Circle of love for a courageous spirit
By Kathie Gallardo January 11, 2008 San Miguel de Allende

Art Benefit Auction Gloria Espino Wed, Jan 16, 7–9pm Generator Gallery Fabrica la Aurora

Gloria Espino is the mother of three, a painter and sculptor who practices the art of ‘living in the present.’ She touches the hearts of all she meets with her courageous spirit and serenity in the face of a life-threatening disease and procedure.

Her lightness of being comes from the belief that the love of others can cure us, that when we are able to open our hearts to and love everything and everyone around us with compassion, we can have complete freedom from the usual fears that can grind us down. She says that adversity is a door, an opportunity to open her heart—to be free.

It is a simple fact that 3 in 10,000 people get leukemia (statistics vary). Anyone can get leukemia. Leukemia affects all ages and sexes and the cause is unknown.

Her husband, Jose Luis Arias, of Arias Gallery, a loved and respected artist in the community of San Miguel artists, has worked tirelessly to raise the needed funds to help “this beautiful woman.”

A large group of well-known and loved San Miguel de Allende artists have donated their works to support this courageous spirit. We thank each one for their generosity. All proceeds from the benefit will be used to pay for medical procedures and related costs for the bone marrow transplant. All donations are appreciated.

To make tax deductible donations, see instructions in the advertisement in this issue of Atención. For more information call Jay at 415 154 9390 Ext. 108 or 044 415 153 5097.

Donating Artists:

Peter Leventhal, Margarette Dawit, Steve Moe, Juan Escurdia, Henri Vermillion, Magdiel Perez, Edward Swift, Edina Sargent, David Leonardo, Dorian Soto, Cati Demme, Marshall Dackert, Carmen Butierrez, William Martin, Jeff Coffin, Margarita Orozco, Jose Luis Arias, Mario Cabrera, Yoshiyuki Sekigawa, Mary Rapp, Britt Zaist, Joan Columbus, Dennis Pohl, Anna Marie Slipper, Leonard Brooks, Delphine Scott, Angelina Perez, Jane Evans, Miguel Angel Fernandez, Lupina Flores, Merry Calderoni, Jose Ignacio Maldonado, Brian Care, Elizabeth McQueen, Marisa Boullosa, Kurth Bousman, Glenn McKay, Mary Breneman, Abel Alvince, Kelly Vandiver, Marlene Johansing, Marianne Johansson and many more.

Note: Photos of pieces are representative of an artist’s work; they are not actually the pieces to be auctioned.

Art enhances architecture in San Miguel
By Margaret Failoni

Art Opening Art & Architecture Wed, Jan 16, 12–4pm Colonia Obraje, San Luis 4 Mimosa cocktail party www.sanluis4.com

An exhibition of contemporary art helps show off a beautiful modern house. Once completed, instead of filling it with furniture and then inviting realtors, the architect came up with the idea of an art exhibition and contacted a curator to put it all together.

Born and raised in Mexico City, architect Lis Bisgaard received her degree from the University of Copenhagen and after travelling and residing for many years both in Europe and North Africa, she returned to Mexico to continue in her profession.

In this creation by Bisgaard, fine lines and a minimalist concept typical of a northern European aesthetic combine with the superb use of light and volume prevalent in contemporary Mexican architecture. In this house, she personalizes and creates a home with adoquin (stone) floors, weathered beams, old mesquite doors, a stairway of mango wood which seems to levitate through a light shaft, brilliantly patterned stone and marble mosaic floors and countertops. A water fixture in the small, jewel-like garden literally rains over a fountain. Large sunlit terraces and a roof garden with magical views add to a feeling of spacious luxury.

Collaborating closely with the architect, the curator has chosen a group of contemporary works by artists from San Miguel and Mexico City which will be exhibited throughout the house and in the garden area—bronzes by Adolfo Riestra, bronze and barro by Jorge Marín, Mari José Marín’s monumental screen and sculpture, abstract monotypes and collages by Edgar Soberón, large abstract paintings by Lynne Gleason, installation boxes by Siobahn O’Donahough and conceptual sculpture by Ana Quiroz.

