The Spring 2014 Quarterly Newsletter is in!

Visit www.carolaperla.com for contact details on how to receive the newsletter via email:

 

Creative Quarterly Journal Annouces CQ34 Winners

 

The art journal Creative Quarterly has chosen to include me in its Spring 2014 online gallery as one of its select 25 international Fine Arts Professionals! Although I narrowly missed out on the Winner Circle to be published in the esteemed magazine's CQ34 issue, I will feature online with my fellow Runners Up.

http://cqjournal.com/winners

 

 

"Mariposa" (Butterfly) - My latest KONZEPTION Installation for the novel "Humboldt's Riches" - PART 1

As of October 12th, I am officially underway in my KONZEPTION cross-pollinating literature and art project.  "Se Vende" led into the theme.  "Prologue" served as the page of inception.  Now "Mariposa" begins to introduce some of the main themes in the novel, which I can't wait to start wrestling with over the next few months.  I will talk more about naturalism and Alexander von Humboldt, the Prussian explorer who inspired the title of my new book, in the next post.  For now I will leave you with this description and images from the new art installation.

The subject is Amazonian butterflies: mariposas.   The installation depicts them as biological nomenclature hovering amidst a lattice-like net and sculptural 'foliage', to which cling crystalline vellum butterflies, transparent yet veined with white ink and pencil.  In "Humboldt's Riches", the main characters are a family of young biologists who have journeyed into Peru's Apurimac region to run an uncle's hacienda hotel, with the idea of continuing their study of butterflies there.  Once arrived, they endure the hardships of living in this remote wilderness and start to see hints of the impending dangers that will catapult them into the novel's adventure,  Yet all the while they cannot resist delving into the forest for their quarry, the variety of vibrant papilios, some rare and uncatalogued, as large as their spread hands. 

Note: my parents were equally obsessed with capturing and cataloguing butterflies and moths (and a fair share of insects) while we lived in the rainforest.  I grew up with these frames, which traveled with us from Peru to Germany to the United States, even when other important objects (all my baby toys spring to mind) were left behind.  As a young girl in Munich, my parents even raised a specific species of domestic butterfly, just to see it hatch in the thousands in our small studio apartment...but more on that in my 'Germany' book)

The installation, as seen presently, offers a depiction of this butterfly theme.  Only when the novel is read months down the line, will the installation offer a different perspective on the subject, begging the question of who is being chased, who exactly is trapped in that lattice-like net among the sculptural green???

 

 

 

 

 

Four Points Contemporary: Latest Exhibition Selection

This past August, I had the honor of being selected to the Four Points Contemporary's 1st Annual All Media International Juried exhibition.  The online exhibition, which seeks to discover promising talent from among emerging international artists, runs now through September 30th, 2013.  Visit the link to see the complete exhibit: Four Points Contemporary Current Exhibitions .

The honor tops off an amazing summer of 'Little Victories', from Bronze in the Art Ascent Magazine "Emergence' Competition to 'Best in Show' at the Foundry Art Centre's 'Papercuts' exhibit, as well as selection in the Vargas Gallery's '2013 South Florida Group' Show and the American Art Jury's 'Gallery of Invited Artists' Salon, as well as a feature article in South Florida's Sun Post.  On the literature front, 'Gibbin House' has also had its little moment in the sun, with reviews, interviews and author spotlights, and giveaways.

In all, it's only been six months since I began an active push towards making my art more public, and the response goes to show what can come from some concentrated efforts.  As I begin 'Humboldt's' Riches' and the 'KONZEPTION' series, I foresee this forward trajectory slowing, being that writing and making art will once again consume my free time.  Let's see what the next six months bring...

 

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. 

 

 

 

LITTLE TRIUMPHS: Winning Best In Show at the Foundry Art Centre

"Se Vende" is Awarded Top Prize and Solo Show in the "Paper Cuts" Exhibit!

Warning: Candid Observations of a Personal Nature Below...

Dear Readers: earlier this Spring, I felt a sudden urgency, as I had never before, to realize my artistic ambitions in a concrete way...oh, I had written the novel, made my art, held a reading here, a signing there, managed not without considerable feet-dragging at last to build a website...but my sporadic efforts quite plainly lacked focus, cohesion...I was keenly aware that for the most part I had dropped the ball these last two years, for a number of reasons, which were ultimately immaterial except for the fact that they had all conspired to distract me from my purpose.  I was left with no other choice than to face my failures and roll up my sleeves...

