'LIT/LITE: Visual Poetry Installations by Carola Perla' at the Foundry Art Centre# - A Look Back

My very first solo show 'LIT/LITE: Visual Poetry Installations' opened two Thursdays ago at the Foundry Art Centre in St. Charles (St. Louis, MO), and I am still finding it hard to believe...

I say this for two reasons: the first is that I feel like such a novice.  I started with my paper cuts three years ago and it still startles me a bit to think of myself as an artist.  The title 'artist' seems to imply such a lot of struggle and suffering, countered by that unmistakable streak of genius and determination.   I instantly recall scenes from 'Of Human Bondage', because I had always imagined myself more like that novel's protagonist, a dilettante rather than the real thing, a lover of the bohemian life, a romantic, not meant for an actual hard life on the street in search of a dream, never really risking the gutter...I never imagined a road towards 'artist' a clean one...even as a writer, I battled demons, I lived a solitary life, at times I sacrificed...but this art, for which I am suddenly recognized and rewarded, this art had been a path of few stumbling blocks, of real joy, of (dare I admit) caprice...how have I found myself in this place, I wondered that evening in Saint Charles?  Can I be deserving?  What comes next?

Which I suppose is the question that brings me to my second reason: last year when I received my prize, it felt like such a beginning of something.  A year later, it feels like a closing chapter...because the truth is that with all my work displayed, I must forge a new path...I have to figure out what I need to do to grow, what still needs saying, do I intend to sell these things one day?  How much longer can I consider myself an artist without selling a piece?  Is this a fork in the road?  These are the questions I am not prepared to answer yet, and so the experience remains stubbornly in my mind an unsolidified one, a castle in the air, a whisper of memories...I am not ready to be nostalgic...

So instead I will focus on the journey of this past year, on the loneliness I felt last June, my uncertainty as I entered the Foundry, afraid of feeling inconsequential, of not being able to stand on my own...and knowing that all these months later, I could not feel more loved or consequential, at least to all who matter most to me...if I happen to elicit any such feeling from others through my work, then I can count myself truly blessed, and perhaps even an 'artist'

'LIT/LITE' runs now through November 7th...here is a bit of what you will see:

"LIT / LITE: Visual Poetry Installations by Carola Perla" Solo Show Launches at the Foundry Art Centre September 25, 2014!

ITS TIME FOR MY FIRST SOLO SHOW!!!

I will save my full comments about this experience for after the opening, I'm too nervous to go into it now...what I will say is that this show punctuates my life in more significant ways than I could have foreseen last year when I unexpectedly won the Best in Show at the Foundry Art Centre's "Paper Cuts" exhibit.  Life is a never-ending stream of surprises, lessons, and miracles, and if I ever stop believing that, then all I have to do is look back on this moment...I am so proud, grateful, and full of emotion, having sent off three year's worth of work - my entire collection - to this show, not sure if I sent enough light bulbs, wrote the correct measurements, made good enough work, and yet knowing that it doesn't matter, because this is all part of the journey...I will keep you posted on the results...in the meantime, here is the flyer for the show:

 

KONZEPTION: My New Literature/Art Project Unveiled!

Be the first to read up on my new series KONZEPTION, an unprecedented literature/art installation project, recently unveiled on August 10th, 2013 and scheduled to last through Summer 2014 with the completion of "Humboldt's Riches":

 

 

KONZEPTION – a cross-pollinating literary fiction and art installation project – aims to make a novel visually manifest by interpreting its creative process concurrent with its evolution, from inception to publication, through works of cut-paper sculpture and mixed media visual poetry installations.  The art works become inextricably linked to the written word with the novel’s opening lines, which are composed within the first piece in the series “Konzeption: Prologue”.  Subsequently, as the writing process continues, the novel’s themes and events inform new installations, while they in turn serve as springboards and incubators for later chapters. 

 KONZEPTION marries Carola Perla’s prose work with her sculptural ‘Lichtsprache’ – lighted cut-paper sculpture and visual poetry installations.  She created her first installation, “Off the Page” (2011), as a direct reaction to the hermetic process of writing her debut novel “Gibbin House”.  Her desire to visually celebrate the completion of this book led to further exploration in ‘lighted’ words and cut paper that incorporated published text as well as in situ ‘poetry chants’.  KONZEPTION  picks up where “Off the Page” left off, examining the birth of the novel instead.  The source here is the in-progress literary fiction novel “Humboldt’s Riches”, a semi-autobiographical Heart of Darkness that follows a young family’s escape from the remote Amazon region of Apurimac during Peru’s 1980 guerilla uprisings.

 

“Konzeption: Prologue”, written in a similar way to other ‘poetry chants’, sets the stage for this South American adventure story.  Breathlessly, it describes the dangerous task of driving in the Andes.  As a spontaneous composition, the prologue cannot be amended.  With no space for error, the artist is much like the Andean driver, maneuvering on a knife’s edge, aware that each carved word will irrevocably form part of the novel’s opening scene. Above the lines hangs the second sculptural element of the piece, a theatrical curtain that introduces this story.   Ruffled and fragile, with lace-like lattice cuts, the constructed white ‘curtain’ is meant to work simultaneously fragile as well as imposing and precarious in its weight and irregularity. Like an avalanche, with its frayed layers casting craggy shadows, the curtain portends the nebulous beginnings of something.

“Konzeption: Prologue” was unveiled on August 10, 2013, officially launching the KONZEPTION series that is projected for completion in summer 2014.  A special-edition photo book documenting the KONZEPTION project will be released as a companion to "Humboldt's Riches" upon publication.