"The Storytellers", By Leticia Maldonado Opens At The Museum Of Neon Art
A video from instagram plays on my phone, over and over. It’s a process clip posted by sculptress Leticia Maldonado, showing impressive strides in her plexiglass manipulation techniques. For the last year, she has been working on her solo exhibition, “The Storytellers” for The Museum of Neon Art in Glendale. She has only shown us, her adoring and inspired audience, the smallest of peeks of the new work that will ultimately be revealed tonight, October 8th.
A Precipice
Leticia’s imagination is a prolific builder, constructing mythologies that combine a personal narrative with concepts of time and memory. The work is harmoniously emotional and thought-provoking, as layered as the human condition itself. Each encounter with any one piece bestows new revelations - a continuous bloom.
Photo by Jordana Sheara
Tiza, as she is affectionately known by friends and family, grew up in Las Vegas. The daughter of a showgirl was mesmerized by the Neon of her surroundings and extraordinarily and poetically became a creator of it. There is actually a movie about her enchanting and heart-warming coming of age - “Las Vegas Bender”. Her warmth and generosity exude as well as her beautiful cognition.
On Vegas and its influence on her and her work, she says…
“When we first moved to Vegas, my mom bought a house at the very edge of town. All of the roads leading to it were dirt and the nearest supermarket was a 30 minute trip. It was very isolated. Even our elementary school butted up against the open desert as far as you could see. Playtime and friends were few and far between. I spent an inordinate amount of time by myself, entertaining myself, and I didn’t have a lot of people to communicate with. Sometimes I think a lot of my art practice is just a journey back into that years-long communion with my inner dialogue to try and physically describe the world as it always felt to me, an isolated and lonely kid. I used to climb trees at the edge of our property and look out at the lights of the vegas strip far in the distance. I was always craving connection and excitement but really lacked the opportunity and social skills to acquire that. So, all of that energy just went into creating my own fictional world, and wondering if I could have an impact against what I saw as toxic forces in the world, by creating a better one. I think that’s maybe a common rural experience but in that time a lot of Vegas was rural, so I think that’s another vein of influence that I received specifically in Vegas.”
Despite the toxic forces of this world, Maldonado has truly managed to hang onto that little girl’s imagination, wonder, and the belief in a better world. Her style of rendering light in illustrative form evokes that inner child, maintaining a playful and joyous approachability to potent dialogues. She inspires me to slow down and visit with myself more often, to observe and honor my own passage through time.
“The Storytellers”, touches on a concept Tiza calls “emotional coexistence”. From her statement:
“Every day on this earth, someone sees or experiences something for the last or only time. So, to be anywhere at any time is to be a potential witness of a pivotal memory. Sometimes we share these experiences with others intentionally, and sometimes they come out in an unguarded moment. I'm interested in how memories filter through other life experiences, how a sunset watched through tears can infuse itself into a warm handshake years later. I believe that we all hold elements of a larger story for each other and I wanted to try and make that personal emotional coexistence visible with the sculptures that comprise ‘The Storytellers,’”
She elaborates in conversation with me -
“From a very young age I’ve always felt that I ‘receive’ more emotional information and social cues than I’m able to process in real time. I also have synesthesia, though it was much more prevalent when I was younger, and both those things together have caused me a great deal of social anxiety over the years and feelings of being totally overwhelmed in social settings.
One of the main experiences of my adolescence was learning how to, and acquiring mental tools for, processing the experience of other people, and finding this inner balance that I call emotional coexistence.
To this day my inner monologue is just a fusion of words, pictures, colors, emotions, music, movie clips, dreams, memories etc. all layered on top of each other, so much so that I sometimes find it difficult to say what I mean. Like I have to unravel it a little to find something succinct that I can communicate. So many different past experiences filter the present tense, and I think those layered energies make for rich moments whether intentionally or at the mercy of. “
“The Storytellers” is a multimedia world of glowing installations created by Maldonado that dives ever deeper into both the artist's personal memories and her physical practice of Neon bending, as well as other disciplines. One of Maldonado’s favorite new materials is plexiglass. I asked her about this in a recent conversation.
