"A Pillow Book"/Manga

plato desgrafiado, serie manga/incised plate, Manga series, 1999

Continuando con eso de "Chinoiserie/Orientalismos"/Continuing the discussion of "Chinoiserie/Orientalismos": for English, scroll down...

fragment of the first version of "A Pillow Book"/fragmento de la primera versión de "A Pillow Book", 2001“A Pillow Book”

De esta obra hay dos versiones, la primera más chica, la segunda más amplia. Empecé a trabajar en el proyecto en principios de esta década, “tratando de ser moderna”, yo creo. (Mi capacidad de salir de lo decimonónico siempre es cuestionable). La obra: se trata de una serie de cojines hechos de tela con transferencia y costura. La primera versión es de 150 x 100 cm, y la segunda, montada en triplay forrado de tela roja, es de 25 elementos de aprox. 30 x 40 c/u.

_____________________________________fragmento de la versión II/fragment of version II "A Pillow Book", 2005
Este proyecto se me ocurrió al estar viendo (durante alguna noche ¡larga y solitaria!) una película del realizador japonés, Akira Kurosawa, “Ángel Borracho”, con subtítulos en inglés. Lo dramático de las imágenes junto con el discurso impreso me hizo recordar a ese género extraordinario, la fotonovela mexicana, y decidí hacer mi propia versión, imitación fotonovela con un fragmento de la película. En la escena que escogí, el héroe, un pandillero joven muriéndose de tuberculosis, trata de sacar un beso de su novia, quien está a punto de abandonarlo por su rival (quien no está enfermo). Es el beso de la muerte: piensa ella que se quedará infectada.

Mi hijo Andrés me conectó la videocasetera (sí, fue antes cuando se usaba eso de videocaseteras) a la computadora, y con estas imágenes sacadas de la impresora hice las fotocopias que sirvieron para hacer la transferencia. La costura es una especie de dibujo que interviene la imagen fotográfica, y la elaboración de los cojines tipo almohadas, además de dar una forma cercana al encuadre de la fotonovela, me da la excusa para hacer la referencia a la película de Peter Greenaway en el título.

fragmentos de la versión II, fragments from version II, "A Pillow Book", 2005

Y va bien eso de las almohadas, porque es una escena de recámara.
También me interesó esta obra de Kurosawa en particular porque está ambientada en el Japón de las posguerra, un Japón tratando de asimilar la cultura de sus vencedores.

fragmento de la versión II, fragment of version II, "A Pillow Book", 2005Escogí la escena por su intimidad y dramatismo, dos cualidades que siempre me atraen. Las dramas de recamara son mi debilidad…

_______________Piezas Manga ________________________________

panorama, obra manga/work from the series "manga", 2006-7

La caricatura existía en la sociedad japonesa como una forma de ukiyo-e, recortable para armar libritos, tarjetas, o estampas. Y la narrativa o trabajo secuencial era elemento implícito de los rollos tradicionales. Pero el comic moderno japonés (manga) me interesa por la forma en que absorbe la influencia occidental mientras sigue trabajando con los elementos estilísticos de la gráfica japonesa de antes. Lo que más me llama la atención es, una vez más, el manejo del dramatismo en el dibujo.

plato "La gritona"/plate, "The screamer", 2007

Ya había trabajado con grafismos de varias culturas con la idea de llevar algo que es por naturaleza bidimensional a una manifestación más tridimensional, es decir, de objeto. Entre otros medios lo había probado con cerámica, que es lo que me propuse con las imágenes basadas en manga.

Traduje varios fragmentos de comic japonés en placas de xilografía.
Al imprimir la placa en tablas de barro, todos los elementos se vuelven tridimensionales. El barro impreso se puede recortar y enrollar o meter en un molde para hacer un plato, etc. Otra alternativa es de desgrafiar directamente el barro, dibujando en su superficie. (En general trabajo con cerámica de alta temperatura o porcelana).
Mi idea era de hacer dípticos o polípticos combinando la misma placa de xilografía impresa en barro y en papel. Pero al hacer la impresión en papel de la xilografía ocupado para el barro, sentí la necesidad de contextualizarlo más, darle más niveles de lectura. Entonces empecé a combinar los grabados de la serie “Microcosmos” con las imágenes basadas en manga.

"Voom", 2007

Esta obra es reciente, de hace dos o tres años para acá, y espero desarrollar mucho más este proyecto.

¿De qué voy a hablar en la próxima sesión? Quién sabe, es un nuevo año.....

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¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡ENGLISH VERSION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

"A Pillow Book "

fragment from version II/fragmento de la versión II, "A Pillow Book", 2005

There are two versions of this work, the first one is smaller both in size and number of elements, and the second, much more extensive. I started working on this project in the beginning of the present decade, “trying to be more modern” I think. I tend to get stuck in the nineteenth century, but here I made it up to about 1950. Anyway, both versions consist of a series of cushions or pillows made up of fabric with images in transfer intervened by sewing. The first version is about 5 by 3 feet, and the second has 25 elements, mounted on plywood covered with red cloth, each pillow being approximately 12 by 16 inches.

fragment of version II/fragmento de la versión II, "A Pillow Book"

