Catie Jarvis Archives - ZO Magazine

The Muse(um) of Lana Gentry

ZO International — Sat, 01 Jul 2023 02:05:18 +0000

The Muse(um) of Lana Gentry

By Catie Jarvis

https://zomagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Spell_of_the_Gypsies_.mp3

“Spell of the Gypsies” – Buckethead

What does it mean to be a muse? In Greek mythology, the muses were nine women, daughters of Zeus, who presided over and inspired creations in art and science. But what of the modern-day muse, not an ethereal goddess, or a Socratic vagabond roaming the countryside? In our modern disconnected world, where artists’ circles aren’t what they used to be, how can one person find a way to spark the creative light in others, to cut through the dark shadows that modern society and its struggles try to dim?

Lana Gentry, a self-taught artist and writer from Virginia, has a collection of over 500 portraits that have been done of her by other artists worldwide, for free, without commission. They vary in form and style, abstract sketches, sculptures, realistic paintings, bizarro, beautiful, and everything in between. She owns many of them but not all. I set out to talk with Gentry, wanting to understand this phenomenon, and how she had become something of a muse.

“Lana” Portrait © Donnie Green

Sitting on her cozy couch, beneath a wall display of the vivid and boldly mind-expanding paintings done by her husband, artist Donnie Green, I immediately feel Gentry’s warm inviting laugh carry across the space continuum of our video call. “There wasn’t a time in my memory bank when I wasn’t writing or dreaming,” she says, and in the way that a muse can lift the creative’s spirit, I think: yes, me too! She tells me about her vast and cosmic connection to creative people. “Other creatives seem to feel this way about me too,” and she considers this an honor.

Above: Lana Gentry “Lovebird” Artist © Robert Mcneill

“F*ck My Heart” — © Lana Gentry Self Portrait

Gentry’s discussion of her creative work and processes feel as intimate and inspired as her creations themselves. She classifies her work as “outlier” art and she herself an outlier who operates outside the mainstream and without traditional schooling. Her art, she says, is developed in the absence of influence. Because of her sensitivities and learning differences, she really had to learn everything in life on her own and in her own way. Things that easily made sense to other people were like “a foreign language” to her and she had to keep “shifting gears” to eventually learn the skillsets of life.

Gentry considers herself a writer first and talks passionately about the wonderful artists she collaborates with, writes about, and features in the magazine loBURN, for which she is the managing editor and lead writer. She says that even with her visual art, it is always words that come first. When she began bringing written worlds into her drawings, creating a journal feel to her work, she says, “I felt like it was cheating.” As if visual art is supposed to stand alone without words being needed. But then, she never created within the confines of rules. Using words feels authentic and her art is a journal of her journey through life.

“It’s always shocking that people buy it,” Gentry says of her work, “because it’s so intimate to me.” I think that her pieces work because they are intimate to others as well. Her work strikes me like a classic folk song, Dylan, or the more modern and southern Jace Everett, a mirror into the individual soul, and at the same time reminiscent of something so familiar, universal, and connectable. Her work is reflective of the modern sadness, beauty, and magic of the feminine, but also pulls on the past, the eternal and timeless.

Finally, I get to ask Gentry about the hundreds of portraits done of her and she’s excited to tell the story… Years ago, there was a small group of art friends in Gentry’s circle who did portraits of each other on Myspace to hone their craft. Around this time there was another artist that Gentry admired, who would post portraits that people had done of her, and Gentry was fascinated by this. This artist (now a close friend of Gentry’s but a private person whose name Gentry protects) seemed to be a sort of muse, inspiring others to create art based on her image and art. One day this muse sent Gentry a portrait she had drawn of her, Gentry, thrilled, posted it up for all to see. Then, seemingly overnight, other artists began creating portraits of Gentry as well! At first, it was always people within her circles, but soon it spread beyond, and she would wake up in the morning to find a portrait posted of her by a total stranger. Sometimes other artists would request pictures from her in certain settings or poses to draw from, other times they’d use selfies she had posted, or draw from other artists’ portraits of her. Once the portraits of Lana Gentry began, they never stopped. Gentry had been kissed by the muse and had become one herself.

