Life source of the human spirit 
By Anna Maria Muñoz January 9, 2009 San Miguel de Allende

Art Opening
Oneness of Spirit: Man and Nature
Agnes Olive
Sat, Jan 10, 6–8pm
Galería de Arte Contemporáneo
Relox 46

Agnes Olive has lived in San Miguel since 1996 and has introduced several resident artists to the community in the “Creative Journey” series of presentations. Her work has been exhibited in Asia, Europe, Canada, Mexico and the US. She is a graduate of Sheridan College School of Design, Toronto, and an art therapist with the National Expressive Therapy Association, New York.

Anna Muñoz: What was your main source of inspiration for your current body of work?

Agnes Olive: The words of Native American James Duncan echo what I am feeling and inspired the title “Oneness of Spirit.” Prophecy says a time would come when we would be at a crossroads. The Elders have said that we are now there and it is time for all of our people to come back to the spiritual oneness that bound us to Mother Earth and each other. This journey is about coming together in healing with understanding and forgiveness.

AM: And your own journey?

AO: I have been on a long spiritual path that has always included my love of ritual and ceremony. Many years ago in Bali, when I was introduced to animism for the first time, I knew I had touched something that resonated deeply within me. It wasn’t an intellectual reaction. I felt it.

Later, in Sulawesi, Indonesia, I witnessed a ceremony in which newborns who die before they have received a soul are tenderly wrapped in a white cloth and buried inside the trunk of a tree so the spirit can be reborn. This and similar customs take place in cultures where ancient traditions and beliefs in nature spirits are still alive.

An encounter with this ceremony in Sulawesi inspired my work “Spirit of the Tree.” I have been fortunate to have ventured to many corners of the world. In Laos I read about and then encountered in a small village a “spirit bridge.” An infant who is born without a soul is placed in a basket just outside the door and a spirit bridge is built nearby. The child waits for the spirit to cross the bridge and for the soul to enter. My tribute to these ceremonies and to the interconnection and life source of the human spirit and nature is the theme in my exhibition.

AM: What in your background do you think sparked this interest in ritual and ceremony?

AO: I grew up in a small Canadian town. As a serious but imaginative child I perceived that something was missing in my life. There was no magic. Then, at the age of six, sin entered my life. In my instructions for first communion, the Catholic Church taught me that I was born with sin, a black mark on my soul. This seemed extremely unfair, and then even more serious information followed. My best friend could not be with me in Heaven because she was not Catholic. That was the final straw and the beginning of my search for a way of life that made some sense to me. This search began in books and in later years led me to travels through countries practicing a diversity of religions and beliefs that I would never have otherwise encountered. The rituals of Buddhism, animism and Native Americans have been inspiring my artwork for many years. My concerns today deal with what man is doing to the environment and

the fine balance between man and nature. I do believe we share one consciousness. Every Saturday morning I walk in the botanical garden and take time to meditate while sitting on the rocks, listening to the wind, the water, the birds and the silence. This is my church.

AM: Have you always felt close to nature? AO: Yes, as a child growing up in a small town, I had access to the countryside and lots of open space. I swam in rivers, skated on millponds and biked for miles to hike in the woods. Of course at the time, I did not realize what a privilege this was. As an adult, I moved with my family to the small village of Terra Cotta, Ontario.

I set up a clay studio and for many years dug and processed this red earth transforming it into clay vessels. I took one of my first pots, dug a hole and returned the pot with thanks and gratitude back into the ground. You cannot get much closer to the earth than that. My clay pieces pertained to ritual or ceremonies and included small bowls and tea caddies for the tea ceremony for the Japanese Cultural Centre in Toronto. Again in my life I was fortunate to have countryside in which to roam and collect.

A transformative experience was coming across the bleached skeleton of a deer, just lying on the ground waiting for me to arrive. Thus began my work with bone, first by combining it with clay and later with my handmade paper. The rather amused neighbors often left offerings of bone and old metal on my doorstep. For 20 years, my studio with attached gallery was in a 150-year-old historical forge. It was ideally set in parkland with a river running through. I had found my magic.