This project occurred to me while watching (some long lonely night!) a movie by the Japanese director Akira Kurosawa, with subtitles in English: “ Drunken Angel”. The dramatic nature of the images together with the printed dialogue reminded me of that extraordinary genre, the Mexican photo-novel, and I decided to make my own version, imitation photo-novel, with a fragment of the movie. In the scene I chose, the hero, a young gangster dying of tuberculosis, tries to get a kiss out of his girlfriend who is about to abandon him for his rival (who isn’t sick). The kiss of death: she thinks it will infect her.

fragment of version II/fragmento de la versión II, "A Pillow Book", 2005

My son Andrés helped me connect the VCR (yes, it was back in the VCR days) to the computer in order to get a series of stills from the video, and with these computer print-outs I made the photocopies used in the transfer prints. The sewing works as a way of drawing on/intervening the photographic image, and making the work in the form of pillows creates a format similar to that of the photo-novels, as well as giving me an excuse to make a reference to the movie of Peter Greenaway (The Pillow Book) in my title. And the pillow business is appropriate thematically, since the scene is set in a bedroom.

I was also interested in the work of Kurosawa because it takes Japan after their defeat in World War II, a Japan trying to assimilate the customs of their victors. I chose the scene for its intimacy and dramatic nature, two qualities which always attract me. I tend to get sucked into these bedroom dramas….

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Manga Pieces

detail, print from the series "Manga"/detalle, grabado de la serie "Manga", 2007

Caricature existed in traditional Japan in the form of ukiyo-e, printed pages that could be cut up to make booklets, cards, or stamps. And in Japanese scrolls narrative or sequential scenes were implicit.

But I find the modern Japanese comic (manga) interesting for the way in which it assimilates Western influences without abandoning the Japanese graphic tradition. What most attracts my attention, as usual, is the inherent dramatic quality of the images.

I have already worked with graphic material from other cultures with the idea of taking a two-dimensional image and translating it into a three-dimensional state, into some sort of object. Ceramics was one of the media I have used, and the one I chose to apply to this project.

I translated various fragments of Japanese comics into woodcuts. When the woodcut is printed onto slabs of clay all the elements of the image become three-dimensional. The printed clay can be cut and rolled or accommodated in a mold to form a plate, etc. (Generally I work with stoneware or porcelain).

cilindro, serie Manga/cilinder, Manga series, 2007

______________________________________incised stoneware/cerámica desgrafiada,1999

Mi idea was to make diptychs or triptychs combining the same woodcut printed in clay and printed on Japanese paper. But when I made the print on paper, I felt that the image needed some other element in order to create a more complex context and thus the possibility of more levels of perception of the finished work. So I decided to incorporate the small drypoint prints of the Microcosmos series into the finished manga prints.

This work is recent (I started it several years ago) and is part of an on-going project.

As for the subject matter of my next blog session.........who knows, it's a whole new year!

detail, stoneware plate, detalle, plato de cerámica, 1999

Chinoiserie, Japonesadas

Dos versiones de un mundo/Two Versions of a world, 1988

En las próximas entradas al blog quiero hablar de la veta oriental tan recurrente en mi obra. For the English versión, scroll down.

Japón, 1915/1950/Japan, 1915/1950,1988

NARRATIVAS JAPONESAS

¿Por qué japonesas? Me es un recurso recurrente, y a ciencia cierta no sé la razón. Pero puedo especular.
--es un ejercicio en otredad. Hay una mayor ambigüedad en las imágenes porque no manejo todas sus implicaciones culturales. Entonces puede haber niveles de lectura que ni sospecho. O que sospecho, pero no conozco. Y hay, para mí, una atracción inherente en lo desconocido, sobre todo si es visualmente seductor.
--el dramatismo de la cultura japonesa me es muy afán.

de la serie, Microcosmos/from the series Microcosmos, 1993

--siempre me han interesado los puntos de intersección de culturas (por ejemplo, mi trabajo con el encuentro de los indígenas americanos con los europeos, y mis primeras imágenes de mestizas y mulatas.) El trasfondo siendo, quizás, mi propia condición de estar entre dos culturas.
--cada uno de estos proyectos se puede ver desde la perspectiva de la intersección de culturas.
--todo este trabajo consiste en la reelaboración de productos culturales ya existentes (apropiación e intervención). En este proceso, y al estar contextualizados dentro de mi obra, el original se tuerce para que lleve, además del trasfondo de su contexto original, un significado propio de su nueva situación.

Me parece particularmente interesante practicar esta transgresión con material japonés, como los japoneses mismos son los maestros de mimetizar elementos de otras culturas y hacerlos suyos. Y por otro lado, en asuntos pertinentes a autoridad y género, mis valores son radicalmente distintos a lo tradicionalmente japonés. En ciertas imágenes, mi intervención cuestiona el contexto original, subrayando o cambiando su sentido.

de la serie, Floating World/from the series, Floating World , 1998

¿Por qué narrativas? Narrativa en el sentido de mover en el espacio y tiempo, de crear algún tipo de dinámica. O llevar una secuencia. Narrativas que a veces son historias, pero definitivamente historias fragmentadas, y en algunos casos, re armables en otra secuencia en otro momento. Unos rompecabezas, que digamos…

Las imagenes que aparecen aquí son de distintas etapas de mi carrera. Hay varias de los ochenta, principalmente dibujos.
El primer dibujo en aparecer, “Dos versiones de un mundo” es un pequeño tríptico que hace referencia a las distintas maneras de percibir una misma realidad. La segunda está basada en dos fotografías de mujeres japonesas, con 35 años de diferencia. Antes y después de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, pues.