The house and exhibition space are located at San Luis 4, which is a callejón located off Calzada de la Luz near the end of Calle Loreto. The exhibit will be open Monday through Saturday, January 16 to March 20, from noon until 4pm

The second art and architecture venue which caught my eye is the art and installation in the Sollano location of the MITU Atelier. Artist and interior designer Leslie Tung, just back from China, created a setting which reminds one of the Shanghai of the twenties and thirties as represented in films or books. Tung cleverly recreates the atmosphere of displaced European nobles and Chinese officials from a dying monarchy inhabiting silk-clad salons. Stencilled opium lamps and damask cushions are carefully placed over lacquered settees. Silk tassels accent lamps and furniture. But what really draw attention are the lovely old scrolls and, above all, the portraits. They are totally unlike the traditional portraits we are used to seeing from China. These appear to be of that magic period of Shanghai’s yesteryear. Mostly black and white portraits of two very distinguished gentlemen stare out at you, but the most beautiful by far is of “the lady in red.” She is elegant, sophisticated and sultry and one can’t take one
’s eyes off her. Incredible interior design and some really good paintings make this installation well worth a visit.

Margaret Failoni is an independent curator and art historian who has lived in San Miguel for 13 years. She curates exhibitions of contemporary art for museums, public spaces and some galleries in Mexico after a full-time career in Rome, Italy.

Lynne Gleason abstracts at the Generator
By Margaret Failoni

Art Opening
Lynne Gleason
Sat, Jan 19, 6–8pm
Generator Gallery
Fábrica la Aurora

For those of us so familiar with Lynne Gleason’s superb horse paintings and large, colorful still lifes, to see her series of beautiful, almost lyrical abstract paintings was quite a surprise. But why should we be surprised? With her painterly ability, Gleason can pull anything and everything off.

Hidden away and not seen before in San Miguel were a large group of abstract paintings which the artist had created years ago. For whatever caused her to bring them back out we are grateful. They are really beautiful. Gleason uses oils almost like translucent watercolors on these paintings, a totally different technique from what she usually shows us. The brush strokes are long and fluid. The color is deftly mixed to create sometimes soft and sometimes dramatic hues. 

There seems to be a fluid movement taking place which has not been seen since the Cuban Wilfredo Lam’s similar techniques, and these paintings remind me of a softer, more romantic Lam.

 Most of the paintings are on large round canvases so the movement in the brushstrokes seems to go on without a beginning or an end. There is no tension. 

Looking at these works is like listening to the string section of a great concerto; soft and smooth and deep.

Margaret Failoni is an independent curator and art historian who has lived in San Miguel for 13 years. She curates exhibitions of contemporary art for museums, public spaces and some galleries in Mexico after a full-time career in Rome, Italy.

Images from heaven and hell 
By Arturo Rodríguez Döring

Art Opening Images of Heaven and Hell Slide-talk and painting exhibition by Arturo Rodriguez Döring Fri, Jan 11, 6:30–8pm Ana Julia Aguado Gallery Plaza Principal 18 100 pesos, cocktails included

In 1993 I was studying for an MFA at the very old Academy of San Carlos in Mexico City. The studio I was working in was exactly below where the artist Celia Calderón had committed suicide some 10 years earlier. The building had served as a hospital for tuberculosis patients in the sixteenth century, so working there completely alone around midnight was quite a scary experience. One of those lonely nights I began painting a large canvas, which I later entitled “Heaven and Hell.” In the upper part of the composition you can see a huge, fat, floating naked lady surrounded by a halo of flowers, inspired by the great Flemish master Jan Brueghel. The female nude, as in much of the history of Western Art, had been one of the major subjects of my early painting, and my grandmother, who had also attended courses at San Carlos when she was young, taught me to paint flowers in vases when I was a boy. This image condensed Heaven. 

On the lower part of the painting (Hell) I stacked a series of images I found disrupting: a landscape in Africa where a group of men are sawing off the tusks from a dying elephant, the head of a murdered criminal, different skulls and Cempasúchil flowers from the Day of the Dead. A market scene and two innocent-looking Mexican schoolgirls tying their shoes completed the picture. This canvas won the 1994 Acquisition Prize of the Aguascalientes Young Artists’ Awards. Now that I see it from a distance, I realize it summarized my first stage as an artist. 

