Sacred Vessels

My inspiration for this series title “Sacred Vessels” come from my thoughts about healing. I look at materials I used in creating this series, it is about the wood that I choose, wood that had a previous use and spent time in the desert weathering the elements over many seasons. It has marinated in the DNA of the desert and recorded the desert experience both day and night. 

Spiritually speaking, I have explored the nature of healing and the influence of light to the process. God is described as Light in many of the major religions. Light plays an important role in my work. Most of my pieces are infused with translucent phosphorescence layers. These layers emit a light, a glow in dark and the darker the setting the stronger the light.

I remember an evening where my mind and soul wandered into a thick darkness, a wilderness place that I came across looking for answers to prayer and meditation on healing I was seeking. In the heavy darkness, one of my pieces provided enough light to refuel faith and hope.

Taos is spiritually magical and has special places of healing and mission Chimayo being one of those healing places.  I embed soil I have collected from Mission Chimayo within all my artwork. 

I like to believe that my pieces help contemplate spirituality. That although God is invisible his manifestation can be perceived by the power of Light, the emotion of love.  and His healing nature.

Finally, music influence my work and remembered the message from the group Jars of Clay.

2 Cor 4:7

If you only look at us, you might well miss the brightness. We carry this precious Message around in the unadorned clay pots of our ordinary lives.

A message is embedded in our ordinary lives….we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us.

I am reminded as an artist that I have Light to share.

Healing in a land of unbelief.

Spiritual objects help the viewer focus onto what is holy and mysterious. Several of my new pieces remind me of a primitive Monstrance. The spirit hovers above the earth, connecting what is holy with whom is holy.

My mind is impressed with the thoughts of healing the body, mind, and spirit. We must use all that is available to heal.

We pray and beg for our bodies to be healed and have faith that God will answer our prayers for healing. “God…get me out of this pain and my death”. And the prayer comes back answered in a way we do not expect when God answers us with …”I’ll get you through”. “Lord heal my body, and He healed my mind. 

The desert DNA is present in this piece. My imagination took me back to that time and wilderness place.

 

A Journey to Protection

A sunset framed against the desert horizon, a sign that special moments are about to begin: it’s a brief interlude before the light of the day becomes the light of the night.

Moments like this are sacred, I want to believe its time like this that connects me with the spiritual realm, allowing me time to explore and commune with something greater than the dimensions I exist.  “I want these moments to last longer,” I say. Much harder to explain…easier to experience.

There are times in the studio where I experience a spiritual stillness and humility. Love those desert nights.

When I let go, I guide my thoughts into prayers. ..and somehow the prayers become a spoken layer in my work like an image of an invisible God. My night encounters have become sacred rituals, connecting God and my work.

Interesting where thoughts arise as I imagine that I am creating healing pieces focusing on the themes of the restoration of health and harmony. The curative properties of Light are expressed deeper in darker settings where I imagine the prayer layers are visible as light energy. I imagine the light energy collected and stored in a sacred vessel during the day and dispensed into the night and the darker the setting: this light protects the night and connects to God.

“Within the process of creating my work, there is a time that the work  brings me to “places” that fill me with the spaciousness of the universe while my artificial boundaries are disolved. It feels like freedom, and Exodus from life tethered in four dimensions”

Larry Ortega

The Exodus brings the Arrival

I am influenced by my desert surroundings. My studio faces stony mountains and a jagged skyline, such a contrast between sky and land. The heat in the summertime consumes you and demands your attention. During the day the sun lingers high in the sky and the heat remains throughout the night. The silence of the desert accentuates my senses releasing memories along the journey, many times now with a fresh perspective.

 

I try to imbue thoughts of faith, restoration, and healing within my work. I believe light has healing power for the body, mind and spirit. I add healing soil collected from healing areas in the southwest such as Mission Chimayo and Sedona, AZ. Many of the pieces have the healing soil from the mission integrated into the pieces. The light emitted from the layers cast with phosphorescent powders provides light and pierces the darkness, fading over time to a tiny glow.