El dibujo “El sonido del viento” (este es una obra bastante grande) combina una imagen decimonónica, europea, con otra tomada por un italiano, Beato, de un samurái en el Japón del silgo 19. El díptico “La persistencia de la memoria” (título originado por Dalí, por cierto) combina una imagen basada en la fotografía de una geisha en principios del siglo 20 con otra de una prostituta de Nueva Orleans fotografiado por el francés Bellocq (la película Pretty Baby lo volvió famoso). El primer dibujo tiene que ver con la disolución de una relación, y la segunda, con la mágica continuidad entre mujeres de una cultura y otra.

de la serie "Floating World"/from the series "Floating World", 1993

La imagen de la serie “Floating World” es de una de varias fotografías que tomé de una obra mía. La obra consistía en un espejo viejo intervenido con una fotocopia del ya mencionado Beato de una geisha. Al poner telas diferentes en frente del espejo, la imagen reflejada y fotografiada cambiaba, “flotaba”. El mundo flotante es una referencia al mundo de las cortesanas en el Japón antiguo, que se llamaba así.

La primera imagen (un grabado chico en punta seca) de la serie “Microcosmos” es de una película japonesa, representa el principio del castigo de una mujer adúltera (eventualmente la matan, el procedimiento usual, aparentemente). Las gieshas de espaldas son de la misma serie "Microcosmos", pero están basadas en una fotografía de Beato. Y las mujeres acostadas con sus guardianes también. De un extenso collage de fotografías de bebés japoneses, el anuncio de un fotógrafo de bebés en principio del siglo XX en Japón, salieron otras imágenes de "Microcosmos".
Hay mucho más, esperen…luego viene “A Pillow Book”.

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In the next few blog entries I want to talk about the recurrent Oriental vein in my work. To wit:
JAPONESE NARRATIVES

El sonido del viento (si lo real no me es real, ¿porqué han de ser sueños, mis sueños?/The sound of the wind (If what is real is not real to me, why should my dreams be dreams?, 1990

¿Why Japanese? I tend to drift into Oriental imagery, although I’m not entirely sure why. I can, however, speculate…
--it’s an exercise in otherness. There is more ambiguity in the images because I’m not familiar with all the cultural implications. So there can be different readings of the work, readings I’m not even aware of when making it. Or that I suspect, but can’t confirm. And for me, there is an inherent attraction in the unknown, especially if it’s visually seductive.
--the dramatic nature of Japanese images is something I can relate to.

The persistence of memory/La persistencia de la memoria,1987--I’ve always been interested in the points of intersection between cultures. For example, my work with the historical encounter of the Native American and European cultures, and my early images of mixed race and “mestiza” women. I work with these themes, I imagine, because of my own situation of being between (or within) two cultures.

--each of my projects involving Oriental themes can thus be seen from the perspective of the intersection of cultures.
--All the work involves the re elaboration of cultural products already in existence, (appropriation and intervention).

--Why narratives? These are narrative in the sense of movement in space and time, the creation of some kind of dynamic, or of a sequence. Narratives which sometimes are stories or histories, but definitely fragmented ones,, at times susceptible to being put together in a different way or in a different sequence, in another moment. Puzzles, perhaps. The images that appear here are from different stages in my career. There are several from the eighties, principally drawings.
The first drawing that appears, “Two Versions of One World”, is a small triptych, which refers to the distinct manners possible of perceiving the same reality.

The second is based on two photographs of Japanese women, with 35 years of distance. Before and after World War Two, that is.

The drawing, “The Sound of the Wind” (this is quite a large work) combines a nineteenth- century European image with another, of a samurai, taken by an Italian photographer in nineteenth –century Japan. The diptych “The Persistence of Memory “(a title borrowed from Dali, of course) combines an image based on a photograph of a geisha en in the early twentieth century with the portrait of a prostitute in new Orleans from the same historic period, taken by the French photographer Bellocq, (the movie Pretty Baby made him famous may years later).

The first drawing has to do with the dissolution of a relationship, and the second, with the mysterious bond between women from one culture and another.

The first image from the series “The Floating World” is one of several photographs that I took of one of my works. The piece consisted of an old mirror with the photocopy of a geisha (by Beato) behind the glass where the silver coating had fallen off. I placed different materials in front of the work and as the reflections changed, so did the photographed image. “The floating world” is a reference to the world of courtesans in ancient Japan, which was thus designated.

Bebés japonés de "Microcosmos"/Japanese babies from "microcosmos, 1993

The image (a small print in dry point) from the series “Microcosmos” is from a Japanese movie still that depicted the beginning of the punishment of an adulterous woman (eventually they killed her, the usual procedure, apparently.) The images of the backs of geishas are from photographs taken by Beato, and those of reclining women with their guardians as well.
From an extensive collage of Japanese babies, the window display of a Japanese baby photographer from the early twentieth century came more scenes from “Microcosmos.”

There is much more to come, starting with “A Pillow Book”.

Escenas de "Microcosmos"/Scenes from "Microcosmos", 1993

"From the Edge...", last entry/"Desde la orilla...", última entrada

Finally we are coming to the end of the almost endless essay "From the Edge, Both Real and Imaginary". Scroll down for the English version and the preceding chapters.

