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.

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.

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“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

 

Myopia…a focused look

A “show” was just a  passing thought one late winter night among unfinished pieces in my new studio space. My new work needed to be shown; Obliq Art had not put on a show in 16 months. …

Source: Myopia…a focused look

“Ancient Memories…Refuge”

I saw the deep borings in the wooden slab of White Oak and began exploring the notion of “refuge”.  Something was attracted to live within this part of the tree, something sought refuge and existence in this fortress, I could see the microcosm when looking closely. At the same time, the pattern in the wood and its DNA reminded me of desert landscapes from the southwest; the vast areas of wilderness.

I began to create layers of air and sky by casting resin layers, relying on lost memories of desert sunsets above a remote beach. There were memories of clouds in the early morning and light at the golden evening hour. The various translucent layers, some with pearlecent and phosphorescent powders mixed with resin, emit an “other world” atmosphere. Immersed within the sky are spherical planets  that, provide an “other” world dreamlike hallucination .

“Every moment of light and dark is a miracle” says Walt Whitman and I wanted to create and capture  these moments.

The work “Refuge” is cocooned in light; a light created with LED lighting that I call the great light and phosphorescent  light, the lesser light. The lesser light is “charged” by the LED light and continues to radiate “stored” energy as “light” long into the darkness.

Light provides healing according to popular studies. Light is an element and theme in my work while I explore the idea of the spiritual powers of healing and light. Healing became an influence in my work while researching and understanding healing. Embedded in all my recent work is earth from mission Chimayo outside Taos, New Mexico. Chimayo has been called “a place of healing”, http://taospueblo.com/ . I saw thousands of prayers posted as photos, hundreds of crutches hung on a wall and realized this too was a place of refuge. Many prayers are answered but many times it is not “God get me out of this” rather God get me through this. The more I meditate in prayer, the more I know that healing is much about surrendering.

There is something special about the wilderness-the quiet and solitude, marveling at the beauty created by God. It is a spiritual experience for me. The same with creating art, a spiritual discipline for me, much like  prayer.

I often think of the quote;

“We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.”― Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

The process of creating this piece allowed me to reveal the mysterious realms of native folklore and culture.  In this piece, the elements of sky, fire, earth and air are my way of capturing the essence of God. God is in the very nature of each element.

“Ancient Memories”…Refuge” 65″ x 20″ x 2″ White Oak, cast resin layers, LED lighting. I had many ideas, wishes and fantasies creating this piece of refuge and prayer.

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“Ancient Memories are…in the Cloud”

Progress shot

Beyond but beneath the obvious, a story emerges from a cutting  of alligator juniper, a lifeless slab of wood “beached” in my studio for over a year. I often looked at this piece of wood, imagining a design that never took place. Something else had to be released and it was an image created millions of years ago and now being revealed through the DNA of the wood and the mind and hands of a artists craftsman.

The whale has been released from its captivity, the DNA of eons of memories and layers of times ancient forests and a shallow sea filled with life. My imagination took over, remembering the times spotting whales against the backdrop of an expansive and seemingly empty sea, many times framed by the dramatic horizontal image where sky meets ocean. The composition of the piece with its long horizontal lines reminds me of the vast wilderness places; secluded mountains and beaches, the heat of the summer and the solitude the wilderness provides.I have had intimate moments with this creature in the wilderness and that was my direction and approach.

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First 3 resin layers

I feel as if I am “hovering” over the scene, exploring what might be here, looking for waves, or fish. I realize I have flown over these coves, physically and meta physically. Maybe there is a connection for this piece of Arizona wood and the desert landscape. I think of the past life of this tree, musing over the DNA, perhaps dating back to the Jurassic period, when great whales and fish inhabited a  large inland and shallow sea that once was here in Arizona.

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I cast the 67″ horizontal edge, vertically, allowing me to create layers of sky from my imagination. Distant green lights the color of an aurora borealis, contrast with the brilliant reds of sunsets and twilight times. The clear cast layers and multiple “spheres” describe a place of planets and distant stars. Thin blue and white layers reflect an ancient ocean where it meets an ancient land.

More musings to come as I continue to create the story of this piece.

62″x24″x3″ Alligator Juniper, cast resin layers.

http://www.stor-ybox.com

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