanimous decision for New Hampshire

Majority opinion by Frank Murphy

"Fighting words" fall outside the protections of the First Amendment

Writing for a unanimous Court, Justice Frank Murphy upheld Chaplinsky’s conviction. The Court identified certain categorical exceptions to First Amendment protections, including obscenities, certain profane and slanderous speech, and "fighting words." He found that Chaplinsky's insults were “fighting words” since they caused a direct harm to their target and could be construed to advocate an immediate breach of the peace. Thus, they lacked the social value of disseminating ideas to the public that lay behind the rights granted by the First Amendment. A state can use its police power, the Court reasoned, to curb their expression in the interests of maintaining order and morality.

Geometric Forms

I have always tried to paint the way I saw it, I lived it and I felt Nature, and Human Nature. In the past, I was not interested in geometric forms. I admired and loved it, I did it academically but I was not into-at all. Many years ago, when I started dialysis, I founded myself, drawing circles, squares, rectangles…etc. I had limited movement, I had only my right hand to work with, from a chair. At the dialysis center, time to time I have drawn only loose portraits of patients that I met there, (giving it back to them), or landscapes, that sort of thing. And of course, what I was making in my studio. Without even realizing, I was changing…and the only thing that I draw were mainly geometric compositions.

When I looked at closely, they were not OK, they were not even close to be OK. These compositions were boring and ugly, with no life of its own whatsoever… I thought because I knew how to draw, that was it! I assumed wrongly. The same love and connection that I felt with other subjects, was not there. Besides, I have always worked from “inside” …

It created some discomfort to go deeply beyond the appearances of every element that contained geometry, because it was inevitable to involve social contents, history, the meaning of the human condition… conflict, soul growth, emotions…

I started to look at the front and inside of a hospital, medical instruments, appliances, medical machines, windows…circles, squares… the reflective surfaces that I encountered daily, and studied them patiently and with caring, because I realized they were not just: geometric things. They have a life of its own, and in every inch, there was a connection with us.

Those firsts draw taught me that all these buildings, houses, train stations…buses…and much more around us, were not meant to be taken lightly, and it was a must for me to make a parallel with Human life, and this world that we inhabit.

There are so many preconceived ideas about cities, towns, suburbs, country life, as they are about its people! My search was much more than buildings and things…

Many years have passed from where I started. I learned to observe with passion, a lifelong cultivation of what is meaningful, communicating from within, and not as a mirror but in its essence.  I can’t explain why I made these structures specifically, or colors or combinations/compositions… I only can tell you what happened before I made the sculptures. When I work, I find the colors as I go along. Upon seeing my art, many find that the colors draw their attention before anything else. The story behind the colors is born by the interplay between these colors. It is not color itself that matters most to me. Rather, the color is secondary to the emotion that it generates.

Also, these lines, parallels, verticals, colors, tables, homes, schools, …circles, ovals…hospitals, parks … contained trace of others, an illimitable fund of thoughts and ideas bringing its beauty and ugliness, contradictions and affirmations, loneliness and busyness, isolation and integration, inclusions and exclusions…

And I remembered the fabulous Virginia Wolf who offers so many vivid and amazing observations about life:

Not by seeing too much do we discover

the isolation implicit in life

but through myopic impoverishment

a tunnel vision of the soul.

So here comes something that we could see as a contradiction of what I have done…but actually I feel that making art is a force from within, letting- go the most intimate feelings and making space and letting- in the outside world...it is like going and coming, opening and closing…

In every reflection I could see myself, it took me in their space, as it took -in every person that was around. I found a “witness”. Windows and reflections in general see everyone who goes through, or walks through…or who passes through… we are all in, even the tiniest living thing, nobody is left aside.

And for this reason, I chose resin because creates a reflection, and is biodegradable. Resin is  not plastic. Also, I can expand…I am not confined…

I like to manipulate this medium, incorporating my own fingerprint, adding oils, or wood, or metal…and combining pieces, integrating them making to belong in that space, in that world.

In certain works, you can see yourself, it is the effect generated by the reflection created by the medium. In most cases, in that reflection, the sculpture sees the people first, rather than the other way. The sculpture does not withdraw from you. It never tramples, includes rather than excludes, allowing the “reflections” of yourself to be who you are, with dignity and respect, without preconceptions or stereotypes.