Por fin, el final del larguísmo ensayo, "Desde la orilla, real e imaginaria". Los capítulos previos se pueden encontrar más abajo. Las imágenes de esta entrada consisten en primero, dibujos y grabados de niñas, a petición de Angel de la Rueda, y fragmentos del políptico "America en Extremo".

"Mamá enojada con su pequeña hija"/"Mommy mad at her little girl", 1953

Realmente no me gusta demasiado admitir que he enfrentado circunstancias para las cuales me he sentido poco preparada, que no he enfrentado bien, que me han abrumado, pero ya que lo pienso, sí me ha pasado, y recientemente.
La verdad, la década de los noventa no me fue fácil. En cuanto a mi carrera, es cuando me establecí bien, supongo. Incluso ahora me quedo atónita cuando recuerdo cómo trabajaba. Por ejemplo, cuando iba a exponer en el Museo de Arte Moderno, fui a ver la sala, y me asusté. Se veía enorme; me sentía de tamaño normal, pero mi obra se me hacía... infinitamente chica. Bueno, de tamaño, comparada con el lugar que tenía que llenar. No sé que es que impulsa a los hombres a hacer cuadros de tres por cinco metros, pero en mi obra un cuadro grande es de un metro por un metro. A lo mejor todo empieza por el hecho que los hombres tienden a tener sus talleres en otros lados, donde sus familias no los distraen, talleres que suponemos han de ser enormes y llenos de bocetos y cuadros en proceso y elementos de instalación y tarros medio vacíos de pintura y botellas vacías de vino y cajas de pizza deterioradas, etc. Siempre he tenido mis talleres en mi casa, así puedo trabajar mientras vigilo lo que está en el horno y volver a trabajar cuando los niños están dormidos (antes cuando mis niños no eran los hombres que ahora son.) Esto quiere decir que trabajo en mesas y en paredes no más altas que dos metros y pico. Además, por naturaleza me gusta trabajar dimensiones no muy grandes, es más íntimo.
Entonces para poder llenar aquel espacio me hice un calendario de lo que tenía que terminar y cuándo. Lo que más recuerdo es que decidí que no tendría tiempo para ir al cine en unos ocho meses. Pero sí llené las paredes, y después de eso las de varios museos más.

"En suma, vista como una existencia que aparece en un alma, el mundo entero para cada quien es peculiar y privado a su alma en específico...FM Bradley citado por TS Eliot/"In brief, regarded as an existence which appears in a soul, the world for each is peculiar and private to that soul" FM Bradley quoted by TS Eliot, 1993 (I)

Al mismo tiempo (¿por no ir al cine?) mi vida social era cada vez más deficiente. Los círculos sociales del mundo del arte iban cambiando. En los ochenta, estuve bien dentro de ese circuito. Pero el mundo iba cambiando, y yo también, y poco a poco me encontraba más aislada. Volvía a rondarme el fantasma de ser la marginada. Y ya no tenía una pareja que me ayudara a integrarme. Es más, la mayor parte de la década no tuve pareja, y cuando la tuve, me complicaba más las cosas en vez de solucionármelas. Tenía unos amigos, buenos pero bastante ocupados, no exactamente un buen sistema de apoyo. Luego mis hijos se independizaron. Creo que fue en 1996 que empecé a vivir sola, prácticamente por primera vez en mi vida. Esto es sin contar seis meses en Boston en 1970, antes de meterme a una comuna de mujeres.
Mi hijo Andrés me regaló un gato cuando se fue. Todavía lo tengo, un siamés con mucho carácter y luego compré en Mercado Sonora una gata que nos resultó algo carente de carácter, pero que funge bien como mascota del siamés. (Andrés ya tenían cuatro gatos: Violencia, Crisis, Caos y Sismo. Quería regalarme más, pero me resistí.)

"En suma..."/"In brief ...", (II)

Y me pasó otra cosa. Desde 1994, empecé a tener anemia. Nadie (léase doctores) sabía por qué. Bueno, tenían sus teorías pero no me podían curar. Me había vuelto vegetariana pero volví a comer carne con la esperanza de sanarme. Y volví con una ex-pareja con la esperanza de alegrarme. Ninguna de las dos cosas tuvo el efecto deseado.

En el dos mil hice una buena exposición (es decir, una que me satisfizo) en la galería de Arte Mexicano. Pensé, bueno, no tengo pareja, no tengo energía, pero estoy funcionando. Fui a sacar un certificado médico para tener seguro y el ginecólogo decidió que tenía un tumor en el útero. Estaba equivocado, pero sí tenía un quiste en un ovario. Luego me quiso operar y quitarme el ovario, ¿o eran los dos? y además el útero. “¿Pero por qué el útero?” le pregunté desconcertada. “¿Para que lo quieres?” me contestó.
Me hizo tomar una serie de exámenes caros y desagradables (como una tomografía.) Después de varios meses de estar especulando acerca de cuándo y cómo podría morir, fui a otro doctor. Este decidió tratar el quiste con hormonas (cosa que resultó) pero a pesar de la mejoría estaba yo cada vez más triste y sin energía. Fui a dar una plática a unos niños de preprimaria sobre que es ser “pintora” y la primera pregunta fue, “¿Por qué estás tan amarilla?” Y, mi cara estaba extrañamente hinchada. Así que no me sentía muy bonita que digamos. Además, estaba pasando por la menopausia. No nos gusta hablar de eso porque es como dejar caer el dato de que estamos al punto de dejar de ser “babes”, como dice una amiga, pero el hecho es que me estaba pasando y estaba sola. Pasaba días en el sofá sin ganas de hacer nada, y la idea de vivir treinta años más (suponiendo que llegara a tener ochenta) me llenaba de angustia, porque no se me ocurría nada que hacer con todo ese tiempo. Fue en ese entonces que una amiga, para un proyecto suyo, me hizo una entrevista en la cual cada vez que me preguntaba algo sobre la historia de mi vida, me echaba a llorar.

