Mexican Heritage

Since my visit to wonderful Mexico I wanted to do a series to honour its food, its culture and its amazing heritage. I finished a group of seven indigenous foods from Central and South America we enjoy around the world: cocoa, tomatoes, beans, corn, squash and chilli peppers. The image of the mighty maguey, a cactus that has served to dress and shelter many, and the plant where Mexicans extract the agave to make sweets, tequila and mezcal. 

maguey

Gut Health

I have been very interested in healthy eating since university, and lately my kitchen is a lab of brewing and fermenting experiments. Here is a photo of the new sauerkraut installation just finished last weekend. It enables me to make 10 mason jars of 450 ml each time. I am using red and white cabbage, apples, cranberries, garlic and salt. It is delicious and so healthy! I have been reading about the benefits of sauerkraut and the different bacteria that it feeds in your gut, I recommend the site on Nourishing Treasures. It has a great explanation of the science behind it.

pink sauerkraut ready to be consumed

Kitchen Art

After my visit to Mexico I needed to make something to honour that amazing culture. I decided to start with food: a lot of very important foods we enjoy today are originally from Central and South America. Some travelled with migrants thousands of years ago, like cocoa. Some travelled with the Europeans that conquered the Americas, like tomatoes. That is why, today  I decided to make samples of important foods I love, to accompany my kitchen, or yours.

Another reason for producing this series is that I think of my work in the kitchen as art. The art of cooking healthy, sustainable, tasty and good looking meals. The art of setting the table with a nice layout, inviting colours, useful utensils. The art of hosting a gathering, the expectation of seeing friends, welcoming music, anticipating some moments during the event when you will call everybody for a highlight such as breaking the piñata. And most important making everyone feel special.

Below you will find images of the process used for the Kitchen Art, and some finished samples.

sketch on paper, wood cutout, paper collage, finished collection of CHILES

squash

tomatoes

beans

Website

One of my goals this year was to learn how to use WordPress to have my own website. In it you will find different samples of my work as a visual artist throughout the decades. There are samples of my illustrations, murals, mixed media objects and paintings, and some of the work I have done as a Forest School practitioner. Please let me know what you think.

www.mariagomezumana.com

Nine Organs

Emotions are hosted in different parts of our body, and accumulate over time. Happiness creates marks on our face and tone up our muscles.  Sadness, fear, rage and envy strain our muscles, and concentrate toxic elements in our organs.  Unfortunately, we only become aware of our internal organs when they are not working properly.

The collection of Nine Organs is a votive healing act.  If intention defines the outcome of our actions, my act of creating Nine Organs is healing.  During the creation process I observe the internal organs and become better at interpreting its signs.  I find a tuning with its performance and its needs.  Each organ is constantly working to maintain balance, working from within to build and preserve life.  The interrelations between organs create systems that enable its function.  Nine Organs echoes my body in the uniqueness of each shape and their interconnections with the body as a whole.

 Brain

 Fallopian

Kidney

Art Show HEAL

From February to March I will have the solo show HEAL, at the General Fine Craft and Design Gallery,  located in Almonte, Ontario (see map).  The opening will be on Sunday March 22, from 1 to 3 pm.  The show consists of two bodies of work: The Healing Alphabet, and The Nine Organs.  The objects were made with mixed media: wood, paper, fabric, embroidery, a sawing machine, a torch, transfers, and drawing supplies.

All healing requires time.  It happens in layers, as coatings of skin, streams of kind words, soothing sounds, and restoring actions.  There are different types of healing: repairing a broken tissue, mending a deep soul wound, curing a polluted river, or restoring a broken community.  However, all healing requires a similar disposition: enormous courage to face fear and to look at pain closely.  

During my healing progress, I found creativity and resiliency compelling to carry on; to overcome sadness, despair, and specially a sense of unfairness and rage.  The reason being that Healing urges me to look at my darkest sides, and into the scary shades of unknown mysteries.  Only then, the wound is identified and the real work begins.

Healing starts to happen when I feel again the burning pain.  As I skulk again through it, I begin to experience transformation.  In time, the treasure is revealed.  It then becomes lush soil, rich hummus, and abundant compost for the soul.  Healing brings a sense of gratitude that makes me eager to disclose the discoveries to honour the process.  

