A droll world of perfect pitch
By Henry Vermillion (July 21, 2006)

If Juan Ezcurdia is not the most popular and most collected of all the artists in San Miguel, he is most certainly a strong contender for that position. His paintings are memorable and instantly recognizable.

His human figures are droll and stylized, as are his animal figures, which often share the space equally with the humans. The animals may clothe themselves in suits or dresses and stroll along hand in hand with their human companions. A special showing of Juan’s work, including a recently made video, will be open for the public Saturday, July 22, at Galería Izamal, next door to the Angela Peralta Theater. DVDs, ceramic tiles and engravings as well as paintings will be featured.

Ezcurdia’s creatures live in a spare, luminous environment: they float or fly or amble in glowing fields of ochre, orange, red-orange or (occasionally) royal blue or green. They are clearly civilized and decent; they carry tiny handbags, tiny guitars or saxophones or other proper accoutrements.

Their edges are soft. Their Assyrian faces are impassive but somehow quite expressive.

Ezcurdia has an innately infallible sense of design and order. I say “innate” because his training was in psychology and theater, rather than in art. His figures, of either people or of animals, are sometimes filing across the picture in perfect symmetry, but they may also be curled into coils or arcs in space (always in his luminous colors). No matter what their arrangement may be in the picture—whether they are people, airplanes or animal creatures—their balance is right, their pitch is perfect. 

The paintings are whimsical and bear a second look. Why is this big green lizard holding hands with the woman with whom he is sharing a soft drink? In the picture entitled “Brenda’s Lovers,” two tall bovines standing erect on either side of Brenda are caressing her. The one on the left seems definitely a cow (Brenda is looking at her), while the animal on the right, by his size and build, seems to be a bull.

Also (rare in Juan’s work), Brenda’s breasts are indicated under her modest smock and pantaloons. What are we to make of all this? Mysterious, indeed.

When Ezcurdia came to San Miguel in the mid-1990s, he was an award-winning illustrator of children’s books. He took the plunge as a painter in 1997 with his first showing anywhere at Galería Izamal. The rest, as they say, is history. He has had an extraordinary success, with more sure to come. He is one of the original tenants of the Fábrica La Aurora Centro de Arte y Diseño, where he maintains his studio. In San Miguel, his work is available only at Galería Izamal and at his studio at Fábrica la Aurora. He is represented in galleries in the US and Canada and in Puerta Vallarta and Mexico City, among other locations.

Galería Izamal painters Jaime Goded, Mike Kleimo, Marion Perlet, Henry Vermillion and Britt Zaist and jeweler Maria Bracho will also have new work at the exhibition.

Art OpeningJuan Ezcurdia: “Luminous Creatures” Saturday, July 22, 6–8pm, Galería Izamal, Mesones 80

A world of illusions and disillusions 

“One can say everything about love, and still not know what to say.”
                                                       —Jean Baudrillard

Love, seduction, the expression of wishes, and sex have drastically modified societies’ conduct and morals in the last two centuries. Ornella Ridone’s show “The Girl Bride” seems to unfold like a logbook that records what has changed and what is consistent in the lives of women.

The artist reconstructs passages from life using metals and women’s clothing, intermixed with human figures, nails and letters. 

There is a strange sensation, intimate and distant, heart-rending and meticulous at the same time. Without looking for answers, Ornella Ridone questions the love of partners, the institution of marriage and the repetitiveness of human conduct. 

Each room simulates an outline, a kind of trousseau, from the world of illusions and disillusions. The color white, although old and tainted, is an inevitable affirmation of the virgin that stops being a virgin, being a girl, an adult girl, or sometimes a woman.  The assembled objects constantly reflect back to the body, and the metal used in the constructions blends with the geometry of the patterns of cloth to order and add another layer of beauty to the assemblages. Sewn with patience, the installation includes many images of the artist, along with small illustrations that belong to the common memory of modern woman.

Nails and other metals, previously used in the work associated with women, penetrate the clothes like knives that will deteriorate and change everything as time passes. Blood pours, rust-colored, lending a ritual air. 