My paintings were getting a little too complicated, but my worries were still the same. I needed to make a statement about society, but also about Art. Which subjects were meaningful to paint? Did painting have to be related to grandeur? Apparently not anymore. In my own criticism I have always struggled to give humble subjects the status of artwork. Ordinary objects have always appeared in my paintings, such as junk and garbage, and later food: cereal boxes, pastry, bottled goods: the postmodern still life. The market scenes I am now presenting are, probably, the natural sequence to this work.

The Ana Julia Aguado Gallery will unveil 16 new oil paintings by Arturo Rodriguez Döring, who will present a lecture and slide show of his work.

Fen Lasell Taylor: Transposing Nature
By Richard Cretcher

Art Opening Fen Lasell Taylor Tues, Jan 15, 6–8pm  The Ra Luz Gallery Posada de San Francisco Plaza Principal 2

Fen is a long-time resident of San Miguel. Some people know her as a gardener, who at one time wrote a weekly gardening article for Atención. Others may know her through the monthly bird walks she leads for Audubon. Although she is dedicated to nature and the environment, she prefers to be considered first and foremost a painter. This is her way of expressing her fervor for the visual world. She takes a subject from a landscape or a figure and converts it into a unique design of her own creation; always respecting the inspiration the subject has given her. 

The Ra Luz Gallery is in the Posada de San Francisco, on the corner of the Jardín. The show will run through January 29.

Richard Cretcher recently published the wildflower pocket guide Flores Silvestres. 

Traveling through vivid imagery
By Cati Demme

Art Opening and Book Signing
Keith Miller
Sat, Jan 19, 5–8pm
Generator Gallery
Fábrica la Aurora

Visitors to Fábrica la Aurora last winter will no doubt remember the launch of “Close to Nature,” a well-received review of Keith Miller’s studio watercolors and oil paintings.

This year he has brought together many of his Mexican plein air drawings and oil pastels in a book called Another Mexico. Beautifully designed and printed, the new book traces his travels through Mexico, going back to the mid-eighties. Miller says that, “I really wanted to get these on-the-spot drawings bound together in one volume. I lost track of the sheer number of pieces I’ve done out on the road just here in Mexico and I thought it was about time to bring a selection of them together between two covers.” Miller, who is an inveterate traveler, from Southeast Asia to Europe and South America, has always carried a sketchbook with him. It’s become an integral part of the travel experience for him. “Rather than a camera, I like to record things graphically. It’s a way of understanding what’s going on around me…..and occasionally it’s even been a good ice-breaker for meeting the locals.”

Another Mexico reproduces about 130 drawings, pastels and watercolors, accompanied by “caption/commentaries” by the artist. Readers learn something of the motivations and techniques behind the work as well as Miller´s feelings about the places he’s drawn. I’ve never thought of San Miguel as being “over- cupolated,” but perhaps it is! You can find out why in the book. While the artist did not want to break up his drawing albums, some of the stand-alone watercolors and pastels reproduced in the book will be exhibited at the launch. They range from rich architectural studies of San Miguel’s landmark buildings to evocative watercolors of Mexico’s Pacific coast. Even “visual entertainments” of Vallarta’s beaches are captured by his pencil. 

Miller, an 18-year resident of San Miguel, was born in Canada and attended Toronto’s Ontario School of Art. “Back in those days, the idea of going out with a sketchbook to make observations was considered kind of quaint, almost Victorian,” says Miller. Anyone who has seen the superb draftsmanship of the artist’s drawings can see how un-fusty and un-Victorian they are. Because his drawings have rarely been shown in San Miguel, this show should not be missed. The artist will be on hand to meet, greet and sign his book. 

Cati Demme is the owner and director of the Generator Gallery. She has been a resident of San Miguel for five years. Her artwork also can be seen in the gallery.

Patricia Mahan celebrates the ordinary: Assemblages made from found objects
By Beverly Russell

Art Opening Patricia Mahan Sun, Jan 13, 3pm Bordello Gallery Órganos 19

San Miguel artist Patricia Mahan follows in the footsteps of Andy Warhol and other twentieth-century artists such as Duchamp, Picasso, Kienholz, Nevelson and Dubuffet, who created three-dimensional artworks from familiar, often discarded objects. 

