Art and Hope at the End of the Tunnel at USC Fisher Museum

Two recent paintings, "Porvenir" and "Jakelin Caal," are part of a group show at the USC Fisher Museum of Art curated by Edward Goldman. The exhibition features work done in the last year during Covid lockdown. The exhibition runs to December 4th, 2021.

Border Pictures at Art Division

Elegies - Vita Art Center, Ventura

Elegies - Paintings - Drawings - Tapestries by David Kassan and John Nava - June 12 to August 14 2021

David Kassan | Pantings, Tapestry and Drawings | Vita Art Center, Ventura CA

John Nava | Pantings and Tapestry | Vita Art Center, Ventura CA

David Kassan | Pantings and Tapestry | Vita Art Center, Ventura CA

John Nava | Pantings and Tapestry | Vita Art Center, Ventura CA

Border Pictures

These images remember some of those lost in the cruel politics of the southern border.

Along with David Kassan, these works will be part of an exhibition entitled Elegies that will open at the Vita Art Center in Ventura California on June 12, 2021

Jakelin Caal  |  2021  |  Oil on Paper Mounted on Canvas  |  41 x 41 inches

Jakelin Amei Rosmery Caal died in the custody of U.S. Customs and Border Protection. The seven-year-old Guatemalan girl, along with her father, was part of group of 163 migrants who crossed the border at Antelope Wells, New Mexico in early December 2018 seeking asylum. Border agents ordered the migrants to be transferred 94 miles by bus to a station at Lordsburg, NM. Prior to leaving, Jakelin’s father notified authorities that she was ill and vomiting. She did not receive immediate care and emergency rescue (BORSTAR) was not called in. Instead, the hour and a half bus trip went forward, When they arrived at Lordsburg Jakelin was not breathing. After efforts to revive her, Jakelin was then flown to a hospital in El Paso, Texas, where she died.

Claudia Patricia Gómez Gonzáles  |  2020-21  |  Oil on Paper Mounted on Panel  |  88 x 48 inches

Claudia Patricia Gómez Gonzáles was killed by U.S. Border Patrol near Laredo, Texas in May, 2018. Claudia was a 20 year old student from Guatemala that had graduated from a program in forensic accounting. She had traveled to the U.S. in hopes of furthering her studies. She was an indigenous Maya-Mam woman and was with a group of other migrants when confronted by Border Patrol. The agent responsible claimed the group refused to get on the ground and instead rushed toward him. He claimed he fired in self-defense. Claudia was shot in the head. She was unarmed.

Carlos Gregorio Hernández Vásquez   |  2021  |  Oil on Paper Mounted on Panel  |  41 x 41 inches

Carlos Gregorio Hernández Vásquez died in the custody of U.S. Customs and Border Protection in May, 2019. There is video showing the healthy seeming 16-year-old boy from Guatemala crossing the Rio Grande by raft into the U.S.  Carlos was taken into custody by CBP at McAllen, Texas, on May 13. Despite U.S. law requiring migrant children to be transferred to Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) custody within 72 hours, Carlos was held at McAllen for about a week. The processing center at McAllen had been plagued by “large numbers” of migrants with high fevers and flu symptoms. On Sunday, May 19, Carlos was diagnosed with flu symptoms and given Tamiflu. He was then moved from the processing center into border station custody the same day. There is video showing Carlos collapse in his cell that night .  He remained there unattended and was found dead on Monday morning.

 

Porvenir  |  2021  |  Oil on Paper Mounted on Canvas  |  41 x 41 inches

Porvenir was a small village in Texas near the Mexican border. In January of 1918, a contingent of Texas Rangers, U.S. Cavalry and a few white ranchers entered Porvenir. They seized fifteen men and boys, all unarmed, and murdered them at a nearby hill. The baseless pretext for the massacre was a raid on a nearby ranch a month earlier by Mexican bandits thought to be Villistas. The Porvenir villagers had nothing to do with the raid.

Porvenir means “the future” in Spanish. The grim irony of the name is that the events at Porvenir followed a pattern that has repeated itself to this day. When the killings were discovered an inquiry followed the standard course. The Rangers claimed they had acted in self-defense and were acquitted by a grand jury. The Ranger Captain who led the slaughter was reassigned. The Cavalry maintained that they were not involved and that it was the Rangers and ranchers that had executed the villagers. Modern investigations discovered U.S. Cavalry issue bullets and casings at the site of the atrocity. The fifteen victims ranged in age from 15 to 72.

Claudia Patricia Gómez Gonzáles  |  2021  |  Jacquard Tapestry (in studio)  |  132 x 70 inches

Detail - Claudia Patricia Gómez Gonzáles  Tapestry

This detail shows a verbatim news story from the time of the shooting that is woven into the tapestry version of the image

 

New Tapestries for The Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels

On January 1, 2021 a group of new tapestries for the Sanctuary Wall of the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels at Los Angeles, California were unveiled. The new works retain key elements of the original group of tapestries made for that space but adds images of Mary and angels, the namesakes of the Los Angeles Cathedral. The new pieces were installed in September of 2020 and were then covered until formal presentation on New Year's Day 2021.