Ornela Ridone was born in Saluzzo, Italy, in 1955, and she began exhibiting her work in that country. She arrived in Mexico in 1984 and began to explore new techniques and themes. She has participated in collective exhibits in Laboratorios de Arte Alameda, MUCA Roma, the Carrillo Gil Museum, the San Carlos Museum, and El Chopo Museum. She shows regularly in the Mexican Modern Art Gallery in Monterrey and in the Carrillo Gil Museum. Her work has been honored twice at the Biennial of Monterrey, where she received an honorable mention in 2001. 

According to art curator Margaret Failoni, “Ridone illustrates a woman’s plight throughout the ages, without falling into the pathetic. Using old garments, tattered clothing or rag-pressed paper, the artist spins tales of love, woe, labor and urgency by actually embroidering the images onto the surface…. The literary as well as the figurative magic she weaves is astounding. One’s eye is riveted toward these works, anxious to move on from one to another so as to read the next chapter of her tale of tales.”

Art Opening, Sunday, July 23, 10pm, Ornella Ridone, “The Girl Bride”
Kunsthaus Gallery Santa Fe, Santa Fe 22A, Col. Allende


Clasen’s “Third Dimension” at Lagundi 

“Producing art is 90 percent sweat and only 10 percent innovation,” the German painter Edda Clasen says. Her paintings betray nothing of it, however. Clasen’s pictures are bright and cheerful; she uses strong colors, exotic creatures and stunning combinations of space and perspective to reflect her concepts. Creation, be it animals or the great cosmos, is the main theme in Edda Clasen’s exhibition.The subject matters portrayed on canvas are best understood when considering her nomadic life: At 37, Clasen already looks back on an eventful life that has taken her to all corners of the world.

After growing up in Ghana, Peru, Thailand, Argentina and Germany, Clasen studied political science and French at Cambridge, Aix-en-Provence and Canterbury before embarking on her artistic career, first in the United States, then in Germany, and now in Mexico. 

Seemingly without geographic roots, her search for identity is answered with a walk through childhood memories, where lizards, crocodiles, elephants, dolphins, giraffes and monkeys populated her early years.

The mixture of cultures and her experience in different countries resulted in a peculiar pictorial language that combines playfully African folkloric elements with Mexican opulence in color and Australian imagery.

Simultaneously, the awareness of a wounded, dislocated and mutated nature leads her to focus on the wholesome and pretty, on the worthy-to-conserve. On a personal level, she presents a dialogue between childhood experience and the present worries about an ever-shrinking world. On a second level, her animals are subject to a symbolic scheme in which omens and sayings and archetypal images that allude to the original myths of different pre-Hispanic (some of them belong to the Huichol cosmogony), native American, Aboriginal and Asian cultures may be perceived. 

Clasen skillfully combines traditional shamanistic elements with a new technique she devised back in Germany: the creation of a three-dimensional space within a two-dimensional painting achieved by stretching three layers of canvas, each 2 cm apart. Working from the outside to the inside, or more recently, starting from the center (sometimes from a mirror), she cuts her way through the canvases, thus creating further depth in the painting and also inviting the sunlight to produce moving shadows on her work.

Clasen compares this work to “archeology of the mind,” and the cuts are like carvings into the past or the deeper levels of oneself: always a difficult and painful but rewarding process. We are invited to explore what lies behind the simple surface of a seemingly bright and cheerful painting. Clasen has displayed her work in numerous exhibitions, including the Forum der Technik in Munich’s Deutsches Museum and the headquarters of DaimlerChrysler in Stuttgart.

Her work has also been shown in Austria, England, Spain, Portugal, the US, and, of course, Mexico.
The exhibit is open through August 21.

Art Opening, Paintings by Edda Clasen, 
Thursday, July 27, 6–8 pm, Galería Lagundi, Umarán 17



Sacred birds in flight at the Vandiver Gallery
By Edward Swift

Pájaros Sacrados, the new exhibition of watercolors at the Vandiver Gallery in Fábrica la Aurora, is ostensibly the most unusual exhibition of paintings in San Miguel. Artist Kelley Vandiver’s series of 16 paintings depict purple finches, roosters, blue birds, cardinals, robins and swallows, to name a few.

