Inspired by Rilke’s references to Angels
The Duino Elegies by Rainer Maria Rilke
The Second Elegy
“…But if the archangel now, perilous, from behind the stars
took even one step down toward us: our own heart, beating
higher and higher, would beat us to death. Who are you?
Early successes, Creation’s pampered favorites,
Mountain-ranges, peaks growing red in the dawn
of all Beginning, - pollen of the flowering godhead,
Joints of pure light, corridors, stairways, thrones,
space formed from essence, shields made of ecstasy, storms
of emotion whirled into rapture, and suddenly, alone,
mirrors: which scoop up the beauty that has streamed from
their face
and gather it back, into themselves, entire.
Charcoal on paper, collaged papers: arches, Japanese, red string, 2015
6' x 4'
Landscape as metaphor suggest our loss and altered meanings in relation to the land, nature and our origins. The idea of Landscape is seen as both a geographical and culturally specific space and as an internal, emotional state of mind, an internal landscape.
Charcoal on paper, collaged papers: arches, Japanese, red string, 2015
6’ x 4’
Lessons from the past. Legends have it that the trees at Monte Alban, a sacred ceremonial pyramid site in Oaxaca, Mexico, are actually guardian spirits. The anecdote inspired the superimposed papers suggesting a multidimensional reality. The crumpled and hanging paper with a play of line, light and shadow, refer to an other worldliness, the physical and the spiritual contemplated from a different perspective.
46” x 40” x 18”
Mixed media, canvas, wood panel, string, handmade paper, digital print, Japanese paper, 2015
The combination of different surfaces and materials within a single piece makes it almost sculptural. It moves out into space. The images are not complete, there are parts torn out and stuck somewhere else. It is about the land, the earth and our losing grip of what is essentially us.
There is the illusion of space and real space, that which exists within the empty frame and that referenced through a drawn line on a surface. A duality that is echoed by the two large vertical canvases. The hanging black string is like the open question of what time is.
Mixed media canvas, wood panel, string, handmade paper, 2015
46” x 40” x 18”
There is a distant horizon like a borderline and a torn landscape, there to open questions of meaning or to break away from definitions. An ambiguous state of identity. A white thread is a line that leads to another undefined space. Various objects are present but seem out of place.
A torn paper that might have been something but now has morphed into a heap. The inevitable transformation of displacement in crossing lines of division.
Graphite, charcoal, paper collage, photo.
Charcoal, graphite on paper . Collage of different cotton papers with black string, 6’ x 4’.
The Red Chair, charcoal, graphite, red pastel, collage on cotton paper. 6’ x 4’
72” x 48”, charcoal, graphite, Japanese transparent paper, and text, on paper “Where is my space, where my ancestral voice now forgotten”.
The Void was exhibited in 2017 as part of a three-artist presentation at the Artspace PS 109 in Manhattan. My interpretation references a spiritual space between life and after-death through dreams as another dimension of existence. My approach to the video was minimalist, to suggest an essence of existence.
Video Installation "Absence Presence" was part of two concurrent exhibitions to explore the Mexican immigrant experience using a traditional format such as drawing in one space juxtaposed with electronic and digital video/audio at another. Drawing and multimedia become the dichotomy of cultural forces that affect a state of being. Crossing the Mexico/U.S. border becomes a rite of passage that is self-contradictory, self-affirming and transformative. The immigrant is iconically in a state of coming and going, of absence and presence.
The video installation consists of four videos establishing a dichotomy between drawing and audiovisual media. Images and sound serve as documentation and metaphor. The audio is the result of countless interviews with undocumented Mexicans, edited to include their own poetry along with atmospheric sounds. The images come from different sources: drawings, video clips, photos, and performance. The videos are composed differently but as part of a narrative mosaic, each looped at different intervals so as to produce a sense of different time relations.
Credits: Judith Escalona, camera (Director MediaNoche Gallery, NYC), Dan Vatsky, edition, special effects, OutPost Edit, Brooklyn, N.Y., Luz Schreiber, actress.
The word Nahui Ollin comes from the nahuatl, an ancient language from Mexico and means metaphorically the perpetual state of change in all things; nothing is fixed, rather everything is in a state of transformation. The relation between the drawing and the video is a way of exploring the ongoing flux of visual language.
Absence and presence, what is left behind, an empty space, a memory best left to dissipate in the passage of time.
Collage series: Photo, acrylics, graphite, string, paper on canvasboard, 10” x 10”