Anything would serve, from leftover pieces of wood, in the case of Nevelson, to detritus of all kinds from old bottles to pieces of fabric and disused radios and kitchen appliances by Kienholz. Mahan’s pieces are fabricated from discarded metal objects which she scavenges from metal dumps in Celaya and other places.

As you walk into her studio, you may pass a pile of such junk, awaiting to be transformed, from an ancient typewriter to discarded bicycle parts, old pieces of flatware, piles of rusty nails, the odd antiquated camera, and even long-forgotten musical instruments. It is all inspiration for Mahan to set to work and create anything that comes to mind from a whimsical figure to a functional candlestick. Despite the industrial origin of the leftovers, in her hands, Mahan’s assemblages have a mystical, ethereal quality that turns the ordinary into something quite extraordinary. As the Boston Globe art critic Cate McQuaid commented, “Stuff that has passed its useful life…and is renewed into something of greater order, has a kind of totemic magic rich in symbol and mystery.”

Mahan, who enjoyed a 20-year career as a flamenco dancer before coming to San Miguel, began painting in 2002 while battling breast cancer. “It helped to ground me,” she explained, “but I found that I was not listening to my own intuitive voice. The assemblages that came to mind seemed too odd, weird and esoteric. I felt they would never be marketable, so I ignored this urge, although I found painting an excruciatingly difficult task.”

While studying The Artist’s Way, a therapeutic book by Julia Cameron with 12 chapters on how to unblock creativity, she learned that she should not be ashamed to follow her bliss. “The book provoked change and helped me find my voice,” she said, “it gave me an open mind to think, ‘Why not try this? It is what you should be doing’.” (She now facilitates a 10-week course for men and women in San Miguel using the book as her platform to help her participants unblock creative powers.)

A local ironworker started giving her discarded stuff from his foundry and told her about the metal dumps in Celaya. “Suddenly all doors opened effortlessly,” she remarked, and soon artworks began to crowd the shelves in her studio, spilling out all over her house in Independencia, which she shares with her husband Dan Matarazzo, who is known for his expertise in rolfing, cranial massage and visceral manipulation which he practices in his El Centro office. Yet even with this prolific activity, she was not convinced she was on the right path. “I brought Barbara Pool over to see my paintings,” she explained, pointing to her delightful landscapes around the house. “I hoped these would make an exhibition for her gallery. Once Barbara saw the assemblages she said they were what she wanted to show. I was absolutely astonished.”

Mahan expects to show about 25 pieces at her exhibition and emphasizes that none of this work would have been possible without the collaboration of her husband. He visits the metal dumps and goes through the debris with her. “He makes sure that each piece has integrity, he welds for me and engineers support mechanisms. We refinish each piece of metal together. I am the conceptual artist, but once the initial idea is there, how do you get it to be solidly built? The assembly and detailing are vitally important to each one.”

Mahan’s colorful life began in Saudi Arabia. Her parents were in the oil business and she was born in Beirut. She arrived in the US at age 18 and has also lived in England and Spain. Like so many people who have been drawn to San Miguel, she has finally come to her artistic destiny. “I feel very fulfilled and very passionate about what I am doing,” she confirmed.

Shown here are two of her pieces. “Alice is Hungry” with spoon and fork as arms, 24 inches tall, consists of 13 found pieces including a candle base, bicycle chain sprocket, metal shavings, clay mask and car sprocket. “Spoon Venus” is 14 inches tall with 15 found pieces containing rosary beads, door knob head, metal chains, bangles, tin trophy base and utensils.

Beverly Russell, the author of several books on design and the arts, has written for The New York Times and numerous other publications. She came to live in San Miguel in 2006.