All are costumed as Catholic saints decked out in robes trimmed with fur, elaborate collars, cuffs and headdresses. The saintly birds are wearing or surrounded by precious stones such as diamonds, pearls, sapphires and rubies. The artist seems to have a particular fascination for blood rubies as well as the jewel-like Eye of God. 

The paintings are rendered in intricate detail. Every feather and ray of light is delicately painted in brilliant colors, and the halos are luminous and hallowed. Each painting is surrounded by a brief Latin text, some of the letters rendered in 22-karat gold dust. The text for the purple finch dressed as the Blessed Mother reads: “All ye that pass by look and see if there could be any sorrow like mine.” The mournful finch is seen against the Hill of Golgotha with the empty tomb in plain sight. St. John the Divine is represented by a rooster, and the text surrounding his painting reads: “A clear voice resounds in the darkness and wakes up those who are sleeping.” St. John the Rooster is standing before a snake coiled in a chalice. The snake is predicting the coming of the burning bush, and the saint is clinging to every word. 

Although the paintings are serious, witty and clever, they are never demeaning or sacrilegious, owing to the artist’s empathy with his subject matter and his skill with the brush. 

He has visibly captured the correct emotions on the faces of his saintly birds. They are human and their suffering is real. 

Kelley Vandiver lives in San Miguel de Allende, but the idea for a series of bird portraits began several years ago in Tulsa, Oklahoma. While living in Tulsa, Vandiver kept an African Grey Parrot named Miranda. He raised her from a tiny chick, feeding her with a syringe, and she grew rapidly, all the while displaying a strong, sweet-natured devotion for her keeper. She developed a large personality, and even larger vocabulary, and she enjoyed carrying on complete conversations with herself. Vandiver admits that life with Miranda was like having another human being in the house. 

He recently told me that he will never go near another parrot as long as he lives. “After about five years,” he said, “Miranda’s sweet disposition changed. Because she desired a real parrot companion, she became frustrated, mean and deeply evil. She screamed without stopping. She chewed up my apartment. She bit me constantly, always going for the tender places. She would clamp down on my hand with her deadly beak and wouldn’t let go. I couldn’t shake her off me. Soon, I began fantasizing about her dying in horrible, painful, gruesome ways. In my mind, I had her beheaded, stabbed, hung, burned at the stake, and anything else I could think of that was painful and involved long suffering. Then I began sketching Miranda in historical Catholic scenes. In each sketch she experienced a brutal death, just like many of our saints. Sketching her demise was the only thing that helped me cope.” 

After it became apparent that Miranda would never return to her sweet disposition, she was banished to an aviary in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. Her new owner had high hopes that she would accept one of the other African Greys as her mate, but to this day she has brutally disfigured every suitor that has come her way.

Soon after Miranda entered the aviary, one of Vandiver’s clients saw the sketches and asked for a series of 14 paintings of different birds dressed as saints. Out flew the Cardinal Cardinal, the Mother and Child, and Saints Veronica, Sebastian and Valentine along with the Stations of the Cross, in which Miranda stumbles for the first time. 

Because Vandiver was in demand as a muralist and portrait artist in Tulsa, he abandoned the bird portraits for a while, but since moving to San Miguel he has returned to them with vigor. Following the new series currently on display, he intends to paint a similar series based on the Sibyls who predicted the coming of the burning bush, and the birth of the Savior of Mankind. One of his current models is his mother’s Jack Russell terrier, named Corazón. 

What else can be said, except a prayer? Blessed are the animals of this earth, for they too are the Children of God. And please, dear Lord, send Miranda a few moments of happiness for she has inspired great things. Amen. 

Edward Swift is a novelist and visual artist. He lives in San Miguel de Allende.

Art Opening, “Pájaros Sacrados”
Saturday, July 22, 5–8pm, The Vandiver Gallery, Fábrica la Aurora – 5B



Master painter Luis Granda exhibits at Mero Arte Contemporaneo
By Michelle Wey

Mero Arte Contemporaneo, formerly known as Galeria Wey, is proud to announce a multidisciplinary exhibition by the Mexican master Luis Granda.