Otra vuelta/Another whirl, 1985
Finalmente me rendí y fui a un buen internista. Durante los años previos mi concepto de “doctor” había sido limitado a ginecólogos y doctores naturistas, para mi desgracia. Resulta que ya llevaba unos diez años de un hipotiroidismo cada vez más agudo. Se alenta el cuerpo, te engordas o te hinchas, te vuelves anémica, produce depresión...muy fácil de tratar, pero tardas un rato en normalizarte. Lo que me molesta es pensar cuán distinta podría haber sido esa década si no hubiera tenido este asunto bajando mi ánimo y robando mis energías.
De todos modos, aún con la bronca médica bajo control, la interacción del hipotiroidismo con la menopausia me había producido un bajón químico que era difícil de revertir. Seguía sintiéndome con una nube gris alrededor. O con un bloque de cemento encima. Seguía manejando mientras lloraba, y llorando mientras manejaba. Me recetaron un antidepresivo y no me pude parar de la cama. Se lo comenté al doctor y no me quitó el antidepresivo, pero me mandó vitaminas para viejitos. Lo dejé de tomar de todos modos. (Tomé las vitaminas). Ahora me he enterado de que dar antidepresivos es como inventar un cóctel personal para cada quien por prueba y error, con la posibilidad de no pueden dejar el tratamiento después. Entonces, a lo mejor no me perdí de mucho al evitarlos.
También me metí a un club muy acá con vapor y máquinas y personal trainers y lloraba en el yoga. La instructora estaba muy conmovida. Pensó que me había provocado una experiencia espiritual.

El cumpleaños de Sylvia/Sylvia's birthday, 1983
Fui con una terapeuta y salía llorando más fuerte. Como Alicia, corría el riesgo de ahogarme en mis propias lágrimas.
No fui totalmente improductiva. Eché a andar varias cosas que luego me fueron de mucha ayuda. Una fue el aceptar dar una clase de gráfica alternativa en La Esmeralda, escuela de arte. Cuando empecé a dar clases ya había salido de mi bache, pero hoy en día encuentro el trabajo en la escuela una conexión orgánica y vital con el mundo que me hace mucho bien. Finalmente, ¿que podría ser más divertido que convivir con estudiantes de arte?
También empecé una nueva veta en mi producción, piezas que tienen menos que ver con “mujeres en su intimidad”, lo que solía ser mi tema predilecto, y más con la historia, historias personales, quizás, pero historia, al fin. Como que empecé a salir de mí misma, en cuanto a temática. Hice, por ejemplo, una instalación de imágenes trabajadas con transferencia y costura, basadas en fotografías de los pueblos indígenas de los extremos de América: Alaska, Canadá y Patagonia. Es una especie de narración de la época de su encuentro con los europeos, encuentro que resultó particularmente devastador en el sur. Me involucré mucho con las imágenes de esta gente al hacer el proyecto. Estaba tratando de reconstruir algo, de darles presencia y voz a pueblos marginados en su momento por su situación geográfica y su desventaja en cuanto a desarrollo, y finalmente, marginados también en el tiempo.

El cumpleaños de Pati/Pati's birthday, 1983

Paralelamente me encargaron, para el coloquio de artistas mexicanas y chicanas, una ponencia con el tema de “Sobrevivencia como artista.” En un principio me dio pánico, entre otras cosas porque no estaba tan convencida de que había sobrevivido o que sobreviviría. Pero resultó ser un vehículo para articularme, una forma de procesar lo que me estaba pasando.

Y tuve suerte, me enamoré. Esto fue muy útil porque el enamoramiento produce muchas endorfinas, que contrarrestan la deficiencia química. Produces tu propia droga antidepresiva. Además, la suerte fue no tanto enamorarme (ya tenía un buen de experiencia con el fenómeno con resultados regulares), sino enamorarme con alguien con quien tenía la posibilidad de desarrollar una buena relación. ** No sé si podría ser receta médica, pero en mi caso, me encarriló otra vez. Así pude empezar a apreciar lo que nunca había perdido pero no estaba en condiciones de ver --vean, me estoy volviendo insoportablemente cursi, ya sé porque rehuía escribir todo esto. Pero efectivamente “fue triste mi historia, y su final feliz.” Sospecho que no tengo todo bajo control, pero ha vuelto mi optimismo incurable y la ilusión que yo sí puedo con todo...hasta con dos nacionalidades.

--Carla Rippey

*El buen gato Akira duró once años, hasta el verano pasado. Lo extrañamos.
**"Una buena relación" –cinco años más tarde, seguimos sin rendirnos.