AM: You talk about your life as a clay artist. When did you start working in handmade paper?

AO: In 1984, I moved with my husband to Lahore, Pakistan, for three years. My position at the National Art College as Ceramic Artist in Residence proved very early on to be a disastrous situation and I departed. A few months later, while traveling through Japan, I decided to go back to Pakistan and set up a papermaking studio. Being a novice, I began experimenting with local raw materials such as bagasse, which is what is left after the juice is removed from sugar cane. The vendors were in awe that this memsahib was going to turn it into paper. At the end of two years I returned to the Art College to teach papermaking and a year later held an exhibition at the National Art Gallery in Lahore. It was entitled “Ways of Seeing” and included many objects such as sticks from brooms and objects from the local market embedded into the paper forms. This was quite a departure from the very formal paintings normally exhibited. In a review, the art critic stated, “This is definitely the work of witchcraft.” I loved it. L
ater while I was a resident at the Banff School of Fine Arts, I experimented with combining clay and paper, a product called Paperclay. Since moving to San Miguel, it seems very natural for me to combine many materials in my constructions. I assemble and combine weathered wood, old metal, handmade paper, bones and seeds and gifts from the sea such a crab tails, and offerings from friends. Instead of digging clay, I now collect corn stalks and other materials from the countyside. 

Anna Maria Muñoz is an actor’s coach, an artist and a curator who studied with Arles Aranda in Mexico City. She curated gallery exhibitions in Tepoztlán and Morelos before moving to San Miguel.

Smooth, sensual bronze sculptures 

Art Opening 
Guillermo Gutiérrez
Thu, Jan 15, 5–8pm
Galería Casa Diana
Recreo 48

Galería Casa Diana inaugurates the 2009 season with the work of an extraordinary sculptor, Guillermo “Miki” Gutiérrez, who has shown his work extensively within Mexico and at the Art Festival in Miami. The sculptor presents 25 small-format bronze sculptures in an unusually smooth patina. His work is extremely sensual. One can appreciate in this exquisite collection of abstracts his precise movements and his connection with the viewer. Gutiérrez’s bronzes at times resemble the human figure, at other times the waves of the sea or other organic forms. Their strength derives from their form and simplicity as well as an achievement of a total equilibrium.

Along with these sculptures and the permanent Friedeberg and Turbeville collections, the gallery also presents several recent multimedia paintings by Carmen Gutiérrez, whose paintings at first seem quite simple—almost primitive or naïve—yet on second observation reveal a profound sense of the mysticism of Far Eastern philosophies and complex esoteric and personal symbols, such as the recurring use of tiny spirals to represent eternity.

The exhibit will be shown until February 9. The galley is open Monday–Saturday, 10am–2pm and 4–7pm and Sundays, 11am–2pm. For more information call 152-0885.

Two Generator exhibits for Art Walk 
By Cati Demme

Art Opening
Keith Miller: New Works
Small Works: From the Heart
Fri, Jan 9, 5–8pm
Generator Gallery
Fábrica La Aurora 14a
Calzada de la Aurora

Keith Miller’s “New Works” involve a trompe d’oeil approach to the art of still life painting. They may even be said to be a commentary on the fictive nature of the three-dimensional spaces produced by all naturalistic or representational painting.

This is art that chooses art as its subject, and we can sense the element of irony and humor in his work. Along with this series, Miller also shows botanical and landscape paintings long appreciated by San Miguel collectors. In addition, signed copies of his two books, Close to Nature and Another Mexico, are available.

In “Small Works: From the Heart,” just in time for Valentine’s Day (Or “Friendship Day” in Mexico), 10 artists present intimate works, all 16 inches (40cm) or smaller. Two artists new to the Generator this time are Barbara Porter and Nisha.

