More offerings for the Pozos Art Walk
By Nick Hamblen July 11, 2008 San Miguel de Allende

Art Walk
Fri–Sun, July 11–13
Mineral de Pozos
01 (442) 205-0811
Artist Reception
Cusack/Walsh show
Sat, July 12, 6–9pm
galeria6

In Mineral de Pozos, galeria6 announces the exhibition of new works by Claire Cusack and Montana Walsh, the Mexico debut for these Texas-based female artists.

Cusack, a well-known sculptor and Houston native, lives in a world inspired by ordinary objects, transforming “trash” into meaningful and unexpectedly exquisite objects. “Many objects have individual voices,” she says, that guide her into their unusual pairings and assemblage. 

The perceived simplicity of Cusack’s work, in which she minimizes the use of glue and fixatives, and relies rather on precise furniture-making techniques, masks the artist’s strenuous process and attention to detail.

Ultimately her art expresses a raw spirituality not unlike the art of many primitive cultures.

Walsh, now a San Miguel resident, is an abstract expressionist who paints (and depaints) strong colors across the canvas in a brilliantly managed balance as primal as it is contemporary, “the evolution of my opinions and emotions on canvas.

Words fade. Actions are truth. My emotions evolve and dilute at nanosecond velocity. To keep up with myself, I paint,” she says.

Walsh credits her ability to create freely to her parents who took her at the age of eight to her first art class where her “beatnik” instructors first introduced her to the idea that the rules of art were to be learned so that they could be broken.

All are invited for a wine (and tequila!) artist reception with both artists in attendance. For information, email galeria6@mac.com  or call 01 (442) 205-0811.

Nick Hamblen works with galeria6 and lives in Mineral de Pozos.

Masked women at the Bordello

Art Opening
Masked Women
Margit Ilika
Mon, July 14, 7–9pm
Bordello Gallery
Órganos 19

Margit Ilika has been visiting San Miguel since 1972. After living here twice for a total of 14 years, San Miguel feels like a hometown. Her children were born here and recently her eldest son, who swam for Mexico in two Olympics, got married at St. Paul’s Church.

When she first visited on her way to graduate school at the Universidad de las Americas in Puebla, the Plymouth station wagon picked up speed going downhill on Salida a Querétaro, probably because of the zinc plates for printmaking in the back seat!

You may remember her collage technique with white masks flying off the faces of figures in her show at Bellas Artes in 1997, or even at the Centro de Artes Creativas in Cuernavaca in 1974.

At times her paintings border on social commentary; at others the influence of Lautrec, abstract expressionism, Japanese ink painting and impressionism combine to make something new and different, what she calls ilikaart.

The philosophy behind masked figures is something so simple that it helps us to be at home with the many hats we all wear. Ilika says, “We can’t be the same person in every circumstance. It isn’t so much that we are lying about who we are, no, it’s more like we have an opportunity to discover new me’s in different circumstances by putting on different masks.”

The influence of Mexican mountains can be seen in the new abstract collages called Music Mountain, which alludes to the flute music said to be heard coming from the mountain El Quemado, a moment in time captured in two-dimensional art.

The abstract series are studies of composition, color and light, like sketches before a painting. You won’t often find abstract works by Ilika on canvas; abstracts are usually done on masonite due to the mixed media the artist uses.

Ilika’s paintings are famous for their energy and delightfulness. The new Mona Lisa series shows the same homage to art history as her series of “art history studies” in which she painted into a print of an artist such as Van Gogh. 

The Mona Lisa series comes from seeing an image of a woman when she passed the color TV walking toward the studio. There on the screen was a stunning woman with black hair wearing a red dress; later a picture in a magazine appeared to be the same woman, complete with the Mona Lisa smile. Fixing the picture to resemble the woman on TV at a glance seemed to be an act of capturing a memory, trapping the fleeting glance. The woman in the painting, called “Portrait from TV,” has the customary mask flying away.

Leftovers from surrealism 

Art Presentation
Joseph Slusky
Antologia Escultural
Mon, July 14, noon
Sala Quetzal
Biblioteca Pública
Insurgentes 25

Joseph Slusky’s exhibition featuring 13 pieces of painted steel sculpture represents 30 years of evolving techniques and spatial concepts in his work.

The influences evident in the upright, three-dimensional pieces span much of the modernist movement of the twentieth century, beginning with Picasso’s collages and paying particular attention to the new Constructivist statements that traversed the Atlantic in the thirties.