“I’ve always loved plexiglass for its reflexive and transparent qualities as backgrounds and in infinity mirrors, but I’ve recently been exploring it more as a 3- dimensional sculptural material. I’m definitely very process driven, and as much as I come to the studio with my vision, the actual properties of the material invariably have an input in the final form of my piece, and to that end I feel really excited when I get new tools! I recently built a new larger format heating element for shaping plexi and that really opened up new directions I’m able to explore and I don’t think I could’ve done the figurative work I’m doing in this show without that new capability. Also, plexiglass is expensive! So in order to make the most of my resources, this new direction has necessitated beginning from mock ups. So I’ll make the entire sculpture out of cardboard first. Then dismantle it to use as a pattern for cutting my plexi. So acquiring new proficiencies sometimes comes with its own new set of preparatory work, and in the past I haven’t really approached from that angle at all, often just doing the bare minimum of prep and preferring to engage more immediately with the initial inspiration.”
part of “The Architect”
In this recent body of work, she utilizes new technologies and mediums as she traverses intimate themes around memory grief and loss. From the museum’s press release:
“Life-size multimedia sculptures are animated by light effects and convey deeply personal memories for the artist while reflecting on universal themes of memory, empathy, grief, imagination, and storytelling”
Tiza has experienced a great deal of loss and pain in the last year with the death of her father. This grief, like her work, is intricate. In her own words,
“At the very beginning of this year my Dad died. He had several ongoing health issues and while I knew he was a vulnerable person, the manner in which he passed felt so unexpected and abrupt. He contracted Covid, went to the hospital with breathing problems, slipped into a coma, and was gone the next day. The whole thing happened in a little over 48 hours. I spoke with him the night before, he didn’t want me to come to the hospital because they weren’t even allowing visitors. So I said ok, ill talk to you in the morning, but that was the last time we spoke. That quickness was devastating, and my grief for the loss of him hit me a lot harder than I thought it would. It all took me by surprise. I loved him very much but he wasn’t around in my early years so we didn’t grow up together. We developed this relationship intentionally when we were both adults and it was just getting good so to speak. Like just more loving and open as we went. Not only do I miss his daily calls, but I discovered a big part of my grief is the loss of potential, and how much closer we could’ve gotten if we just had a little more time. It also brought up so many harmful experiences of my childhood that I thought I’d healed from where I was also (though he was living) mourning his absence.”
One of her installations, called “The Grave”, is a life-size adult figure constructed of different shades of transparent blue plexiglass lying on a box the size and shape of a human grave. An 8mm projector casts found footage into the body. Animated violet and cream waves rendered in Neon wash towards the body, representing tides of grief. Above the figure hangs a 4-foot moon created from etched glass. The glass is backlit by neon tubing that shifts in color and shape in an animated sequence.
“At times it absolutely felt like a strong tide pulling me into a bottomless place. Also it just felt so separating. My grief separated me from my previous reality, even though that life was still existing all around me. In this sculpture, ‘The Grave”, it was important to me to represent the tide and the moon as the encompassing forces of nature that they are, and also to show the figure's identity disintegrating inside of those forces, at the mercy of unshakable memories.”
This moon is full, at its highest gravitational impact on the tides. It feels calm and resolved, with a story etched into the surface.
“I used to pay more attention to the currents of the moon but I admit, this year I barely looked up. I still consider the moon a satellite to my own personal reality though, and I knew I needed that imagery as an anchor in her full force in this piece. I wanted her to have more of a specific sense of place, and so I etched in backlit flowers as though she and the viewer are low to the ground. Like I felt. This moon is also animated! There are three separate tracks of Neon and they each fade into and out of each other in an undulating way. That’s my first time incorporating animation behind the etching, but I did that because I wanted it to feel dreamlike and hopefully foggy….”
Her show opens on the eve of the full moon and her glowing blue moon rises just in time. I get the feeling she sees something in our moon that no-one else can…
Tiza spent her birthday this week completing installation, which she sees as a good omen. I really do think so, too, friend. Congratulations!
Go see the ultimate storyteller’s new exhibition, “The Storytellers” at Museum of Neon Art tonight and through February 11, 2023.