Q: Could you please give me an overview of your background as an individual, a student and artist? The school you attended, your main interests, why you chose that residency and how long you were at the studio?
A: I am a novelist. I have a Ph.D. in theology, doing my graduate work at Harvard University and Boston College. I was completely oblivious to contemporary art and had just completed my novel, THE MEMORY ROOM when a writer friend, Janet Fitch insisted I attend the opening of Enrique’s Coming Home show at Griffin Contemporary in Venice, California. I’d never actually been to an art opening and was really nervous to go. The place was jammed, limousines at the curb, etc., but the work was so entirely compelling that I went back to see it every single day until it closed.
In any case, Enrique and I met soon after. He read The Memory Room in manuscript form and a friendship between us began. I was intimidated to meet him, but that all fell by the wayside immediately as we met more or less in the questions that we were each pursuing. So there is great safety and peace there. My manuscript was soon to become a book and I asked Enrique if he would consider letting my publisher use an image on the jacket cover. He agreed and Quiet Night (Recollection) II, 1999 graces the cover of the hardback edition of The Memory Room.
I was invited to do a residency at Whale and Star and spent two weeks there in May 2010.
Q: What was the focus of your residency?
A: I’d just finished another novel manuscript and was exhausted when I was invited to Whale and Star. But Enrique and I both thought that was OK. I would more or less in my emptied out state, drift around and be fed by the activity and work around me. Writers do a huge amount of drifting around!
I’d taken materials for a little practical writing book for beginners that my students had bugged me to write, and I thought I might begin pulling that together. But it seemed really idiotic once I got to the residency, so I abandoned it. I also, after a few days, realized the novel I thought was finished, wasn’t. I’d sent it to a brilliant poet friend of mine then living in Sophia, Bulgaria, for his critique and emailed him the second day I was at Whaled and Star to stop. I knew I had to go deeper into the work, even though I’d been working on the project since 2000. So I did. This kind of thing happens at residencies. You have a focus or you have no focus and then you get a focus, if you’re lucky. But it’s all quite serendipitous. You can’t will it
I didn’t begin re-working the novel while at Whale and Star but I did feel this great rotation inside that I must pay attention to. Which is what I’ve been doing. I’ve just completed this novel manuscript and I’m very happy with it.
Q : What aspect of Martinez Celaya’s work and personality inspire you?
A: I withdrew my manuscript, and began reworking it because, among other reasons, Enrique was just beginning to work on the large canvases for the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, and I saw, among other things, the beginning of The Crossing which move me deeply.
I’m attracted to work that has a certain kind of ambition. Work where I can feel the person behind the work wrestling with questions that have a certain degree of seriousness. You know – that they are engaged in what I would call the most important questions. Like what is truth? And integrity? Death? Belonging? Memory? Ethical conduct? Love? Sorrow? In other words, work that without apology engages in questions of meaning.
I felt this at the residency, felt it in all the work Enrique had been producing these years, and felt it dramatically when I first saw Coming Home in Venice, California. The Memory Room attempts to deal with questions of moral debasement, and using that as the starting point asks what a person can do faced with moral atrocity? What are the resources that can stand up to such a thing? What do we have?
In the process of that struggle, theological language was no longer available to me as an author or for the protagonist of this novel. So then I went to this art opening at Griffin Contemporary and I see this work of the elk and the boy. And the elk has a mirror held in his antlers, aimed at the boy. And the boy, if he raises his head from looking at the floor, will see himself reflected in that mirror. And the large animal is benevolent. So I’m standing there in this jammed crowd of people talking, sipping white wine, and I’m almost crying because I’m feeling that maybe theological language is possible again, in some way. I stood there for an hour and then of course kept returning, so it is this kind of thing. Not that one finds answers. Enrique‘s work is not a manifesto and neither is mine. But you can engage in a kind of discourse that is the deepest kind of discourse I know, and the one that calls for my deepest attention.
Q: What do you think of Miami has an upcoming art city? How does the city influencer work?
A: I was living at the residence, which is attached directly to the studio. And outside that, to galleries, and so on, which I enjoyed visiting. I was warned not to go outside after dark. That the area was dangerous. So I didn’t. Enrique and the staff, everyone, of course, left at night. And there, at that time, were no windows in the residency itself. So I had this very interesting experience of utter aloneness and darkness at night, these strong cement, walls and fence, surrounded by streets that held some danger. It was intense. And then, so odd, every single night of my stay, at midnight, give or take five minutes, but almost exactly at midnight every night, some bird began singing with great vigor right outside my door. I was warned I shouldn’t actually even open my door at night. But I couldn’t help it. I eventually did, and looked up into the tree. I did this a few times and could never see the bird.