Un pastel para dos bastoneras/A Cake for two baton-twirlers, 1984
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OK, you have arived at the English version! The images for this entry are drawn from drawings and prints of little girls (at the request of Angel de la Rueda) and fragments of the polyptych, "The Farthest Reaches of America".

Fragmento/"America en extremo"/Fragment,"The Farthest Reaches of America", 2001-5

I really hate to admit that I’ve come up against situations that I’m not prepared to face, situations that I’ve handled badly, and that have overwhelmed me, but it has happened, and not so long ago.
The fact is that the nineties were difficult for me, although as far as my career is concerned, this was the period in which I really established myself as an artist. Now I’m amazed when I think back on how hard I worked. For example, when I was going to show in the Museum of Modern Art here in Mexico City, I went by to check out the museum spaces destined for my exhibit, and I was terrified. They looked enormous. I mean, I was of a normal size, but my work seemed…infinitely small, compared to the space I had to fill.
I don’t know what motivates men to make pictures nine by fifteen feet (for example), but in my production a big piece is three by three feet. Maybe it all starts with the fact that male artists tend to have their studios away from their homes, where their families can’t distract them, studios which we envision as huge and full of sketches and canvases being worked over and half-empty cans of paint and empty wine bottles and boxes of deteriorated pizzas, etc. On the other hand I have always had my studio in the house, so that as I work I can keep an eye on whatever is in the oven and go back to work when the kids are asleep (back when my children were boys, not the men they are today). This means that I work on tables and on walls no higher than around eight feet. Besides, I like working in smaller dimensions, it’s more intimate.

Anyway, in order to fill that impossible museum space, I made myself a calendar of what I had to finish, and when. And I distinctly remember that I decided that I didn’t have time to go to the movies for eight months (I basically worked from 9 AM until midnight or later). But I did fill the museum halls and those of several other museums after that.

Fragmento,"América en extremo"/Fragment, "The Farthest Reaches of America, 2001-5

At the same time (because I didn’t go to the movies?) my social life was increasing deficient. The circles in the art world were changing. In the eighties, I was quite integrated into the social circuit. But the world was moving and so was I, and little by little I found myself more isolated. The phantom of being the outsider was coming back to haunt me once again, and now I didn’t have a spouse to drag me to exhibits and parties, etc. I actually was alone most of the decade, and when I wasn’t, it made things worse instead of better. I did have friends, good but extremely busy friends, which was not exactly a support system. Then my kids grew up and moved away. I think it was in 1996 that I started to live totally by myself, for the first time in my life (except for six months in Boston in 1970, before I moved into a women’s commune).
My son Andrés gave me a cat when he left. I still have him*, a Siamese with a lot of character, and later I bought a female cat at a local market, who turned out to have not so much character, but she functioned well as a pet for the Siamese. (Andrés had four cats, whose names translate as Violence, Crisis, Chaos, and Earthquake. He wanted to give me more cats but I resisted.)

Something else was happening to me. In 1994 I started becoming anemic. Nobody (that is, no doctor I consulted) knew why. They did have their theories but these led to no effective cure. I had been vegetarian for a while but I started eating meat again, thinking that might make me healthier. And I got back together with one of my exes, thinking that might make me happier. Neither plan had the desired effect.
In 2000 I put up a good show (good, meaning I liked it) in “Arte Mexicano”, Mexico City’s oldest gallery. Well, I thought, no energy, no spouse, but at least I’m functioning.

Fragmento, América en extremo"/Fragment, "The Farthest Reaches of America", 2001-5

Then I went to get a medical certificate for insurance purposes and the gynecologist decided that I had a tumor in my uterus. He was wrong, but I did have a cyst in an ovary. So the doctor decided to operate and take out the ovary (or was it both ovaries?) and remove my uterus as well. “But why the uterus?” I asked, disconcerted. “What do you want it for?” He answered back.
I went through a series of expensive and very disagreeable examinations (like a cat scan, where they got confused and scanned the wrong part of me). After a few months of speculation as to how and when I might die, I changed doctors. The new doctor treated the cyst with hormones (it worked) but in spite of this advance I was progressively more listless and unhappy. I went to give a talk to some preschool kids about what it’s like to be an “artist” and the first question was, “Why are you so yellow?” And my face was like, puffy. So I didn’t feel exactly beautiful. Besides, I was going through menopause. We women hate talking about is because it lets out the fact that we’re about to stop being “babes”, as a friend of mine puts it, but the fact is, it was happening to me, and I was alone. I spent days on the sofa with no desire to do anything, and the idea that I might live thirty more years (supposedly, if I made it to eighty) horrified me, because I couldn’t imagine whatever in the world I would do with all that time. It was around then that a friend interviewed me for a project of hers, and every time she asked me a question about my life history, I started to cry.
Finally I gave in and went to see a good doctor of internal medicine. Up to then my idea of a “doctor” had been limited to gynecologists and naturopaths, unfortunately. And it turned out that I had been suffering from hypothyroidism for at least ten years, each year worse than the preceding. This condition slows down your system, making you retain liquids and thus get fatter or at least puffy, and it can cause anemia, as well as depression…it’s very easy to cure, but returning to normality takes a while.
What annoys me is to think how different those years could have been without this business robbing me of my energy and good spirits.