 “The most precious light is the one that visits you in your darkest hour!” Mehmet Murat Ildan

My studio is full of shards, artifacts, and salvage. At times, I re-purpose these pieces into my work which provides a pathway to new work and a new direction. I experiment illuminating the work with LED light fixtures as a way of viewing them in a dark setting.  My pieces, when viewed in natural light have distinct characteristics and it is the light effects the LED fixtures provide when viewing in a dark setting that set the piece apart.  A different connection and context is created as the light penetrates the translucent layers and reacts to the layers mixed with phosphorescent powders.

With this new series, I have created a sense of motion in the piece. This new work has the piece hovering and gliding over desert and ocean landscapes or seascapes.   The different pitch provides a sense of descending, flying or a sense of hovering. The changing color of light creates a wide range of spiritual moods, from calmness and healing to a sense of peace.

“Seeking the Sacred V” The last of this series. 18″x 7″x 17″ Alligator Juniper, cast resin, steel ball joint hardware, LED light, UV Light. There is a beautiful planet that lights and glows beautifully under UV light. The elements of earth, air, and water intermingle as an intruder looms above the land. The resin impregnated the live edge of this piece of wood creating a seascape showing a sea floor and a sky hovering over the ocean. Clouds are suspended between layers and emit an eerie glow. An LED pulsates light behind the piece and illuminating a portion of the ray.

If the pieces I create imbue a “mystical” mood to my viewer, I feel I have succeeded in my mission as an artist. If the pieces take you to a journey of deeper perceptive state, even better.

Website Gallery

Lortega777@gmail.com

602-369-3698

 

“The Arrival”

Gliding over a canyon drawn by eerie lights penetrating the darkness. The spirit world beckons the arrival of the new light. It brings new meaning, new thoughts of well being, prosperity and peace. The hope that Light illuminates the hope in our lives. 

  “The most precious light is the one that visits you in your darkest hour!” Mehmet Murat Ildan

The arrival of this Light emboldens us to search and find new strength from a revived faith.  The Light allows us to experience a renewing of mind and spirit, bringing new ideas into unfinished parts in our lives.

I continue the theme of Light penetrating the darkness. My pieces act as ” lenses” diffusing LED light through the translucent layers of cast resin. Hidden layers of light come alive in dark settings, creating and emitting their own light illuminating our world.

Mixed media. $350 to $500 .

11″ to 15″ in height- 4″ to ” wide. Cast resins-wood-LED light and steel mounting hardware. The art of Larry Ortega

 

Exodus

Seeing the final phase of these pieces: final resin casts, the LED lighting location, additional airbrush detail, sanding, engineering hardware to attach the steel rod to a base.

Flying and hovering and strange night lights all part of the story of Exodus. Freedom is the theme of the Exodus and wings provide a unique freedom. I often have dreams of flying or hovering outside my body. Freedom is a spiritual feeling and is associated with light. 

The cast resin pieces become a lens diffusing LED light through the wing and surrounding area. It’s a soothing light, a light you might see in the distance of the desert wilderness. Exodus is a story of a flight to freedom through a desert wilderness. The journey is illuminated at times with a column of fire or clouds for the masses to follow during the day and during the night. A journey in the desert at night avoids the heat of the desert day and the stars of the night illuminate the desert floor.

New pieces-Cast Resin Wings: 34″-38″ wingspans. LED light-wood and resin bases. Series of 12 available this fall. More at: Online Gallery Website 

The Encounter

In my dream, I am alone in an ocean desert. The moonless sky helps shield the pitch black sky protecting it from celestial lights. The sound of silence is deafening. I am lost, helpless and desperate for a sign. Hope becomes fear as the wilderness becomes unrecognizable and my faith is my only assurance until the Encounter.

“The Encounter I” is the working title of this mixed media piece. The cast resin molded wings are cast with phosphorescent coloring-aqua-sky blue and green. The wings are airbrushed with pearlescent lacquers and additional clear resin cast is cast on top.  

I like the idea of the mixed media pieces hanging on a wall with the LED lighting illuminating the work. I love how you can apply a “fade” on the lights as the LED lights cycles through an array of colors. One of my personal favorites is the yellow-orange colorization.