He did this singing with great intention, it seemed. As if singing Compline. And no bird ever answered him. He just offered it up. And I felt a very strong bond with this voice and the absence of his body, and unable to see him and that he sang and likely still sings, in the depth of darkness over streets that were unsafe for me at night. And this link, from inside the windowless studio to outside with the bird was a kind of cord making very visual what all of writing is about, really. And maybe painting too, I don’t know. This way of trying to fashion a link between inner and outer, between one’s deepest self and the world of others, and to cross over that danger and risk. And this is what “the Miami art city “meant to me, I suppose. Fragility and rigor, risk and beauty all intertwined.
There were a few other things of note for me:
Enrique suggested I come those certain weeks in May because two people would be there who would interest me and they did. David Raskin from the School of Art Institute of Chicago spoke on Donald Judd. I’d done two month-long writing residencies in Marfa, Texas with Lannan Foundation and spent a lot of time at Chinati. It was my first real encounter with Judd‘s work. Titled, “Judd‘s Credible Art” it was a great talk. Also, Dan Siedell was there. I’d read his work and for a long time, wanted to meet him. I disagreed with a lot of what I read others say about Enrique’s work and like what Dan was saying, his grasp of the work, so that was wonderful too. The residency is a place where all the boring, opaque stuff of life is, momentarily, stripped away, and you get to just live for a while in the rigor of certain concerns, and feel their complexity and power and beauty, and interact with a few other people who are doing the same thing. It is just heaven.
At night I was given access to the studio itself and this was a great privilege as I like to see art best in solitude. It was wonderful to sit on the floor for hours in front of . for instance. Writers see something and it might enter the work three decades later, you never know. But you do know when you are seeing something that feeds you in a mysterious, unnameable way. Or for example, the Golub portrait. I love that work and was at the studio in LA when Enrique finished it. But there, in the studio, where I think it has its permanent home, it is large and hung high. And then on the floor nearby, is a little cage with a tiny yellow bird in it. Maybe a finch. So you get to sit there, and see the two juxtaposed. And wonder why one holds up against the other. And think about art and nature or art and life or any of those dichotomies. What is small and living and natural, what is large and man-made, a portrait of someone now dead. But it isn’t really those dichotomies at all. It’s that the two things hold up to each other because they are equally truthful. So you go back into your writing quarters with that encounter with truthfulness. You want to be more like that than you were when you entered the studio and saw these two things in conversation. You want your work to be as truthful as both the Golub portrait and the small bird, so that you can enter into a discourse that is at that level of real–ness.
Mary Rakow WORKING METHODS, Whale and Star Residency, Miami Arts Journal.
Q: Could you please give me an overview of your background as an individual, a student and artist? The school you attended, your main interests, why you chose that residency and how long you were at the studio?
A: I am a novelist. I have a Ph.D. in theology, doing my graduate work at Harvard University and Boston College. I was completely oblivious to contemporary art and had just completed my novel, THE MEMORY ROOM when a writer friend, Janet Fitch insisted I attend the opening of Enrique’s Coming Home show at Griffin Contemporary in Venice, California. I’d never actually been to an art opening and was really nervous to go. The place was jammed, limousines at the curb, etc., but the work was so entirely compelling that I went back to see it every single day until it closed.
In any case, Enrique and I met soon after. He read The Memory Room in manuscript form and a friendship between us began. I was intimidated to meet him, but that all fell by the wayside immediately as we met more or less in the questions that we were each pursuing. So there is great safety and peace there. My manuscript was soon to become a book and I asked Enrique if he would consider letting my publisher use an image on the jacket cover. He agreed and Quiet Night (Recollection) II, 1999 graces the cover of the hardback edition of The Memory Room.
I was invited to do a residency at Whale and Star and spent two weeks there in May 2010.
Q: What was the focus of your residency?
A: I’d just finished another novel manuscript and was exhausted when I was invited to Whale and Star. But Enrique and I both thought that was OK. I would more or less in my emptied out state, drift around and be fed by the activity and work around me. Writers do a huge amount of drifting around!
I’d taken materials for a little practical writing book for beginners that my students had bugged me to write, and I thought I might begin pulling that together. But it seemed really idiotic once I got to the residency, so I abandoned it. I also, after a few days, realized the novel I thought was finished, wasn’t. I’d sent it to a brilliant poet friend of mine then living in Sophia, Bulgaria, for his critique and emailed him the second day I was at Whaled and Star to stop. I knew I had to go deeper into the work, even though I’d been working on the project since 2000. So I did. This kind of thing happens at residencies. You have a focus or you have no focus and then you get a focus, if you’re lucky. But it’s all quite serendipitous. You can’t will it
I didn’t begin re-working the novel while at Whale and Star but I did feel this great rotation inside that I must pay attention to. Which is what I’ve been doing. I’ve just completed this novel manuscript and I’m very happy with it.
Q : What aspect of Martinez Celaya’s work and personality inspire you?