Sanctuary Wall tapestry installation 
The Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels | Los Angeles, California | September 2020

Sanctuary Wall tapestries
The Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels | Los Angeles, California | January 1, 2021

 Sanctuary Wall | View from the cathedral nave
The Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels | Los Angeles, California | January 1, 2021

Sanctuary Wall tapestries | Five Panels | Jacquard Tapestry | 30 x 9.5 feet each | John Nava 2020
The Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels | Los Angeles, California | January 1, 2021

Detail - Center Panel | Sanctuary Wall tapestries
The Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels | Los Angeles, California | January 1, 2021

Sanctuary Wall | View from the cathedral transept
The Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels | Los Angeles, California | January 1, 2021

Notes on the Sanctuary Wall Tapestries

The new Sanctuary Wall tapestries in the Cathedral present an image of Mary, Our Lady of the Angels. Like the earlier tapestries made for the Cathedral this new group refers to both the long heritage of the Church and to its presence in the “New World” - our world. In keeping with ancient tradition the image of Our Lady overlooks the Cathedral interior as similar holy figures have done in the numberless chapels, basilicas and cathedrals of the Roman church. Here the five tapestries form a polyptych - a woven evocation of so many multi-paneled sacred altarpieces of the past.

The tapestries are composed of layered images. Overarching all is a great circular geometric pattern meant to evoke the infinite - the Divine. It radiates from the center panel and is derived from Cosmatesque mosaics found throughout Romanesque period churches in Italy especially. The pattern mirrors a similar one that appears above the scene in the tapestries at the opposite end of the church in the Baptistry. The theme of a radiating circular pattern begins in this cathedral on the tiled floor centered below the altar.

In the left and right hand tapestry panels the ground is overlaid with another linear pattern - the streets of Los Angeles.

Making sense of this image of our own city bonded with the great circular design is a layer of text that appears in the two inside panels on either side of the center. These words come from the Book of Revelation. “See the home of God is among mortals, God will dwell with us, And we will be with God, And we will be God’s people.”  

The images of the angels that accompany Our Lady appear in the left and right side panels. These are derived from 17th century types painted by indigenous artists trained by friars during the early days of the Church in the Americas.

Mary, in the center tapestry, is cloaked in traditional blue. Her white chemise features a golden floral design drawn from the pattern of the embroidered robes of Our Lady of Guadalupe. This reference to the holy tilma, along with Mary’s Latin American features, present this woven Virgin as, also, a “New World” image of Our Lady.

The figure of Mary glows at the center of the composition. Her gesture is a classic one of openness, of reception, of acceptance towards the faithful before her. At the same time, however, her hands also stretch downward to meet the raised hands of her Son on the bronze cross below her. This relationship connects the tapestry image to the specific sacred elements and space of this church. As the central figure in a cathedral named for her the image aims to convey a certain serenity and gravity and to be a focus of inspiration and source of solace.
John Nava

December 31, 2020

Museum of Ventura County Collection

The Museum of Ventura County has acquired Big Platter, a 27 foot wide tapestry that features the promenade near Surfer's Point in Ventura. The work was installed in November 2020 and will be kept on permanent display.

Big Platter | Installation view - Museum of Ventura County

Big Platter | Installation view - Museum of Ventura County

Big Platter | 87 x 330 inches | Jacquard Tapestry mounted on Panel | John Nava 2017
Collection: Museum of Ventura County

Big Platter | Installation preparation - Museum of Ventura County - November 2020

Big Platter | Installation  - Museum of Ventura County - November 2020

Notes on Big Platter from a 2018 exhibition:

The Sea

Degas, said any artist who sets up outdoors to paint should be watched by the police and stung with “just a little buckshot”*. Without going that far I have generally thought of myself also as a studio artist - doing my work within that quiet and private space. For me the exception has been the shore where, over the years, I have set many of my pictures. Perhaps the coastal region we all share exerts a powerful pull and draws out even the most solitary painter. It is the meeting place of air, water and earth - vast, timeless and always beautiful. It has been my particular fascination to place ourselves - the human image - into this nexus.

Ventura Promenade

There is a long tradition in art of the Arcadian image. Arcadia as the setting of an harmonious image of people within nature. For me Seurat’s famous “Grande Jatte” is a modern (19th century) version of this image. A quiet, sunlit shore with the bourgeoisie of Paris taking the place of the idealized shepherds who populate the Arcadian paintings of Poussin. “Big Platter” (“grande jatte” translates as “big platter or bowl’) makes the Ventura Promenade the setting for my version of this image. The promenade near Surfer’s Point is, in fact, a magnetic gathering place for our community - a place where all sorts come to stroll, to surf, to rest in the sun.  We find ourselves immersed in this beautiful nexus of shore, sea and sky completing the composition. I wanted to make Ventura’s own Arcadian image.  

The Tapestry

The “pointillist” painting manner used in the “Grande Jatte” is another memorable aspect of Seurat’s masterpiece. In the early 1800’s the optical blending of color was an innovation of the recently developed technology of Jacquard weaving. The directors of Jacquard’s tapestry mills worked out the phenomenon of the juxtaposition of colored fibers in weaving and wrote about it. Seurat read and made notes about these discoveries and translated the ideas into paint using distinct touches of color that “blended” at a distance to create the image. In “Big Platter” I took the image back into the Jacquard weaving medium that inspired Seurat. In another allusion to Seurat’s pointillism I developed a sort of colored mosaic of patched texture in the weaving to depict the scene.

John Nava

* ”If I were in the government I would have a brigade of policemen assigned to keeping an eye on people who paint landscapes outdoors. Oh, I wouldn't want anyone killed. I'd be satisfied with just a little buckshot to begin with.”

Edgar Degas