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GALLERIES: Finding redemption in winter's darkness
By Cate McQuaid, Globe Correspondent, 12/02/99
Decembers
are the darkest days, and we mark the time of year with celebrations of light,
rebirth, and salvation. The cycles of earth and sun are etched in our psyches;
they teach us how to cope with the more personal darknesses we may encounter
as we ramble and stumble through life. ''Images and Histories,'' an exhibition
of work by Chicana artists of the American Southwest at the Tufts University
Gallery, finds its roots in spirituality and the dark times that ultimately
redeem us. The art was inspired by the domestic altar, commonplace in many Chicano
households, which ties together beliefs about religion, healing, death, family,
and the afterlife. The show is broken into four sections: icons, health and
illness, death, and remembrance. It has been installed in a way that takes the
viewer on a bracing and tender journey. Enter through a facade fashioned after
that of the Mission Socorro in El Paso, hung with retablos - oil paintings on
tin of saints like the Virgin of Guadalupe dating to the 19th century. The Virgin
of Guadalupe looms large in Chicano culture, which practices a heady mix of
Catholic and indigenous beliefs. Legend has it that in 1531 she appeared to
a peasant and left her image on his cloak. She appears dramatically in the ''Icons
and Archetypes'' section in Delilah Montoya's ''La Guadalupana,'' which features
a giant black-and-white image of the Virgin tattooed on the back of a handcuffed
man. Color images of similar tattoos, festooned with roses, wreath the central
picture, and flowers and candles litter the floor. Montoya at once evokes shackles
and freedom, and how the two are inextricably linked. Ceramacist Gloria Osuna
Perez's ''1996'' stands on a pedestal in the ''Health and Illness'' portion
of the show; a gray vessel split down the middle to reveal a candle sporting
the Virgin within, as well as colorful beads and origami and a medicine bottle;
it's as if we're looking inside a womb and finding a party. Perez died of ovarian
cancer last summer; a picture of the artist showing off her bald, post-chemo
head, lies before the vase. Connie Arismendi's ''Vigil'' hangs in the ''Death''
section: a candle burning against a wood panel hammered with lead. The lead
is the cold gray armor of death and grief; despite its bleak facade, we must
keep the candle burning. Celia Herrera Rodriguez's ''Red Roots/ Black Roots/
Earth/ Tree of Life'' installation haunts the ''Memory and Remembrance'' area.
Wire mesh painted with ghostly figures surrounds a checkerboard inscribed with
names. A cross hammered, fetish-style, with nails and wrapped in red and black
cord lies over the names. The cord then snakes up a blanched, bare branch of
the ''tree of life,'' which cradles red fabric wrapped in black, the hint of
a lost soul held up for honor and redemption. Finally, a ''Day of the Dead''
altar has been installed to honor Perez. Her tragic death folds beautifully
into the process of creating and viewing ''Images and Histories.'' Art is about
coming to grips with life; so is spirituality. There is no deeper human struggle
than accepting death. The work of these Mexican-American women gives us some
of the tools we need to walk that path. Gallery Bershad in Davis Square is a
sun-filled space filled with quirky angles and odd crannies that's a lovely
showcase for art. Two shows fill the wall there now. ''Architecture in Mind''
features the work of color photographer Peter Hendrick and black-and-white photographer
Donald Greenhaus. Both shoot urban scenes. Greenhaus's images are moody nocturnes
of New York after dark, walking home before dawn after a night listening to
jazz. Hendrick's most ambitious pieces combine vivid imagery with neon. ''Shadows
of the American Dream, Image I'' hangs suspended from the ceiling at an angle
to the wall, confronting the viewer stepping into a darkened room. It shows
the dark skeleton of a construction project against a brilliant blue sky, cut
across with telephone wires. Blue neon tubes rise up behind the picture and
shoot into the air above it, punching up the disequilibrium already established
in the image itself and the way it is hung. It's a sharp, threatening presentation.
Along the back hallways of Gallery Bershad, Gale Fulton Ross's paintings show
figures full of grief with titles like ''Woe in Blue'' and ''Overwhelmed.''
Her brushwork is loose, her portraits lithe and evocative - indeed, Ross's line
and her vivid color and dancing brush don't let sadness dominate her work, which
always has an edge that liberates it. Barbara O'Neil Ross is a comic disguised
as a sentimental landscape artist. Her landscapes at Gallery 57 would be too
saccharine (they're pastel; it's hard to make a pastel sunset that has nerve)
if she didn't throw in visual puns that add up to commentary on man's mistakenly
assumed sovereignty over nature. ''Field Mouse'' has a computer mouse scurrying
over a golden field, and a computer monitor's frame drifting amid the clouds
overhead. ''Cranes in Their Natural Habitat'' has building cranes poking out
of a pearly mist. It's not deep commentary, but it's fun and unexpected, and
worth a visit.
This story
ran on page D04 of the Boston Globe on 12/02/99.
© Copyright 1999 Globe Newspaper Company.