Going forth, my plan for 2013 centered on two main tasks: 1) to garner reviews for Gibbin House as a lead-in to my next book, and 2) to gain acceptance into art exhibits outside my gallery.

By April, my first task was well underway, and as I continue to work with a host of kind reviewers, I welcome readers to message me here or on my Carola Perla Website with any testimonials they're willing to share!

For the second, I scoured possible gallery and online exhibits.  It was not the easiest thing - my pieces were too large for most, the wrong medium for others.  Moreover, I was desperate to find an exhibit that celebrated paper and sculpture together - I wanted to see my work next to my peers, as a confirmation that I too belonged.  Naturally, when I stumbled across the Foundry Art Centre's Call to Artists for 'Paper Cuts' I instantly regarded it as 'the' event I wanted to join.  Cut-paper exhibits are shockingly rare, and the space seemed so beautiful - I told myself that acceptance here would be the ultimate sign of  accomplishment in the task I had set out for myself. 

By the time the center's response letter arrived in June, I had already placed in another group show and had won an art magazine prize, so I told myself that it wouldn't be the worst thing if I didn't get in.  The envelope was so thin, I reasoned its contents could have no other message for me.  But then it did.

Fast forward three weeks, the short time span I had in which to ship my pieces and arrange my own travel to St. Louis.  As I have confided to my friends, I flew over there with the sensation of never having traveled before, much as I had navigating my way around Tallahassee during college orientation when I was eighteen and away from home for the first time.  It was strange, to be getting dressed for the exhibit opening, as if for the prom, going to see my work in a new space, all grown-up, heading towards this seminal moment which I had awaited with such anticipation, validation of me as an artist...and I was doing it all on my own.  Once again I stood in Anka's shoes, a shy little thing, waiting for the reality of my situation to sink in. 

The space was indeed lovely, a converted train car factory that still had the original steel lifts - in the second world war it had assembled torpedoes - with lots of natural light and high ceilings.  Any worries for the state my pieces might be in (thank you, fedex) immediately subsided as I spied them at the end of the long gallery.  They had been installed with great care and lit with just the right degree of intensity...from here on out, I told myself, I could deem the experience a success.  Being there is all I had wanted, it's all I had worked towards.  I even managed to mingle, to ingratiate myself a little with fellow artists, pose for a picture, not drop my wine.  It was all turning out better than I could have hoped. 

And then they called out my name.  Going Solo Award for "Se Vende" by Carola Perla.  The piece I had done in honor of my family, as a tribute to Casa Marsano, an expression of my love for all things Peru.  The jury could not begin to imagine the deeply personal significance of the house motif or the Spanish poem, its allusions to Chabuca Granda, dust and garua, fairytales and broken dreams...they could not know and yet they thought it deserving.

Now, I know there are exhibits around the country every day, meaning that artists are winnings awards every day, and so I will not let this little triumph go to my head.  There is so much work...SO MUCH WORK ahead of me.  But I will keep the feeling of this first victory in a safe place, to call on when doubt sets in, as it always will.  Because it is a beautiful, necessary thing to work for yourself, to make art that feeds your own soul and gives you a pure purpose...I worked happily in the shroud of anonymity for nearly a decade, as I felt I should.  But every decade or so, it's nice to receive an accolade, a stamp of approval...the community of directors, curators, and artists at the Foundry Art Centre were wonderfully kind and welcoming, and for their support of my artist's journey I thank them...

On to the next one...


For those of you in the St Louis area: please note that the exhibit runs through until September 27, 2013.  It features beautiful work in cut paper as well as book art. 

Here are some photos from the 'Paper Cuts' opening event, which took place June 28th:

Paper Cuts Exhibit at the Foundry Art Centre, St. Charles, MO

"Se Vende" and "Spelling Bee" by Carola Perla at the Foundry Art Centre

"Se Vende" and "Spelling Bee" at Paper Cuts Exhibit

"Se Vende" and "Spelling Bee" paper installations at Foundry Art Centre

"Se Vende" and "Spelling Bee" paper installations by Carola Perla

Winning piece "Se Vende" by Carola Perla

"Spelling Bee" visual poetry paper installation by Carola Perla

Carola Perla and Director Angela Fowle

 

JOURNEYS: "Paper Cuts" Exhibit at the Foundry Art Centre, June 28, 2013

 

Ever since sending off my two large installations, "Spelling Bee" and "Se Vende",  to St. Charles last week for the "PaperCuts" exhibit, I have been experiencing terrible pangs of anxiety. 