In this body of work, art mirrors my healing path: it embodies the process and gives shape to the task.

Artwork During our Mexico Trip

I said I would do a mono-print every day during my stay in Mexico.  I didn't, but almost. I made 16 mono-prints, of which I like 12, and of which I really like 8... And here they are: mono-prints of 18 cm x 20 cm.

Daily I would scratch over a single plexiglass sheet, and I would add new images as the trip progressed. I used the Pin Press to print on paper, making layers of found images such as bus, museum, or metro tickets, receipts, maps, cards, and poetry books.  The "papel picado" motifs were added as stencils here and there, using wheat glue as a binder.  Now I intend to transform the mono-prints into something else: tearing, cutting and painting over them.

Forest School Paperwork

I finished correcting the Forest School paperwork.  Why does Forest School require writing? Some friends are asking and here is the response.

Forest School training is not only about how to work and play with children in a natural environment but much more.  It includes teaching children to assess and manage risks, so they can benefit from outdoor experiences.  The course is a guide to start our own Forest School, and therefore includes developing policies and procedures, elaborating a communication strategy, and defining a Forest School handbook.  As practitioners we study (or review) different styles of learning as well as barriers to learning.  The course includes forest management, site ecological impact, as well as local flora and fauna.  We learn to undertake a formative and a summative evaluation.  The course expects us to plan and execute six sessions, that include several areas: learning goals, planned experiences and alternate plans, observations, evaluation, resources, and considerations for the following sessions.  Each session needs to have a site risk assessment, an activity risk assessment, and a risk benefit assessment.  Finally, practitioners are competent to share life skills such as to use a sharp knife, a bow saw, a hatchet; how to light fire and cook on it; how to build shelters; and how to tie knots for different uses.  And finally, a Forest School guide models how to respect nature, to leave the natural site as found, and how to be thankful for the opportunity to experience it.

Here is a 4 minute video of the skills I practiced with a group of children.

Mexico!

Mexico is an amazing country. Bountiful in resources, culture, geography, historical wealth, countless places of interest, but most important, its people. I have been to Mexico three times and every time I return in love with Mexicans: they are friendly, helpful, generous and resourceful. It breaks my heart the violence resulting from drug traffiquing, corruption in political figures, and greed in corporations such as banks and industrial compounds who profit well from chaos. How to change that? I can only offer what I do: art.

Thanks to efficient friends in Mexico who contacted me with arts organizations, I was able to give four workshops. Different groups were interested, two in Oaxaca and two in Mexico City. The workshops I designed for them was based on chine-collé, a mixed media technique in printmaking. I carried a Pin Press and Akua inks, they provided the rest. The participants were print makers and art students from different organizations. As payment each group brought homemade Mexican food to share with the group. Each workshop was different and enriching. I am truly grateful for having had the opportunity to contribute and learn so much!

In Oaxaca the workshops took place at La Curtiduria and at Universidad Autonoma Benito Juarez:

La Curtiduría
Espacio Contemporáneo para las Artes

Universidad Autonoma Benito Juarez
departamento de Artes Gráficas

In Mexico City I was fortunate to run workshops at the following Arts Organizations.

Escuela de Iniciación Artística de Mexico
escuela numero 1

La Clinica
Artist Run Centre in Mexico City

Transformers

I have been working on mono-prints but I am not quite happy with them.  So I decided today to play transformers, and to turn the five prints I did as prep work for the trip to Mexico, into paintings.  I glued them on wooden boards and waxed them, which gave them a different quality.  This enabled me to work on them a bit more, and it looks like they are going to work fine this way.  Here a sample of the five prep-mono-prints transformed into paintings.

When Does a Trip Begin?

In a few days I am going to visit Mexico, and preparing the trip feels like I am already on my way. I decided to include an art project: I want to create a mono-print every day of my visit. At the end I will end up with at least twelve different images. I will scratch and print a single plexiglass sheet every day. The supplies needed are inks, paper, rollers, spatulas, and the Pin Press. I am already trying the process at home, getting into the routine of a daily exercise. The visit includes Mexico City and Oaxaca, and I intend to post some of the resulting art work on this blog.

