Silica Azul

It arrived in a box bigger than God. Seriously, several illegal immigrants could have been smuggled into the country in this box - if they were skinny immigrants. It was nearly as tall as me and several times as wide (ahem) and it took everything I had not to dive on it with an Xacto knife like a fallen Upper East Side debutante into a pile of fine Peruvian flake.

But I dug deep. Deep, people. I held back my glee, or greed, or whatever it was, and patiently slit open the sides and, with a little help from my friend, gently lifted out the blue behemoth from beneath it's tomb of
biodegradable packing peanuts. I could see the sapphire glow emanating from within the multiple layers of bubble wrap, which I gingerly peeled off like an Egyptologist with a precious mummy. And finally, after a full fifteen minutes of extraction, my treasure emerged: Silica Azul, a mixed-media piece of azure gorgeousness, spread across almost ten square feet of canvas, created by my best friend's brother.

Chava doesn't just 'paint.' Like all of our kerasse, Chava has to do things the hard way: this work is made of, dig it: linen, stucco, steel powder, paper, and, oh yeah, acrylic paint. He makes art of out of things I barely knew existed (steel powder?). His works are three-dimensional, tactile, and have the unique properties of being both futuristic and primitive at the same time. I've been badgering him for years for one, and this summer the stars aligned and a set of circumstances led to God's Own Enormous Box on my front porch.

I had thought I might give my cross/crucifix collection a rest and put it above my fireplace, but apparently I'm not that spatially adept and didn't realize that 64" x 54" is way more inches of wall space than I've got. The only other unbroken wall space I have in my house is in a closed, dark hallway (no) and on the wall next to my bed (yes!), so that's where it went, with no small amount of sweating, cursing, and contorting myself to get it hung. But finally, there it was: glowing on my wall, receding and approaching, almost alive.

I lay there contemplating it and came to this: unlike a Celtic knot, one of my most personal and meaningful motifs, or the Labyrinth, equally compelling, Chava's painting contains interconnections in a much less obvious way. It looks, to me, like the blueprint of an individual life: large, dark pools of Source, renewal, emptiness, and despair, circumnavigated by pathways, roads, and inlets, moving all around in patterns. Some of those ways are long and constant, others short and staccato, just like our love affairs, friendships, endeavors, dreams, failures. In it I saw times and places: eras with one set of circumstances and then another, a path taken and then ending, followed by time in the deep pools of both dark and light and then re-emergent on the other side. Boxed in, set free: everything is everything, one of my mantras and the song that most signifies me to my very best friend.

Right now I exist in one of these pools: neither here nor there. I'm looking for a new home, one which will greatly shape the future for me and mine. This is the one thing in my life, that I, a unfailing control freak, have chosen to 'let go and let God,' so to speak: I ask my grandmother and other guardian spirits to guide me to the right home for right now so that my tomorrows can also be in the right place at the right time. There's a strong element of release and 'if it be your will' running through my blood right now, and in some way it seems fitting that Chava's painting is too large to fit in the most obvious spot of where I live now - a sorely-needed sanctuary that I've now outgrown - and has taken on a life of its own, demanding a place of honor in a home I haven't found yet, but is on its way.