Art and anonymity: A photographic exhibition by Nancy Chargualaf Martin
By Mac Test

Art Exhibition
Nancy Chargualaf Martin
Show open until the end of January
Galería/Estudio Valerie Mejer
Fábrica la Aurora

Presently, we can hardly imagine artists wanting to be anonymous. There is too much cultural caché in proclaiming: “I’m an artist.” Yet, if we look to the streets we can see anonymous art flourishing everywhere; I am talking about graffiti. Of course, to those initiates and participators, these aren’t anonymous projects at all—each piece is signed with what street vernacular calls a “tag,” which consists of a recognizable image or calligraphic-like signature. For the past seven years, Nancy Chargualaf Martin, an artist from Santa Barbara, California, has been obsessed with documenting these unknown graffiti artists through photography. The show will run through January.

Martin says that her photography, which registers the abstract elements of temporal graffiti/art, seeks to capture an integration of nature and art, building and human, destruction and creation. She endeavors to shine a new light on urban artwork that is frequently perceived in a negative way.

She took her first photograph of graffiti in Cinque Terre, Italy. She was amazed by the human impulse to create such artwork. Having grown up learning to respect other people’s property, she was simultaneously struck with exhilaration and judgment. Graffiti, after all, is vandalism. Martin aims to consider the creative impulse behind these rebellious expressions. She doesn’t merely document these transient pieces of art, rather she looks to create a new composition, like any good photographer, creating a whole new aesthetic presence that extends beyond the graffiti artists intentions. Her photography discovers and uncovers.

Over the years, Martin has developed new techniques by combining her photographs with watercolors and other mixed media. After learning the technique of “print transfers,” she began using her library of graffiti images to create new objects, incorporating graffiti with watercolors/mixed media. Her methodology consists of a gentle introduction to things that make us uncomfortable. Historically and communally speaking, graffiti is not a desirable art form, yet some individuals have the nerve to go up against a wall and “throw up a bomb” (street vernacular for a graffiti piece). They are driven by a creative impulse. Martin seeks to give a voice to this emotion, the thing that drives an artist to create. “We pour our souls out on canvas, on a wall, carved into a tree, scratched into glass,” she says, “in an exercise that may attract or repulse the viewer. You never know.”

Martin comes to San Miguel with a grant from the William T. Colville Foundation. Recording graffiti art has become inspirational to her own art work. These stunning images, at once abstract and pictorial, combine the elements of human expression in a great swath of creative impulse. Perhaps no other form of art embraces its medium with such verve and vigor as graffiti. The medium (a building, a sign, an oil drum, a corrugated tin wall) determines the form, and if the medium is not a legalized graffiti wall, then the pressure of time and the need for constant surveillance dictates the painting process. Jean-Michel Basquiat must have found the large indoor studios a relief compared to painting trains under the cover of night. Then again, it is no longer graffiti if produced in private environs and sold in a public art market. True graffiti belongs to the street and to the people. It cannot be sold or bartered.

The tradition continues despite the erasure of its history. Although the respected graffitists find their work preserved, new artwork frequently covers the old. Over time, the elements fade the pictures, the dilapidated building or sign crumbles—public canvases in continual flux. 

Who knows, another major icon of Basquiat status may lurk behind the tag; the question is: Does he or she want to be known?

Mac Test has published poetry, essays and reviews for various literary magazines including Utne Reader, Southern Poetry Review and Poetry London.

Last minute art news

Art Opening Fri, Jan 11, 7pm Sala de Arte Mexicano Bellas Artes Hernández Macias 75

Bellas Artes, El Centro Cultural Ignacio Ramírez, El Nigromante, welcomes sanmiguelenses to the latest exhibit by painter and sculptor Vladimir Cora.

Cora’s work is colored with the life and energy of his tropical coastal home, Acaponeta, Nayarit, reflecting both the aesthetic of the region and a social commentary on its culture. Years of experimentation with color, form and light developed into the poetic visual language which is uniquely Mexican and uniquely Vladimir Cora. 

His work figures importantly in twentieth-century Mexican Art. A celebrated protégé of modern master Rufino Tamayo, Cora forms an important part of a new generation of Mexican artists. José Luis Cuevas declared Cora one of Mexico’s greatest neo-figurative artists after Cora was honored with first prize in Mexico’s National Salon of Painting in 1983. The Museo de Arte Moderno and Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City have both held one-person exhibitions of Cora’s work. In recognition to his artistic contribution, the Mexican government honored Cora by inaugurating in Acaponeta, Nayarit the museum Casa Museo Vladimir Cora.