Furthermore, thanks to friends in Mexico, I have contacts with two graphic art studios in Oaxaca that are willing to have me for an afternoon each, to share what I do and to and learn from them. I am very excited about the prospect of meeting artists and art studios during my travel. Thank you friends for making this project possible!

The images underneath are a sample of the prep work, as a warm up before departure. Prep work will be a training routine for the mono-prints I will produce in Mexico. Every day I will add a new image to this post, until the day we leave. This exercise will put me in shape, and will ensure I pack all the supplies required for the work. Here are three samples of the mono-prints:

Day 1 prep work:

 

Day 2 prep work:

Day 3 prep work:

Still Healing

We all need to heal something. I certainly need to do a lot of it, which is why I am still working on the same theme.

I am shaping wooden objects like human organs, to represent the vessels of our emotional trauma and healing. I am convinced Generative Somatics are the only way to truly heal body, mind, and spirit, and possibly too, one's connection to the land. GS (for short) is a network that supports, trains, and empowers people in their healing process. This initiative is one of my sources of inspiration, internal work, and information.

For this artwork, first I draw and cut the shapes on plywood. Then I work on the surface with layered images that talk about stories, experiences, texture, words, sounds. Telling visual stories I recreate my own path and it helps me to move on. Words work like mantras that allow me to accept, understand and forgive. Qi Gong uses sounds to contribute healing internal organs, and I am using such sounds. I am also adding some of my drawings and prints of cell structures. My intention is to create visual opportunities for the viewer to engage, read and interpret, possibly connecting to his or her own healing path.

The following images show me cutting the wooden shapes, and how I prevent warps by painting a cross in the back of each organ. The last one shows the primed shapes with white milk paint, sanded and ready to be worked on with wax, fabric, paper and oil paints. The lower image is the structure of a liver lobule, which I find fascinating. These works will be shown in November at the General Fine Craft located in Almonte, Ontario, where I currently work part-time.

cutting the shapes on plywood

preventing warping by drawing an X

Finished Heart

Finished Liver

Process of Bruised

Earlier this year I made Seven Organs representing seven key body parts that keep us alive. They were shown together as a metaphor of interactivity in our internal body. These pieces were wood cutouts, and the surface was worked with fabric and paper, bound with bees wax.

Now I want to work on human tissues, as a deeper search for our internal landscapes and how we are connected inside. I am drawing the four kinds of human tissue, and filling my mouth with their beautiful names: epithelial, connective, muscle and neurone. As it happens in artwork, I have a general direction of where I want to go, I have to set the limits of what I want and what I don't. It is the work what dictates the path, being attentive to my emotional reactions, my body posture, the internal dialogues my mind embarks on, and most importantly, the connection to the creative process.

Here is what a corner of what my table looks like, with the group of art pieces I call Bruised. These will be worked integrating transfers on fabric taken from an Esmarch bandage, embroidery, drawing on rice paper and print. I just got a Pin Press as a gift, and I have been experimenting with it. Here is a sample of the process.

Prints for Cancer

This month I will have two shows: one at the Shenkman Arts Centre as part of the exhibition Selections, which opens on the 25th. In it I will show my brain, well not mine, but yes, mine.  The second show will be at the Fundation Quebecoise du Cancer, located in Gatineau.  They were interested in artwork that deals with healing and contacted me. However I will not show the seven organs as some of them have been bought (yippie!) and I don't have enough time to make new ones.  Instead, I will show some of my monoprints, two of which you can see below.

These monoprints were made using the fabulous Pin Press, Akua inks, rice paper, Canson printing paper, bits of other things found along the way (such as the stencil letters I used for the Book Exchange Box).  My drawings were based on microscopic photos of human tissue.  I am still fascinated with the marvels and mysteries of our human body.

Book Exchange Box

We have been building a Book Exchange Box with the family, to go in the front of our house. Last Monday on Labour Day, it was ready to be inaugurated. We giving it the finishing touches when the City Councillor for our area of the city appeared, as part of her campaign for re-election next month. We asked her about concerns we have in terms of plans for the park at the Kanata Town Centre Core. Her reply made me decide to write letter and send it to the local newspaper.  We feel the area needs to remain green to serve our community rather than developers and corporations. I include a copy of the letter, in an act of cultural activism.