This particular suite of work is entitled “Strangers in a Strange Land”. We all experience the unknown in our daily walk of life, some through a death experience or in a meditative state. When we are lost, we seek the familiar and in our desperation, we cry out for a sign. This the first in the series of these sculptures. The each wing is 17″ and it the photo above, the wings are verticle emulating that angelic being that becomes a light we follow.

http://www.stor-ybox.com  @anObliqartist

“Strangers in a Strange Land”

“The Encounter I” My studio has an abundance of resin and wood shards, artifacts from past projects, and salvage, things I cannot throw away. It is full of music as well and my mind wanders through the biblical stories of the Exodus, where guiding lights and columns of clouds and fire are found along a desert journey. Before starting work, I muse on some of my common themes in my work, the themes of healing and restoration.  Bits and pieces of memory are stored in the shards of my work, time is captured and measured in these lifeless pieces. I look to release the memories contained by using the media of resin, LED lighting wood and steel.

At times I think myself as an alchemist,  looking to release the memories “stored” in the pieces. I am drawn to using resin, LED lighting wood and steel.  I seek to create commonalities between materials, and the experience and memories.

In this photo, I imagine the molded resin wings engulfing what looks like the heart of a being. The LED lighting pulsates colors through the translucent layers of cast resins.

Healing, light, and restoration have become central themes in my work. My imagination is inspired by nature and depicting stories from scripture. I imagine a time during the creation of our world, the light, the formation of earth and sea. Stories of hope, healing, and provision while lost in the desert. LED and UV light is a medium that I use to illuminate my work.

When I am in a wilderness environment, I imagine a time when the landscape was shrouded in chaos but formed to create meaning and mission where time, space and light dispelled the darkness as new beginnings emerge.

The desert and the ocean have always been part of my life as has surfing, diving, fishing, sailing and exploring remote realms in Mexico, Central America, Alaska, and Hawaii.

One of my favorite artist’s quotes comes from British artists Francis Bacon “The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery”. My feel my work has a mysterious nature to it, lights that penetrate the darkness and seemingly comes from within the work, light that pulsates a healing and meditative mood and helps penetrate the darkness.

 The Art Process   I utilize resin, wood, steel and light in most of my pieces. The translucent nature of resin and how I cast and color resin layers creates skies, clouds, oceans, and landscapes. I mix phosphorescent powders into certain resin layers allowing me to “create” light in the darkness. I use LED and UV lighting to illuminate the resin layers and the light seeping through the resin creates a sense of wholeness, healing, and peace. 

The perception of these works shifts as the color of light is changed, at one point a sunset at another time a twilight in the desert or ocean landscape. Any light “charges” the phosphorescent layers in the work to produce a radiant quality…an eerie glow. That “glow” dissipates over time but may remain a subtle light throughout the night, only to be charged the by the light of a new day.

More on website: http://www.stor-ybox.com

 

 

Seeking the Sacred

Our personal journeys take us to many places. At times we find ourselves along paths that are unmarked and without light to guide us. We are forced to confront fears that only darkness can produce. But we are driven to explore, it is part of our DNA as humans whether it is reaching to the stars or the depths of the ocean or… the boundaries of our imagination. We begin the journey as children: bringing natural curiosity as artists, scientist, and philosophers.
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A new series of work titled “Beneath the Darkness” reveals imaginary desert and ocean realms. Places and moments of time where light penetrates the darkness providing hope, security, and inspiration. A concealed LED light illuminates the cast resin layers in the cross-like shape and radiates a light within the steel and plexiglass base.

“Seeking the Sacred”

I had a sense of creating something sacred, perhaps a holy vessel, something that can produce a sense of peace and maybe miraculous healing. My own faith says that is possible. Some say that prayer is talking to God and meditation is listening to God. I hope the piece becomes that beacon providing the light into a voyage to a sacred harbor.
Two in a series: Resin-Steel & Light       19″x 11″x4″ See at the Ice House
First Friday April 7th 2017.

www.stor-ybox.com