Fragmento, "America en extremo"/Fragment, "The Farthest Reaches of America", 2001-5
Nevertheless, once the medical problem was under control, the interaction of the hypothyroidism with menopause had produced a chemical downward spiral that was difficult to reverse. I still felt like I was moving in a gray cloud, or trapped under a ton of cement. I kept on driving while I cried, and crying as I drove. I was prescribed an antidepressant which finished the job of destroying my energy. I told the doctor and he didn’t take me off it, he just added vitamins for the elderly to my prescription. I stopped taking it anyway (I did take the vitamins).
Since then I’ve learned that prescribing antidepressants is like inventing a personal cocktail by trial and error, with no guarantee that the treatment will work right away or be temporary. So maybe I didn’t miss much in avoiding the pills.
I also started going to a very posh club with a steam room and exercise machines and personal trainers, and I cried during yoga. The instructor found this very touching. She thought I was having a religious experience.

Viajes a las pirámides, I/Trips to the Pyramids, I, 1985

I went to a therapist and left crying harder. Like Alice, I was in danger of drowning in my own tears.
I wasn’t totally unproductive. I got going on several things that were to prove very useful for me. One was to accept an invitation to give an experimental printmaking class in a university art school. When I finally began to teach, I had already recovered my spirits, but the work provides me with an organic and vital connection with the world which has been very positive for me. Anyway, what could be more fun than hanging out with art students?

I also started exploring a new vein in my own work, doing pieces that were less concerned with “women in their intimacy” (my old specialty) and more with history, personal history, probably, but history, nevertheless. Perhaps I was starting to grow beyond myself, thematically.
I made, for instance, an installation of images, sewing on transfers from photographs of the indigenous peoples of the extremes of America: Alaska, north Canada, and Patagonia. It was a sort of narration about the period of their encounter with the Europeans, an encounter which was particularly devastating for the groups from the southern hemisphere.
I got very involved with the images as I worked on the project. I was trying to reconstruct something, to restore in some measure the presence and voice of these people, excluded and endangered during their lifetime, and now fading from memory, isolated in the past.

Viajes a las pirámides, II/Trips to the pyramids, II, 1985

Around this time I was also asked to participate in a conference of Mexican and Chicana artists, with a paper entitled “Surviving as an Artist”. At first I was panic-stricken, partly because I wasn’t so sure that I had really survived or if I would continue to do so. But the essay turned out to be a vehicle for articulating myself, a way of processing all I had been going through.

And I got lucky, I fell in love. This was very useful because falling in love produces lots of endorphins which counter arrest deficient body chemistry. You produce our own antidepressant drug. Anyway, the lucky part was not only to fall in love (which I’d already done a lot with mixed results) but also to do so with someone with whom I had a chance of building a decent relationship.**
I don’t know if this remedy could be prescribed to the public at large, but it certainly got me back on track. So that I could start appreciating all that I really hadn’t lost, but had lost the ability to perceive—wait, I’m about to get ridiculously maudlin; no wonder I hesitated before writing about all this “personal stuff”. Anyway, the story was sad, but not the ending.
I suspect I don’t have everything exactly under control, but my incurable optimism is back, along with the illusion that I can handle anything…even two nationalities.

--Carla Rippey

*Good old Akira the cat lasted out eleven years, until last summer; we miss him.
**"decent relationship" --five years later we are still hanging in there...

Akira y su mascota La Rata/Akira and his pet cat, The Rat, foto Dennis Callwood, 2001

From the Edge, third entry

This is the third part of an essay published in the book, "Cries and Whispers". Following the chronological logic (the redundacy is warranted) of the blog, scroll down to read the second and first parts. Para leer esta entrada en español, ve abajo.

This drawing is one of seven that the series of prints called "The Use of memory" was based on. The image is drawn from a photograph, particially visible, by Flor Garduño/Este dibujo es uno de siete en los cuales se basó la serie de grabados "El uso de la memoria". Se tomó de una fotografía de Flor Garduño, parcialmente visible aquí. 1993
My oldest son has also gone through the experience of being a foreigner, but in his own country. In 1980 my condition of extreme poverty (well, extreme poverty for somebody from the middle class, a condition provoked by my unfortunate lack of staying power, at least in the context of matrimony) was relieved by an invitation to organize a printmaking department in the University of Veracruz. And so I was able to enter real life as a wage-earner with a modest income.
The school year started two weeks after I made the decision to move to Jalapa, and I had to find a grade school for my son. The only school in Jalapa willing to accept him on such an short-term basis was the Díaz Mirón.
Here I must make a parenthesis to say that Díaz Mirón was a famous poet from the state of Veracruz, and a wall at the entry of the school was adorned with a passage from one of his best-known poems. According to my friend Guillermo Rousset, Mexican poet, revolutionary and translator, Díaz Mirón wrote with a perfect dominion of meter, but this didn’t impress me as much as the fact that the fellow was a murderer (but then so was Rousset and in both their cases, for skirmishes with other men, involving women and politics).

The Warrior/El guerrero, 1993

The poem in question, however, I found most irritating, as it was based on what I considered an imperfect metaphor involving the poet characterized as a brave roving lion and the lady to whom he addressed the poem as a shy dove in her nest. As if there were no lionesses and male doves in the world…anyway, at the time I considered myself much more of a lioness than a dove stowed away in a nest, so the daily walk by the poetic mural was a source of annoyance.