With this exhibition, Mero Arte continues to fulfill its intention to represent a select group of contemporary artists who demonstrate a mastery over their chosen medium and a dedication to the importance of aesthetics as the guiding principal in the creation of a work of art. 

Luis Granda was born in Spain in 1941. He arrived in Mexico at 13 years of age with his family, escaping the Franco regime. He studied architecture in UNAM in Mexico City but soon recognized painting as his true vocation. Granda has created an outstanding career as a plastic artist. To date, he has accumulated more than 25 individual exhibitions and many more collective exhibitions, including solo shows in Bellas Artes and Casa Lamm in Mexico City. Although primarily an oil painter, Granda has to his credit a body of work that also includes lithographs, prints, watercolors, drawings, bronze sculpture, a series of signature gold and silver jewelry and three published books about his work. 

Granda’s paintings have a very strong visual presence; they are iconic, masculine, humanistic images that draw the viewer in. They are images that focus on the connection between the conscious and the unconscious in order to give emotional expression through plastic means. When describing his work and its inspiration, Granda says, “My work focuses on the roots of human beings, their myths and their symbols.

Painting is a constantly creative game based in observation and learning from others.” Granda insists on the importance of the intuitive element in the creative act as the means of creating a dialog with the viewer that is free of intellectual pretensions. The experience of a Granda painting is a visual journey through symbols and passionate color drawn from ancient cultures and universal figures that transport us to the mystic realm of humans, to the realm of the senses. The artist says, “For me, painting is a compromise with existence, it dignifies me and gives meaning to my life. My work is instinctive, not intellectual, in that the primary purpose of the artist should be to communicate his feelings, instincts, and emotions.”

The objective of Mero Arte Contemporaneo is to promote the work of artists with a unique personal vision, firm in the belief that not only are originality and beauty still possible in a post-postmodern world, they are the most important elements of creative expression.

Art Opening, Works by Luis Granda
Friday, July 21, 7pm, Mero Arte Contemporaneo, Zacateros 24



Pozos ArtWalk 2006 

10am–4pm, Saturday & Sunday, July 22 & 23 Mineral de Pozos For transportation from San Miguel, call Casa Montana at 01-442-293-0032. Maps and guides are available at the Jardín Principal and Plaza Zaragoza.

Celebration of the textures of life
By Cati Demme

As a child, Judy Holden had two goals. The first was to work with leprosy victims, and the second was to create colorful designs. She traveled from Canada to Africa after training as an occupational therapist, and she stayed for five years working with the leper colony in Kumasi, Ghana. Kumasi is the cultural center of West Africa, and Judy quickly took on the role of local tourist guide to the local craft workshops, including the famous Kente weavers. 

Upon returning to Canada, Judy studied for her master’s degree in applied behavioral science and became the head of a department of occupational therapy, with a private practice in counseling. She continued to pursue her passion for crafts and design through the study of woodcarving and ceramics.

The travel bug began to gnaw again, and Holden took a job in Bermuda. The striking natural beauty of Bermuda inspired her to study for her diploma in fine arts at Bermuda College. There, one of her teachers had studied at the Instituto Allende. Her studies allowed her to experience all media, but in the end she chose watercolor as her media of choice. 

Her next move was to England, where Holden experimented with watercolor and pen and ink techniques. On her return to Vancouver, she decided to continue with watercolor and studied many experimental watercolor techniques. She has developed a techique in which the pigment is manipulated with textured materials rather than the brush. Holden’s next move was to Mexico, where she has been able to work on her art fulltime.

Through her work, which is a feast for the eyes, Holden shares her passion for the many cultures and individuals who have enriched her life. 

The exhibit is open Friday, July 28, to Sunday, July 30.

Art Opening, “Celebration of the Textures of Life”, Works by Judy Holden
Friday, July 28, 5–8pm, Salon de Bridge, Hotel Real de Minas, Stirling Dickinson & Ancha de San Antonio