I keep wondering if it's because I'm worried about the state they will arrive in (being they've never traveled that far)?  Have I provided the right materials to display them?  Will they be hung correctly? Will they will make it back to me safe and sound in October?

And then I again, I wonder if my mind is really on something much more deep-seated...am I worried about how they will be received?  What would I do if someone wanted to buy them, would I be happy about it, or spin into another spiral of worry altogether?

And what if it's not any of the above?  What if it's because I am entering a new phase of my artistic life, which is my life essentially?  Starting this July, I will be participating in two separate gallery exhibits, in addition to unveiling a second piece for my upcoming novel "Humboldt's Riches" at ATELIER 1022.  I have left the safety of my own studio and have ventured out into the world.  I have no idea what reaction to expect.  There is as much responsibility in success as there is in failure...will I look back on this summer and see it as the monumental shift in direction as if feels to me now?  Is this the start of something or just a wave, a swell as occurs from time to time only to see things die down again?

 

I deliberate on all this from my seat at the dining table/computer desk in my living room.  Slanted rays of afternoon sun play on the palm fronds outside my window, balmy air pulsates through the mosquito mesh.  I am stationary, yet in motion...I am, I realize like my Anka in "Gibbin House", traveling without moving...Again, as so often in the past ten years, I find myself in her shoes, and it is brought home to me how very real my heroine is, and I love her all the more for it.  She understands what I feel just now.  As I enter this next chapter, I offer these lines:

"I pulled the covers over me, but my skin prickled from the inescapable chill that comes from lying alone.  I could not gather myself tight enough to feel solid and whole.  My stomach still seared from the coffee and now the astringent gin.  All the fluid in my insides rocked with the forward motion of the past week.  I lay inert, and yet my body was on a train, on a ferry, in a subterranean car, traveling without moving.

 

"I now feel most intimately that the process of traversing distance is an erosion of the spirit.  The thrill of change that accompanies the onset of a journey is a deception, the fearful attachment to outcome which makes adrenaline kick in a way not entirely un-pleasurable propelling the lie.  For a moment one feels positively alive.  One is duped into committing to the chaos.  One inhales the fumes, joins in rigid attack stances near sliding compartment doors.  One holds on feverishly as stuttering wheels grind to a halt.  One is titillatingly taunted by visions of missed connections, rerouted trains.  One presses on.

But after hours of vigilance and wide-eyed awake-ness, one adopts patience.  Or as it ought to be known, the self-congratulatory brother of fatigue.  Patience then gives way to indifference, and in time one becomes a heretic to the creed of goals and ends and satin-ribboned resolutions.  One stops caring about the names of foreign cities, stops seeking out their hearts from window seats.  Eventually one realizes they are all disfigured, all the same sketch of blasted glass and ruins and fire-retardant weeds, anonymous to the fickle gazes that graze them.  One drifts among them, a shipwrecked figure on Gericault’s raft, gaunt and delirious, running one’s arm through the air outside without hope or aim." (p. 36-38)

 

 

 

 

Little Triumphs: Bronze Winner of Art Ascent Magazine's 'Emergence' Art Contest!

I'm so excited to be able to add another 'Little Triumph' to the list, as Art Ascent Magazine just announced that I am the Bronze Winner of their July issue's 'Emergence' art contest!!!

The magazine chose the top 20 artists from among a host of international applicants earlier this May, and will feature the three placing winners in July's print as well as digital online issue, with article and photo spread.  I've been lucky to get a preview of the article and I must say it is a wonderful appraisal of my art's thematic direction and aesthetic aims.  To see more, visit the website and sign up for the magazine's newsletter.
http://artascent.com/emergence-winners-july-2013/

Also, if you're inspired to support my work, sign up for the 'Gibbin House' giveaway at Closed The Cover!  The book review website is conducting the contest, and will award three lucky winners autographed copies of my book! 