As an artist working from the mid-sixties to the present, Slusky began exhibiting when the second generation of abstract expressionists were starting to be noticed in galleries and museums across the US. It was then that he experienced the flow of talent from Hans Hoffman, Earl Loran and Sidney Gordon, who joined the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley. Already their work incorporated the positive, utilitarian concepts evidenced by artists like David Smith or Robert Roshenberg whose assemblages broke ground for new ways of combining two- and three-dimensional materials in single statements. The Funk Movement on the West Coast led by Robert Hudson also flourished, imprinting Slusky with leftovers from surrealism.

Slusky’s sculptures begin in the scrap heap, from which he draws the archeology of his welded constructions, forms that are later fused into unpremeditated structures. He works intuitively, often referring to the process as “journeys to inner excavations.” Discarded metal references the Los Angeles culture where he grew up and becomes the message of an inner vision, a vision of cosmos, closer to the drawings Slusky makes, although the drawings are seeded by a different process not related to the hard sculptural forging. Playfully abstract, determined to be non-figurative, the brightly painted pieces nonetheless occasionally evidence a human symmetry, a wild figure struggling to free itself from springs of gravity.

More related to the drawings may be the final step in the process of creating the earthbound pieces, when the surfaces are layered with coats of acrylic, sanded and coded with detailed geometrics that recall Joan Miró’s search for a meaningful language, or Joaquin Torres Garcia’s Universal Constructivism that encouraged references to pre-Columbian glyphs in Latin American paintings. Slusky’s graphics, however, are pure invention. In a final impulse to further reference his personal journey, he searches maps for destinations like Mozambique, Senegal or Kajabbi, endowing each metal variation with a sense of the unknown, the obscure. The meaning is in the journey to each place.

Artist donates to Cañada de la Virgen project
By Edward Swift

When Merry Calderoni stands before an ancient Mexican wall with many layers of color bleeding through to the surface, she wonders who stood there before her, who planned a change in history there, what lovers kissed before the wall or used it to pass on a written message?

Was someone executed there? What stories are contained in each layer of paint?

Her emphasis as a painter has always been on texture and color. It is no surprise that ancient, crumbling walls, first Italian and then Mexican, found their way into her paintings. At first she painted them in a realistic manner, but now she prefers to paint her impressions of the walls in an abstract style. Sometimes she pulverizes bits of the walls and mixes the coarse powder with her pigment. In some of the paintings she incorporates bits and pieces of old posters, cardboard or metal.

Over the past three years she has found inspiration in the murals, carvings and textures found on Mexican pyramids. Working shoulder to shoulder with a team of archaeologists on the restoration of Cañada de la Virgen, a pyramid about 25 miles from San Miguel, she was inspired to create a series of large abstract paintings called Mexcavations in celebration of this pyramid and the people who constructed it. When the paintings were shown in Bellas Artes last year, Calderoni pledged a percentage of sales to future excavations in the state of Guanajuato. Some of the money will be used to pave a road to Cañada de la Virgen, which should be open to the public in the near future. She also donated a painting of the pyramid’s mural, to be hung in the on-site museum.

In the catalog that accompanied the Bellas Artes exhibition, Gabriela Zepeda writes, “We look to the new and modern work of Merry Calderoni to invoke, implore and reunite the ancient goddesses and old gods of Mesoamerica. I celebrate the art of Calderoni, and I am very pleased to know that her inspiration is my past.”

Merry Calderoni has a working studio/gallery in Fábrica la Aurora.

Edward Swift is a local artist and writer.

Sonambulopolis, workers and women
By Carmen Gutierrez

Art Opening
Pedro Friedeberg, Artemio Sepulveda, 
Miguel Angel Castellanos
Sat, July 12, 6–9pm
Galería Casa Diana
Recreo 48

A group exhibition for Pedro Friedeberg, Artemio Sepulveda and Miguel Angel Castellanos opens Saturday at Galería Casa Diana.

Friedeberg presents a series of small-format original paintings from the series “Sonambulopolis.” He captures a moment that appears static but where spaces are more related to stage sets. The human figure, absent in his paintings and prints, becomes the lead motif of his sculptures and art objects.

Expressionist Sepulveda offers a large collection of pastel and charcoal works on paper. His images portray life experiences which lead him to identify with workers—their exploitation, weaknesses, vulnerabilities, worn faces and hands and humanity.

Castellanos shows several large-format oils on canvas, with a touch of gold and silver leaf. With great tenderness, the young artist portrays Mexican women and children in their folkloric costumes. His paintings have a crystalline vision with a liquid transparency, which evoke both an intense yet dreamlike quality.

The gallery is open Monday through Saturday from 10am–2 pm and 4pm–7pm, Sundays 11–2pm or by appointment at 152-0885.