KAPWA: POSTCARDS FROM MENTAL LANDSCAPES
THE KAPWA OF "POSTCARDS FROM MENTAL LANDSCAPES"
June 2023: A Group Exhibition
Featuring Melinda Luisa de Jesus, Ulysses Duterte, Jr., Paul Hawkins, Geof Huth, harry k stammer, Julia Rose Lewis, Michelangelo Mayo, April Milszeski, Anne Murray, and Phyllis Shaw.
Exhibition Statement
When I opened up Submissions for this exhibit, I didn't know what to expect, in part because I deliberately avoided a theme. I was open to anything because of my faith in "Kapwa," a Filipino indigenous concept whereby one sees one's self in the Other, a notion I translate into the interconnection of all things and creatures across all of time.
But when I started seeing the postcards as they arrived, they were of such variety that I was initially at a loss on how to approach them all as part of a single exhibit. The postcards ranged over original art to prints to actual postcards, from drawings to collage to visual poetry, and with artists ranging from the emerging artists to those who are considered masters at their art. Still, I knew something would arise or that I'd sooner or later think of something that could "unify" them.
My faith was rewarded when I received the book of visual poetry POSTCARDS FROM MENTAL STATES created as a collaboration by Julia Rose Lewis and Paul Hawkins (Hesterglock Press, 2023).
Synchronistically, both Julia and Paul also had sent postcards that celebrated their book (did they know the other was sending a postcard?). The book certainly was relevant to the exhibit—thus my naming the exhibit after the book's title. But I also found in Julia's and Paul's book a statement by master asemic artist/Vispo poet Tim Gaze. Through a blurb, Tim shared:
In other words, these diverse postcards coming from diverse peoples became--through the exhibit--parts of a shared self instead of remaining individual selves depicting only themselves or their singular points of view. Such, indeed, is Kapwa.
Also because of Kapwa, I didn't think much about the placement of the cards, that is, where each would hung. But I did want to suggest an ascension as a metaphor for widening one's gaze and perception. Thus, the bottom left corner presents Phyllis Shaw's triangular image that points upward while the bottom right corner presents April Milszeski's sketch of a girl looking out at the world to see a rainbow. A rainbow, too, can be a metaphor of Kapwa since everything (or most things), no matter how different, inevitably is colored by a color from the rainbow.
I thank the participants for trusting me with their works. Here are close-ups and more information about the postcards:
Melinda Luisa de Jesus
Poet-scholar-activist-peminist Melinda Luisa de Jesus sends us a moving symbol of matrilineal lineage. L-R, Top Row: Melinda's paternal grandma, Juanita Bayquen (in Igorot dress); her maternal great aunt, Cristeta La Madrid de Petrey; her maternal grandma, Felicidad Angeles; and her mom, Eloisa Domingo de Jesus. The bottom row also features her (far left corner) with daughter Malaya and her mother.
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Ulysses Duterte, Jr.
Ulysses' postcard is a refurbished one from Hearst Castle. On its right side is a painted orange vertical line. He says about the orange line:
As for the orange line in my drawings, they represent truth in the sense that whatever the viewer’s interpretation of my subject, that’s the TRUTH! I chose the color orange based on an ascribed meaning to orange that I discovered on the Adobe website: "a mix of red and yellow, orange combines the passion of the former with the positivity of the latter. Bright and vibrant oranges are fun colors that burst with youthfulness, energy and happiness. They inspire creativity and uplift people's moods."
You can read/see more about Ulysses' line at his exhibition, "No Timer, No Countdown."
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Paul Hawkins and Julia Rose Lewis
The postcard image is one of the images in Julia's and Paul's collaborative book, Postcards From Mental States. In the book, the image is accompanied by a caption-like text: "re-entry is its own event." In an Artists' Statement, Paul and Julia share:
Our collaborative project, Postcards From Mental States started by exchanging digital archives of travelling through America at times when we had both felt overwhelmed; a simple realisation that we tend to document difficult times in our lives. We create archives of ourselves to revise at a time when we are less overwhelmed. We know we are very easy to very easily overwhelmed. If whelm originally meant to overturn, then a vessel is implied here. To overwhelm is to over-repeat turn a vessel. Turning over an engine gets a motorboat started, and yet overturning a boat pauses or stops the boat in the water. Exchanging our personal archives felt like turning over an hourglass. The passage of sand back and forth and back and forth is a soothing and subtle reference to death. The pattern of sand grains runs on the hourglass.