GIBBIN HOUSE - BOOK GIVEAWAY by www.closedthecover.com!!!


 

Homage to Casa Marsano: "Se Vende" Visual Poetry Installation by Carola Perla Unveiled

This May 11th, I unveiled my latest visual poetry installation "Se Vende" during ATELIER 1022's 2-Year Anniversary event.

 It was a special evening for me, as it also marked 2 years since the launch of Gibbin House.

How strange, I kept thinking to myself as I stood posing for photos, that a work I had once lived with behind closed doors for nearly nine years was no longer a private thing, indeed for two years already it had aged, shaken out its skirts and petticoats in the public eye, gotten all adult on me like a teenager graduating college.  It gives you that feeling of "when did I get so old?".  And yet, I also felt relieved.  Relieved, realizing that two years into the completion of Gibbin House, the reason for its existence, the need to exorcise and 'verarbeiten' (as the Germans say) which drove me to write it in the first place, remained the same force behind my work today.

I realized that, although I had never admitted it to myself as I tinkered away at my novel, I was afraid of finishing the book and having nothing left to say.  Perhaps it's why I worked on it for so many years...but looking at the emotional investment in "Se Vende", I knew that wasn't the case.  One way or another I have found projects to express my world views. I have looked for ways to lay things bare, expose ironies and elevate beauties, as an artist ought.  "Se Vende" is probably most emblematic of this impetus - it addresses the sudden and controversial tearing down of Casa Marsano, a known Lima landmark from 1941-2002 and a house that holds a special place in the history of my family.  The building, which was far from dilapidated, could not be saved because it was deemed by authorities to hold no cultural or architectural value (when I see photos of Ocean Drive from the 40's and the row of Art Deco palaces that used to stud that street, I am reminded that Casa Marsano is not the only house to have been so disregarded.)  Judging by the websites, articles, and blogs dedicated posthumously to Casa Marsano, it's clear that the landmark was not only significant to my relatives, but to a city at large.  It's destruction begs the question of what we value in ourselves when we destroy the monuments to beauty that promised such permanence, such continuation.  The poem in "Se Vende" does this by repeating 'for sale' and using cultural references to ask how far we go in selling our patrimony.  The accompanying voice recording of me reading the poem add to the echo effect.

I'm proud of this piece, this examination of a house, my second 'house' as it were:) From Gibbin House to Casa Marsano, I will continue to strive for authenticity and illuminating expression.  Here is to another two years...

And thank you to the Miami SunPost for the great write-up in anticipation of the unveiling.  Follow the link here to read the article in full: http://miamisunpost.com/art-visual-poet-carola-perla/

Argentina's El Clarin Recommends ATELIER 1022 and Carola Perla!

Argentina's largest newspaper EL CLARIN, which is also the most wide-read Spanish-language newspaper online, recently published a travel article on Wynwood that recommends ATELIER 1022 as one of the neighborhoods best galleries!  Echoing our 'Artvergnugen' mantra, the article lists me and my fellow artists by name.  Thank you for the great incusion!

To read the article in full, follow the link here:
 

http://www.clarin.com/viajes/arte-moda-Miami_0_896910308.html

"Se Vende" - Carola Perla's Latest Illuminated Paper Art Installation Set To Be Unveiled In Just Three Weeks!!!

...in anticipation, let me share the 'official' release on this new unveiling. It offers some insight into my themes and process. Hope it's of some interest!

Introducing Visual Poet Carola Perla

Miami Author Highlights Transience and Transculturation

in Illuminated Paper Sculptures

 

ATELIER 1022 Studio and Fine Art Gallery introduces resident ‘paper sculptor and visual linguist’, artist Carola Perla, whose latest visual poetry installation "Se Vende" is set to be unveiled at ATELIER 1022's 2nd Anniversary Exhibit - "Perla Projekt 2.0" - on May 11th, 2013.  The young German-Peruvian author launched her literary fiction novel "Gibbin House" at the opening of ATELIER 1022 in May 2011, and has in the ensuing two years expanded on her published prose with an impressive collection of floor-to-ceiling visual poetry 'illuminations' that explore transience, permanence, and transculturation through cut paper, light, graphite drawings, and autobiographical source material. 