A: I withdrew my manuscript, and began reworking it because, among other reasons, Enrique was just beginning to work on the large canvases for the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, and I saw, among other things, the beginning of The Crossing which move me deeply.
I’m attracted to work that has a certain kind of ambition. Work where I can feel the person behind the work wrestling with questions that have a certain degree of seriousness. You know – that they are engaged in what I would call the most important questions. Like what is truth? And integrity? Death? Belonging? Memory? Ethical conduct? Love? Sorrow? In other words, work that without apology engages in questions of meaning.
I felt this at the residency, felt it in all the work Enrique had been producing these years, and felt it dramatically when I first saw Coming Home in Venice, California. The Memory Room attempts to deal with questions of moral debasement, and using that as the starting point asks what a person can do faced with moral atrocity? What are the resources that can stand up to such a thing? What do we have?
In the process of that struggle, theological language was no longer available to me as an author or for the protagonist of this novel. So then I went to this art opening at Griffin Contemporary and I see this work of the elk and the boy. And the elk has a mirror held in his antlers, aimed at the boy. And the boy, if he raises his head from looking at the floor, will see himself reflected in that mirror. And the large animal is benevolent. So I’m standing there in this jammed crowd of people talking, sipping white wine, and I’m almost crying because I’m feeling that maybe theological language is possible again, in some way. I stood there for an hour and then of course kept returning, so it is this kind of thing. Not that one finds answers. Enrique‘s work is not a manifesto and neither is mine. But you can engage in a kind of discourse that is the deepest kind of discourse I know, and the one that calls for my deepest attention.
Q: What do you think of Miami has an upcoming art city? How does the city influencer work?
A: I was living at the residence, which is attached directly to the studio. And outside that, to galleries, and so on, which I enjoyed visiting. I was warned not to go outside after dark. That the area was dangerous. So I didn’t. Enrique and the staff, everyone, of course, left at night. And there, at that time, were no windows in the residency itself. So I had this very interesting experience of utter aloneness and darkness at night, these strong cement, walls and fence, surrounded by streets that held some danger. It was intense. And then, so odd, every single night of my stay, at midnight, give or take five minutes, but almost exactly at midnight every night, some bird began singing with great vigor right outside my door. I was warned I shouldn’t actually even open my door at night. But I couldn’t help it. I eventually did, and looked up into the tree. I did this a few times and could never see the bird.
He did this singing with great intention, it seemed. As if singing Compline. And no bird ever answered him. He just offered it up. And I felt a very strong bond with this voice and the absence of his body, and unable to see him and that he sang and likely still sings, in the depth of darkness over streets that were unsafe for me at night. And this link, from inside the windowless studio to outside with the bird was a kind of cord making very visual what all of writing is about, really. And maybe painting too, I don’t know. This way of trying to fashion a link between inner and outer, between one’s deepest self and the world of others, and to cross over that danger and risk. And this is what “the Miami art city “meant to me, I suppose. Fragility and rigor, risk and beauty all intertwined.
There were a few other things of note for me:
Enrique suggested I come those certain weeks in May because two people would be there who would interest me and they did. David Raskin from the School of Art Institute of Chicago spoke on Donald Judd. I’d done two month-long writing residencies in Marfa, Texas with Lannan Foundation and spent a lot of time at Chinati. It was my first real encounter with Judd‘s work. Titled, “Judd‘s Credible Art” it was a great talk. Also, Dan Siedell was there. I’d read his work and for a long time, wanted to meet him. I disagreed with a lot of what I read others say about Enrique’s work and like what Dan was saying, his grasp of the work, so that was wonderful too. The residency is a place where all the boring, opaque stuff of life is, momentarily, stripped away, and you get to just live for a while in the rigor of certain concerns, and feel their complexity and power and beauty, and interact with a few other people who are doing the same thing. It is just heaven.
At night I was given access to the studio itself and this was a great privilege as I like to see art best in solitude. It was wonderful to sit on the floor for hours in front of . for instance. Writers see something and it might enter the work three decades later, you never know. But you do know when you are seeing something that feeds you in a mysterious, unnameable way. Or for example, the Golub portrait. I love that work and was at the studio in LA when Enrique finished it. But there, in the studio, where I think it has its permanent home, it is large and hung high. And then on the floor nearby, is a little cage with a tiny yellow bird in it. Maybe a finch. So you get to sit there, and see the two juxtaposed. And wonder why one holds up against the other. And think about art and nature or art and life or any of those dichotomies. What is small and living and natural, what is large and man-made, a portrait of someone now dead. But it isn’t really those dichotomies at all. It’s that the two things hold up to each other because they are equally truthful. So you go back into your writing quarters with that encounter with truthfulness. You want to be more like that than you were when you entered the studio and saw these two things in conversation. You want your work to be as truthful as both the Golub portrait and the small bird, so that you can enter into a discourse that is at that level of real–ness.