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Geof Huth
Geof's card presents "Ribbon of Walnut" qbdp #462 (2023-02-16), 1 of an edition of 4. To create it, Geof used walnut ink against distressed cardboard. I consider Geof Huth among the most adept Vispo artists we have today, with marks—such as on this postcard—often mysteriously evoking mystery even as the empathetic viewer is moved to imbue the marks into metaphors for known experience (for example, this card's deceptively simple image moves me to recollect my visit to the Alhambra in Spain).
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harry k stammer
harry k stammer is an artist & musician well-known throughout the visual poetry world. He titles this piece "Another Day, Another Poem" (2023).
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Michelangelo Mayo
Michelangelo Mayo assembles fragmented images and fractured illustrations to envision difficult emotions and represent complex mental states that are brought about by an ever-changing modern world. He observes "a fast-paced evolution of social norms that has eroded and molded into new attitudes and emotions, most of which are undefined and unexplored." He seeks to "take all modalities of popular culture and new philosophies and transforms them into a visual narration, a voyage and pilgrimage of this world both physical and introspective." In the process, he creates worlds of bountiful shared experiences and yearnings.
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April Milszeski Pereil
April sends an original ink & watercolor drawing she titles "Escaping to the Beach." She says her charming drawing is "about living someplace warm and loving life." It certainly exudes her goal: "enjoying the good life under warmth!"
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Anne Murray
Anne Murray is an artist, writer, and activist who currently lives in Budapest. She is active in aiding refugees arriving from Ukraine. As regards her drawing that reflects what she envisioned about two octopuses meeting, she notes:
"My work focuses on vulnerability and the fragile set of factors that create and refract the elements of our daily existence. During the pandemic, I read the book, Other Minds: The Octopus and the Evolution of Intelligent Lifeby Peter Godfrey-Smith. Through this book and further research, I learned the strength and flexibility as well as extraordinary physical qualities of the octopus—an intelligent being living mostly a solitary life of about two years. Due to the fragile and permeable nature of its senses and limbs, an octopus is able to learn an immense amount of information during its lifetime, which it only passes on through its DNA, as octopuses are largely independent creatures living in isolated hollows without the social interaction of other species. I compare the octopus to the artist in her studio, isolated, but permeable, with soft skin, which can take in a multitude of information through her, or its entire body. The octopus has brain matter in its eight arms as well as a central brain. Its skin can reflect the world around it, copying the structure, texture, and color of a reef or hollow, in order to hide itself almost instantaneously, but also it seems to dream and change color and texture as well, while it is at rest. This creature’s multiple intelligences have fascinated me and led me to uncover and discover new ways of seeing and applying value to the infinite necessity of our vulnerability in a constant state of metamorphosis and metacognition."
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Phyllis Shaw
Phyllis Shaw's postcards reproduce three of the abstract paintings that have given pleasure to this New York-based painter's Facebook and offsite audiences.
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As a participant in other postcard/mail art-based exhibitions, I was a little surprised that some of the participants did not know of one of its fundamental premises, that is, that the art has go to through the mailing process. The mail process, of course, is fraught with "risk." Mail may be lost or damaged in transit.
In Anne Murray's case, her drawing was safely ensconced in waxy paper before being inserted in an envelope.
In Michelangelo Mayo's case, his two postcards were ensconced within an envelope that went through the mailing process. But Michelangelo notes the "envelope art" went through the mailing process that the postcards would have underwent.
Others hewed to mail art's concept:
Ultimately, I hope with this exhibit to show how the smallest space can host the most generative artwork so that others might try their hands at it, and then share it with the world. To mail is to share.
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THE REFUGEE'S ART GALLERY
Note From the Gallery Director:
Due to California's 2020 Glass Fire, gallery operations at North Fork Arts Projects (NFAP) were temporarily suspended. But as NFAP's curator, I didn't feel like giving the wildfires the last word. I decided to open NFAP’s offsite operations at my fire evacuee residence. Given that this residence and studio is much smaller than my pre-fire digs, the gallery's physical space also has downsized to, not even the closet but, the closet door. The Refugee's Art Gallery may well be the world's thinnest gallery—perhaps I should apply for a Guinness World Record!
My studio has a closet fronted with two sliding doors. One sliding door introduces the gallery. Slide that door away and the second door will be revealed with the hanging artwork. Obviously, all artwork will be flat as the distance between the two doors is 3/8th of an inch. But I can work with that (e.g. this postcard art exhibit). I am glad to present NFAP's offsite Refugee Art Gallery because ART IS RESILIENT. I hope viewers also enjoy the presented artworks.
(Click on all images to enlarge)
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