Along side, literally, the mural site, in a gallery of the School of the Integrated Arts, I am showing work executed in Spain last summer. The body of work is called La Tramontana Temporal in reference to winds that blow across the Pyrenees to the Mediterranean Sea.
This body of work is largely inspired by a sustained residency in Catalonia, Spain. In it, I sought to work with forms that convey something of the refined and constructed landscape as well as the beautiful natural environment in the context of the depth and drama of the tumultuous and enduring cultural and political history in that part of the world. More specifically, I was inspired by a particularly massive 10th Century masía stone rural farmhouse in which my wife and I lived and worked, once the home of a famous Almogaver mercenary leader and feudal lord of the region. I was also inspired by the architecturally varied forms of the finestra (window) as well as the bridges (pont), both intact and in ruin, some from Roman times, others from the Spanish Civil War, some as a result of military attempts to isolate mountain populations, some simply the residue of time. I was also inspired by gracious Catalán rural customs, such as the planting of cypress trees to signify hospitality, and finally the Tramontana winds blowing across northern Catalonia, downward from the Pyrenees to the Costa Brava of the Mediterranean, all metaphors to me of natural and transcultural changes, passageways, transitional spaces alluding to the stubbornness of life and yet its never ending delicacy and wonder.
Here is a pdf of the bi-fold brochure (in Spanish):
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