Completion of -Shaking The Void

April 30 2012

Mixed drawing media

107x83mm

A Note on Veronica De Jesus

The Holy Spirit of the Sea

by Cedar Sigo

There were several portraits of Christ stationed around Veronica's studio. They seemed apart from any series, single occasions that had since piled up, probably to further her other simultaneous series of works. The light coming through the window of her loft studio kindly let the walls disappear a while, one hand of blinding white light washes another. These faces of christ were let loose as apparitions for as long as I was visiting. I had planned to write about these works without a single thought to Veronicas last name. If I had I might have backed away from this premise. Obvious puns have always been lost on me. The image of Christ could stand for some reclaiming anyway, I felt immediately upon seeing these pieces that even I had come to villianize his image, as one might villianize a corporate logo or the image of the president.

On the cover of her latest edition of memorial drawings Christ is rendered in a paint that dries more like red and green sealing wax, you feel tiny bits of golden hash and moss crying up from between the cracks, like the weathered face of a fountain in tivoli gardens, as if a large key would fit in his mouth, another is a quick portrait in black made into a mask by cutting out both eyes afterward, in another he appears more classical “skin of burnt brass and hair of lambs wool”, in another he has Fetal alcohol syndrome. He wears a t-shirt in my favorite portrait, a young Matt Dillon, broad shouldered blocking our view of the sunset. And finally as Juno the wife of Zeus or a medusa that's been misunderstood ssame hair

Veronica does not repeat herself with regard to technique. The eye takes the situation in from the least obvious angle, it hides much of what you may think you want to see immediately. Step in as much as you like but be sure and include the hands. The arrangement and number of the Jesus works, however intentional, seemed to be the source of my feeling that entrance has been granted before the first physical gesture toward beginning these works, The fault lines have been laid in advance. Veronica has also come to be my favorite colorist in the bay area. Like maps charting rainfall, the earth must purge its glory at times, coloring is key to her system, a tempering of the almost psychedelic turn of corner (phrasing) in her lines. It always seeps up darker from beneath the imagery.

Of her more recent work she has said, “”Now I feel less worried about my control and its given me even more control” or in a short written note she states, “I am protected by my own cosmology” I have felt a similar fearlessness in my diving for “real” poetry. After completely upending your sense of time you are washed ashore onto a further island, (sometimes larger sometimes smaller) I've no idea if what I have done is ever any good, I only seem to one when a piece is finished.

With an artist of this caliber its much more necessary to ask why she started certain of her works rather than to ask for any meaning or boundary after the fact. She keeps several of her series going at once, blind embossed visions running reel to reel, It seems most important that Veronica just plain survives in the world. I own her portrait of the poet John Wieners, her work often draws me back to his, in particular to his poem The Lights in Town, “Poetry appears that sure entrance to a storied paradisical garden, where pure patented mystique fulfills its indispensable acts.” Veronica's values seem unattached to what becomes of the work after its execution, somewhat like the stories one hears of Wallace Berman, Ray Johnson, or Jay Defeo getting by. Veronica is currently working on a very large drawing, its working title is Shaking The Void, It centers on a red phone or confession booth, its outline slightly splintered and slanted to tear us back from its foreground, bat man fancy dancing, fanning his flames, a tank of amber light that fits all the way inside the wall.

Dogeared Books San Francisco, Ca 2012

New Drawings go Up, some drawings get taken down

The window is changing constantly-month to month.

People stop for long periods of time, to take a glance.

Driven, True Stories of Inspiration

The Best Day Possible-featuring NIAD Artsit Darleen Farr and Krissi Dean

Driven True Stories of Inspiration

Veronica's Art Notes from the exhibition, Under The Big Black Sun

My fiction is truth, and sometimes my nonfiction is true too. I have mythology, i have a sprititual totem and their is a beast which lies beneath. i am protected by my own cosmology. My art is subject, body, object.

Carlos Almarez

John Baldessari

Guy De Cointet

Judith F Baca

Carlos Villa

Jim Goldberg

Carole Caroompas

Terry Schoonhoven

Judy Chicago

Notes from Matt Mullican lecture from the Geffen

ideas come up like weeds

slides act like an artificial memory

light is a L.A. idea

algorithum stays the same-light subject, there is no you - just the pattern of you.

light-distance-pattern

implication of the place that was drawn

Glenn pricks finger, mullican is interested in the pain of glenn-500 drawings-ego and whatever glenn was going through.

subject-object-split

drawings of experiments inside of this fictional space

model of a possible cosmology

information-wall information-wall-information-wall-information

tearing up deaths cape

mirror neurons

Hello Now from Everywhere is a book of memorial drawings selected from an ongoing series. Over the past four years Oakland visual artist, Veronica De Jesus, has been making memorial drawings of the recently deceased and installing them in the window of Dog-Eared Books in San Francisco. Her style is lively and eclectic and her subject choices are idiosyncratic: her own friends along with pop icons like Laura Branigan and Louise Bourgeois. Regardless of their fame, everyone is celebrated for their uniqueness. Also included is an intimate essay by Veronica's wife, Regina Clarkinia.

$26, B/W softcover with color dust jacket.

130 pp.

6" x 9.5"

You can buy the book in person at Dog Eared Books or go on line
hello now from everywhere-buy a copy

Veronica has made a very special edtion of 17 unique hand drawn, hand painted covers and dustjackets for the book of memorial drawings. This edition is called "17 Heavens" and each book is a hand-drawn original artwork.
they are priced at

$150, B/W softcover with hand-made origianl cover

130 pp.

6" x 9.5"

to purchase these special copies please contact via email lostlfnt@hotmail.com
Write hello now from everywhere or 17 heavens in the subject line
Publication Studio in Berkeley, CA (run by Colter Jacobsen)

What is Publication Studio?: Publication Studio is an experiment in sustainable publication. We print and bind books on demand, creating original work with artists and writers we admire, books that both respond to the conversation of the moment and can endure. We attend to the social life of the book, cultivating a public that cares and is engaged. Publication Studio is a laboratory for publication in its fullest sense � not just the production of books, but the production of a public. This public, which is more than a market, is created through deliberate acts: the circulation of texts; discussions and gatherings in physical space; and the maintenance of a digital commons. Together these construct a space of conversation, a public space, which beckons a public into being.

Oakland Artist Lydia Greer and myself teamed up to make this animation of a story i made up. I have been actualizing it since 1999(roughly) and now it has blossomed into a short 3 minute animation. here is the link

Dogkhat's Journey