 

Carola Perla's soon-to-be unveiled "Se Vende" integrates all these elements and introduces as its autobiographical component the real-life demolition of Casa Marsano, an ancestral estate and Lima landmark.  A graphite representation of this site emerges from behind a carved wall-sized 'chant' poem that uses the Spanish 'For Sale' expression (Se Vende) as its central 'word motif'.  In "Se Vende", the poem invokes Limean history and folk references, their melancholy devaluation mirrored by the ever-crumbling letters and the building's spectral silhouette which hovers amid fine incisions.  Back lighting and the artist's recorded voice performance of the poem add multi-sensory resonance.

 

The artist has dubbed her poems 'chants' because they evolve from a word or phrase on which she must meditate during the process of cutting each letter freehand.  The perpetual incantation organically inspires the sound or image of the next, the motif functioning as both a visual and musical building block that slowly draws in other elements.  Since such poems depend on the immediacy of the physical creation, they are composed entirely in the moment.  Each piece, despite its graphic precision, is therefore an absolute and spontaneous original. 

 

"I see my paper installations as room-sized conversations - visual echoes of my personal fascination with displacement and the way language shapes identity, having spent much of my early childhood traveling across borders, from Romania to Peru to Germany to Miami all before the age of ten," explains the artist.

 

"The search for 'home' and 'voice' is what drives both my personal and aesthetic decisions.  It led me to write about exile in Gibbin House and to create a mute protagonist.  However, living in Miami, which is this very transient, multi-lingual city, is a daily reminder that the struggle for 'home' and 'voice' is not my own, but universal.  My hope is that the visual impact of these sculptures, coupled with the familiarity of at least one of the languages I use in my poems extends that same reaffirmation to others."

 

In addition to her poetry chants, Carola features in her pieces excerpts from her novel Gibbin House, as in "Off the Page", the first of the artist's cut-paper sculptures born out of her wish to transcend the inherently hermetic nature of the writing process.  The installation, which debuted during Art Basel Miami 2011 to public acclaim, was comprised of the material culture amassed over a nine-year writing odyssey, and punctuated by the last page of the book - a cascading blanket of white paper, carved delicately with letters dangling off the page.  Imbued with movement and aglow with diffused light, these floating letters translated the extemporaneous vibrancy of language and became for the artist an ethereal manifestation of the spoken word.  "The ephemeral quality of paper adds to the effect with its frailty," says Carola, "yet the irreversible act of cutting reinforces the permanent nature of words.  As words cannot be unsaid, so a paper cut is the ultimate in commitment.  The possibilities seemed endless." 

 

Indeed, the potential for this art form sparked the series of transience- and transculturation-themed works that round out the collection currently on display at ATELIER 1022: "Spelling Bee", a whimsical floor-to-ceiling visual poem in four languages that traces a young girl's linguistic journey across continents; the German-language "Illegible", incorporating a graphite portrait and the original poetry 'chant' that addresses identity through language; as well as the small-scale "A-Mended Conversation" cut from Mexican amate bark and embroidered with printed text from the Gibbin House manuscript, the medium's traditional uses highlighting gender and class roles as defined by the novel's fictional characters.

Mapanare Interview with Carola Perla @ATELIER 1022 During Art Basel

This past December Mapanare Blogger Patrick Ogle was so kind to interview me during Art Basel.  Here is the link to his article about me and some of the video!

Article:

  Mapanare with Carola Perla - author and artist

Video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=9rUO5iD6txA

 Carola Perla Interview

Gibbin House is a Book Club Pick!

This past November, 'Gibbin House' hit a milestone with its first 'Book Club' reading!  The Miami-based event was held at ATELIER 1022 Gallery and turned out to be just the sort of spirited bohemian evening our protagonist Anka would loved to have been a part of, with elegant intelligent women on velvet pillows sharing profound thoughts and their love of literature over heapings of cucumber salad, dark bread, smoked meats and a seemingly endless pouring of wine...

Now, despite the thrilling occasion, this lazy author managed to drag her feet about posting the photos!  For shame.  So here is a sampling - the rest can be found on my facebook page: facebook.com/carolaperla  If you have any questions or would like to feature Gibbin House as part of your next book club, please contact me here or on facebook...I look forward to the next one!!