Images From Midnight in The Garden of Good and Evil
“Snake” by Pablo Sanitbáñez Servat
The title “Midnight in The Garden of Good and Evil” has been one I’ve always found profoundly evocative and imaginative, it asks you to consider what that place and time might look and feel like. Our exhibition, of the same name, was simply my interpretation of that glorious title.
The exhibition needed to be dark and evoke primal emotions, I imagined the Garden of Eden after the fall. What is good and what is evil is for the viewer to decide, and speaking to that point were the front window tableaux. We dressed two women, one as the Yoruban saint Oshun, and the other as the Catholic patron saint of Cuba, La Virgin de La Caridad del Cobre.
I stopped people on the street, and asked them to make a snap judgment on which woman represented good and which represented evil, once their judgements had been made they were asked to read this text: “What was your immediate visceral reaction to these women? Which represents good and which represents evil? On one side is Oshun, Yoruban saint of love, sensuality and femininity, keeper of the sweet waters. On the other, you see La Virgen de La Caridad del Cobre, patron saint of Cuba, the virgin mother and embodiment of holy charity. In fact, you are viewing two aspects of the divine feminine, and according to the Afro Cuban religion Santeria, these women are representations of the same person, two sides of the same coin. What informed your choice? Why did you choose one over the other?”
The results were fascinating. Midnight in The Garden of Good and Evil was held during the yearly hot air balloon festival here in Natchez. The city attracts people from all walks of life, crossing socioeconomic stratifications. Nearly everyone we stopped participated in the experiment; the results of which were overwhelmingly positive and ultimately unifying across race, culture, religion, and gender.
José Bedia was an obvious choice to participate in the exhibition, because of the nature of his practice which incorporates the natural world often with overt references to his religion. He send us an enormous work, very typical of his style, titled “Vegetabilis”, which features a very fertile looking woman, holding stalks of vegetation anchored in the earth, outlined in her very own constellation. Woman as mother, fecund, rooted, bridging the Earth and sky, he depicts her as an eternal cosmic being.
Andres Conde turned toward ambiguity, as is his nature, with his beautifully painted depiction of “Judith Beheading Holofernes”. A beheading, from my perspective, is inherently evil although Judith is portrayed as virtuous in the Bible; in decapitating Holofernes Judith saved her city from destruction. Conde seems to agree with the biblical point of view as the painting is not for sale and was dedicated to his only daughter. The inscription on the back of the work speaks to her ancestral feminine strength.
Noah Saterstrom grants a surreal peek into his own family history as it relates to the disappearance of his great grandfather, Dr. Smith, from the family record. Through diligent research the artist discovered Dr. Smith’s absence was a result of having been committed by his family to an insane asylum, more than one over the years actually. The paintings are eerie and sublime, with a dreamlike quality. The often nebulous subjects look more like representations of spectres than humans, apt as the series takes place during the first half of the the 1900’s. This is particularly true of the seated young women in the foreground of the work titled, “Burning of JT Smith Drugstore, Donaldsonville, Louisiana, 1904.
Darian Mederos gives us “Ambrosia”, food of the gods. A portrait of his longtime muse and former fiancé, Sophia. Semi-nude, protected physically by bubble wrap, and with the distortion the layer of plastic adds, from prying eyes, Mederos set out to create a work representing “good”. As the artist moves further and further toward abstraction and away from his once photorealistic portraits, his vision of good appears muted, no longer crisp and real. One wonders, as the painting seems to convey a nostalgia, perhaps the work is more of a memory of the good that once was, rather than a representation of what is.
Courtney Egan’s light based works added an otherworldly, pulsating and living dimension to the show. We chose to project “Cluster”, which features a circular arrangement of Magnolias opening and closing at different intervals through the miracle of time lapse, into a pool of water, resulting in a mesmerizing display. Visitors were entranced with the work, as they stared into the pool like Narcissus.
All the sculpture shown in Midnight in The Garden of Good and Evil were created by César Orrico. Largely bronze works which could easily be mistaken for antiquities from the Greco Roman world, but for the orange to white ombre treatment of the patinas. Orrico’s attention to detail and technical skill is stunning, he could rest on that if he so desired, but the man is more than a skilled technician, he is a wildly imaginative artist. Some of my favorite works by César deal with mythology, as in Mabón, the personification of the Autumnal Equinox.
“To My Beloved” by Kevin Sloan nearly brought me to tears at first sight. It is beautiful, full of pain in heartache and the weight of guilt. An enormous wedding cake, decorated in icing with “I’m Sorry” spelled out, and the words “My Beloved” scrawled out across the bottom of the painting. Even the handwriting seems to be in agony. Its partner in the exhibition, “Soft Monument”, the second cake created by Sloan bears a more positive message, “Thank You”. The manner in which Sloan applies paint to the work creates the effect of voluminous icing and the strokes a feeling of a deliciously loose freedom.
Jeff Faust’s transcendent painting “Ascending Quietly” combines elements of the natural world with his brand of surrealism. The work is quiet, which makes it all the more impactful. The delicately painted robin’s eggs float upward out of their comfortable nest into the darkness, while a mysterious orb beneath the nest radiates light. There are so many things which attract me to this painting, the frame, the stillness, the painterly technique with which it was created - but the detail that pulls me in every time is the little bit of orange at the bottom of the orb which gives it life.
Last but certainly not least is Pablo Santibáñez Servat, the man whose works range from elegant and sophisticated still lifes, suitable for the most conservative and tasteful collections to raucous works featuring a spectacularly painted nude with eyes of hummingbird heads and a stylized tattoo of the devil across her exquisite chest with the word “Sauvage” written in script just above. I am of course referring to “La Diosa Colíbri” or The Hummingbird Goddess. Santibáñez Servat is the living embodiment of the dark and light sides of the moon, the dichotomy is evident in his work and I suspect in himself. We hung “Sanke” at the door to greet visitors as they entered. Every garden needs a snake.
Ultimately this exhibition on good and evil was about beauty, the divine, sensuality, nature, and our shared humanity, even love. …eternal concepts. I hope we did them justice. Midnight in The Garden of Good and Evil was made possible, in part, by a grant from Visit Natchez, to whom I am eternally grateful. John Grady Burns, horticulturalist and owner of Nest, had a visual impact on the show which can not be overstated. John Grady was truly the ninth artist in this exhibition, he helped me bring the garden to fruition. Thanks also go out to Country Roads Magazine as our media partner and Regina Charbonneau of Regina’s Kitchen for her gorgeous charcuterie with edible flowers, Material Girl Fabrics, Home Hardware and Creative Exteriors. Andres, Stella, Monique, Sophia, LaShaundra, and the man Mitchell Luckie, hanger of lights, thank you! This was truly a group effort and coming together of community. Love and appreciate you. oxo Stacy