JUDY TUWALETSTIWA: text/subtext
April 17 - May 13, 2001

Reception and Gallery Talk:
Tuesday, April 17, 5 - 7 p.m.
Reception for the artist:
Sunday, April 22, 3 - 5 p.m.


detail from text:wind, 2000
sand, African basswood, acrylic on canvas, 58" x 37"


 

(click on thumbnail for larger image)

Oracle2:Canto1, 3/00
mixed media on canvas
48 x 66 inches

#18 Iteration, 2000
mixed media on canvas
66 x 48 inches

#17 Omina ad Unim, 1999
mixed media on canvas
66 x 48 inches
#19 Cadences, 1999
mixed media on canvas
66 x 48 inches
Folio 2, 2000
mixed media on canvas
66 x 48 inches

 

Judy Tuwaletstiwa combines paint and canvas with sand, clay, fiber and sticks, materials that speak of the high desert of Black Mesa in Northern Arizona where she lives. She writes, "This desert landscape opens the unconscious to me. When I observe the continually shifting interplay of the elements in this beautiful and harsh land, I cross through the thin membrane between the daily world and the unknown. In my work, whether writing or painting, I seek a language that embodies the elusive and mysterious images that resonate from the deep strata of the unconscious."

Ms. Tuwaletstiwa recently returned from a seven week Lannan Foundation Literary Residency in Marfa, Texas where she began work on Making Breath Visible, a book that embodies her experience of the personal and collective unconscious. Her first book, The Canyon Poem, a fine arts limited edition, published in 1999, examines the cycle of a year in sixty-one plates of image and text inspired by rafting down the Grand Canyonês Colorado River, which descends in geologic time through 1.8 billion years of earth history. The Canyon Poem is in the collections of rare book libraries throughout the country, including those of Yale, Columbia, Harvard and UC Berkeley. The exhibition, text/subtext, includes large-scale paintings, original plates from The Canyon Poem, and material from Ms. Tuwaletstiwa's book-in-progress.


email: sesnon@cats.ucsc.edu