 Porter presents her exquisite collection of whimsical assemblages never before exhibited in San Miguel. Nisha, of “DaNisha” ceramic sculpture fame, presents her new series of spectacularly innovative oil paintings on shaped wood panels. Other exhibiting artists include Cati Demme, David Leonardo, Henri Moyal, Sioban O’Donoghue, Lulu Torbet, Wabi Sabi Collective and Alvaro Zardoni.

Both shows will be on display through February 5.

Gallery Opening

Fri, Jan 9, 5–8pm
James Harvey Artist
Fábrica La Aurora

A brand-new gallery at Fábrica La Aurora, called “James Harvey Artist,” opens this Friday during the monthly Art Walk.

Action painting and the Sal-Zar technique
By Helen Rivas 

Art Opening
Roland Salazar Rose
Estudio Salazar Gallery
Fri, Jan 16, 5–8pm
Montitlán 6, Los Balcones

The theme of the recent paintings by Roland Salazar Rose centers on landscapes of Mexico created in the abstract expressionist style. Also on exhibit are earlier large, figurative paintings employing Salazar’s unique Sal-Zar mixed media technique.

Most abstract expressionist art is not the painting of an object or image, but rather a study in color and brush stroke. There are two major types of abstract expressionism: action painting and color field painting. In action painting, the artist strives to show movement through color. Jackson Pollock is an example. He dripped and poured his paint. Salazar uses spray enamels in his Sal-Zar medium to create special images and, like Pollock, pours or drips the Sal-Zar or applies it by brush. Guillermo Zajarias, director of the Aura Galerías in Mexico City, writes, “His landscapes transmit the geographical beauty of this area [San Miguel de Allende] as well as the myriad faces portrayed as if these were commissioned portraits of imaginary people. His technique is unique. The magnificent end result: a rich work of art.” 

A “color field painter” is one who is concerned with color and shape. Mark Rothko is one of the best examples of this kind of painter, as is demonstrated by his rectangles and the variety of color that he uses. Other examples are Willem de Kooning, Adoph Gottieb and Jean Debuffet. 

Thomas B. Hess remarked in an earlier exhibition of action painting at the Dallas Museum for Contemporary Arts, “Action painting is not ‘personal,’ though its subject matter is the artist’s individual possibilities.” Salazar Rose says, “Although I hate to use labeling to describe what I do, ‘abstract expressionism’ allows me to use each dab of color or layer of resin to characterize both my mood and my reaction to the ‘process’ as it occurs.”

The artist shows nationally in major US cities such as in New York, Miami, San Francisco and Chicago. In Mexico, he has shown in one-person exhibitions at the Instituto de Relaciones, the Diego Rivera Museum in Guanajuato; Galería Libertade in Querétaro and Bellas Artes in San Miguel.

At this exhibition, Salazar is also displaying six art books of images and writings about the series he has painted in San Miguel since 1988. Some are on sale at the Biblioteca Pública’s Tienda. They are also available at no charge as electronic pdf files at www.e-artbooks.com. Additional information on the artist is available at www.salazargallery.com.  

The paintings are on display at Estudio Salazar Gallery from January 16 through March 31. Hours are Tuesday and Thursday, 11am–2pm, and Sunday, 2–5pm, or call 152-0995 for an appointment.

Art Opening

Winter Graphic
Yam Gallery
Thu, Jan 15, 5:30pm
Instituto Allende
Ancha de San Antonio 20, int. 1 

Yam Gallery is honored to inaugurate Winter Graphic, a group show that includes the works of distinguished artists such as Flor Minor, Bela Gold, Paloma Diaz, José Castro Lenero and Oscar Gutman.

Of particular interest in this show is the “Tequila Diablo” etching series, commissioned to important Mexican artists such as Macotela, Gilberto Aceves Navarro, Roberto Turnbull, Jazzmoart, Gustavo Aceves and Mario Nuñez. The gallery also has invited resident artists Paul Rodríguez and Ana Thiel to present their new series of graphic works in this exhibit.