The Dïaz Mirón had only one blond child in its rosters: Luciano, my son. To begin with he was the “gringo” and from then on, the object of fierce discrimination. In addition I had foolishly placed him in second grade, though for his age he should have been in first, “because he already knew how to read”. Hounded and younger than his classmates, Luciano’s instinct for survival kicked in and he teamed up with an eleven-year-old, who was also (and once again) in second grade, and who doubled as best friend and body guard.
This friend’s passage for our house was notable for the sudden disappearance of my scissors and an infestation of lice affecting all the members of our family (and revealed to us by an embarrassed barber, who thus ended our previous state of innocence regarding the possible reasons for an itchy scalp).
As a probable consequence of the Díaz Mirón experience, the youngster (who nowadays is a young man with a family of his own) developed and still conserves the habit of conversing with anyone who comes within range (the cigarette vendor, for example) with an automatic and precise replica of their particular accent (an accent usually determined by social class). My other son, who always speaks with the exact same "Mexican Virgo accent", no matter whom he happens to be speaking to, has no patience with this trait and considers his brother to be “savagely chameleonic”, but then, while Luciano was suffering through the Díaz Mirón, Andrés was enjoying a short reign as the teachers’ pet in his nursery school.

An Inventory/Inventario, 1993
There was a time in which I was seriously considering changing my nationality. I finally desisted, because I couldn’t get used to the idea of not being from where I was born. (Back then being a dual national wasn’t an option). And besides, I found out that in the University of Veracruz, where I worked, that to be in the Academic Council, one had to be “Mexican by birth”.
This confirmed my suspicions: Mexicans are born, not made. So much for that.
But when I was still debating a change in nationality, I mentioned the fact to my father over the telephone, and he was scandalized. “What’s the matter with you?” I asked, “We’re a family of immigrants; we have a tradition of centuries of changing countries, from France to Scotland, from Scotland to Canada, from Canada to America, etc...” “But always before” he answered, “we changed for something better...”
Sometimes it appalls me to be from the States. Thinking about my father’s reaction, for instance, or the treatment that “my” embassy gives to the unfortunate visa “supplicants”. Or about Iraq. Or Bush, “oh-my-god”.

I just had the pleasure of being the surprise gift at my mother’s 75th birthday party. My dear mother-- little did I know when I left at eighteen that I would never again live close to her. (But then again at eighteen I knew so little about everything.)

I think of you, therefore you exist.../Te pienso, luego existes...,1993

Right now the big news is that one of my nieces is getting married-- and that her fiancé is going to Iraq for a year. Of course, the poor thing had joined the Army Reserves years ago, probably thinking more of getting an education and helping the victims of natural disasters than of the latent military-action aspect.
Nobody in the family talks much about the year in Iraq. Actually, the emphasis of the line of planning followed by my niece is basically on who the maids of honor are going to be and how to arrange everything so as to all go to the same hairdresser’s before the ceremony (apparently this is an important part of the ritual) when half of them are white and the other half, black, and the hairdressers who know how to fix “white hair” can’t cope with “black hair” and vice versa. Historically I have avoided these dilemmas, being as part of my typical outsider stance I never go to the hairdresser’s, and only after much resistance, of a not very decorous and absolutely unappreciated sort, do I attend weddings.

The labyrinth/El laberinto, 1993
Anyway, there are several things that attract my attention in this situation. One, the father of the young lady (my brother-in-law) is an anti-war and anti-government activist, plus he and my sister are massage therapists and vegetarians. So my niece grew up in a very “alternative” home. But she doesn’t act like somebody who’s not mainstream. She behaves like a happy, very well-socialized young American. So maybe the trick is having roots. If you have always lived in the same place, like her, you become part of it, in spite of your “alternative” parents.

Me, the daughter, me, the mother, me, the grandmother, me, the sister, me, nothing else, just me, all by myself... /Yo, hija, yo, madre, yo, abuela, yo, hermana, yo, nada más yo sola...,1993

There you have it. Maybe it’s really so, this business of putting down roots. I’ve lived for thirty years now in the same place, Mexico. (“Half of your life!” exclaimed a taxi driver, after dragging this fact out of me. “I’m not sixty!” I replied, indignant.)

Anyway, for more than half my life. And here I am writing this for a book of experiences of “Mexican women”. What’s more, a few years ago I represented Mexico (along with that other Mexican artist of dubious origin, Remedios Varo) in an exhibit in the National Museum of Women in Washington, DC. And not long ago I participated in a gathering of Mexican and “Chicana” women artists, as a Mexican, of course. As a matter of fact, I’ve been a “Mexican artist” for thirty years now. And...I’m even a member of an academic council here, in spite of my birthplace.
It all comes down to this: after all my protests and contradictions, I’ve ended up also being from here, from Mexico. So I’m Mexican, too, and proud of it.

Convention of Mexican and Chicana artists in Oaxaca, 2001/Convención de artistas mexicanas y chicanas en Oaxaca, 2001

Well, that sounds like a good ending for a text, but I have something else I want to talk about… (To be continued).

Juan Diego and the Virgin of Guadalupe/Juan Diego y la Virgen, 1994