Lana Gentry — © Tamara Duvall

Lana Gentry “Seven of Pentacles” — © Jessica Perner

Lana Gentry “Queen of the Shades” — © Rick Young

Lana Gentry — © The Art of Terry Bizarro

A great influence on Gentry was editor, agent, and artist Leslie Barany. “He was a tough mentor,” she says, who taught her about connecting with other artists. He told her that it wasn’t interviews that she was performing when she set out to speak with other artists, but deep conversations. This struck a chord for Gentry, who says she wants to be talking to artists all the time, to always be in conversation with them. In this way, I think, life is reflective. You call out and something answers back. All these portraits of Gentry are a kind of answer to her outreach, support of, and interest in artists of all kinds.

At this point, the portraits done of Gentry feel to her like a long-term cultural project and simultaneously like little gifts that light up her own artistic spirit and life. She says it’s, “fun to see myself through the eyes of others.” She seems to admire and enjoy each depiction and rendition, grateful that her image can spur creative acts. “I didn’t grow up with a lot of self-esteem, [and I had] a lot of hurdles to work through,” Gentry says. She says that each portrait “feels like this mystical wonderful thing.” She told me about this crazy moment when she had just pulled herself out of a deep depression, and she got back on her computer to find a portrait done of her by the artist Robert Bauder. He had painted her crying as if he could feel the truth of her emotions, though he had no way of knowing. Cosmic connection. The world answering back.

Triptych of Artwork by Artist — © Lana Gentry — Center: Philosophia (Unavailable) Commission for Ryan Boyle

So, what’s next for Gentry? How does she plan to keep her muse energy flowing, to continue to connect to other artists? A podcast, of course! Gentry and her husband Green are at work building a podcast that will explore marginalized masters, past and present, shedding a light that shines way beyond politics, to illuminate art that didn’t or wouldn’t get its chance to be seen. I look forward to listening!

After talking with Gentry, it seems to me that a muse is simply a person in constant conversation with the world. Other creatives can feel this and want to answer the call. A muse is the exact opposite of someone who is checked out, following the herd, the norms, basic. A muse can see the magic and never lets fear dim this curiosity. From the word “muse” comes “museum,” a place where the muse’s work can be admired. I imagine a museum made up of the 500-plus portraits of Lana Gentry, with all the artists gathered inside sharing their passions and inspirations. If only in my mind, it’s a space that inspires me.

Reap, L.Gentry, from the collection on Lacy and Zoey Edwards, 8″ x 10″ colored pencil on gold parchment. 2003

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The Tendency Towards Complexity

Catie Jarvis — Fri, 02 Jun 2023 18:36:36 +0000

The Tendency Towards Complexity: Thoughts spurred from the novel, Shantaram

By Catie Jarvis

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“House of Cards” — AudioMachine

I’m lounging under an umbrella on a white sand beach in Turks and Caicos, vigorously turning the pages of my novel, my heart racing. The humid air and ocean breeze coat my skin and the tropical sun bends behind my glasses to shock my eyes. But it is not the sun or the heat which is causing my eyes to tear. I reach the end of Chapter 29, shut the book, and throw it onto the beige beach chair.

“I don’t know if I can go on,” I say to my husband. And I mean it.

I feel the devastation of the main character, Linbaba, as if it is my own. A testament to the author’s strong and connective writing. Like life, parts of Shantaram are unbearable, and others are full of tenderness. This novel offers an important reminder, that within each person, each life, each city, and each moment, there are worlds of pain and depths of beauty if only we look close enough.

I’ve chosen to read Gregory David Roberts’s novel, Shantaram, while on an all-inclusive Caribbean vacation with my extended family. It’s like being emersed in two foreign and contradictory worlds at once. Pristine turquoise waters, tourists in straw hats walking the beach with rambunctious children in tow, versus the sewage-stenched slums of Bombay, “those writhing alleys of struggle and dream [1].”

THE FICTION PORTAL

I look up from the page to see bikinied bodies sipping pina coladas, and back down to read viscerally detailed and brutal prison beatings, stories of hard men with unimaginable depths of cruelty and kindness, and insights about human nature that bring me to my knees in the sand as if I am the one taking the punches. I wouldn’t want it any other way.

Something that I love about reading is how it shapes my view of reality, alters my perspective, and adds harmonies and dissonance to that voice in my head which narrates life. Reading Shantaram, compels me to look closer at the world around me.

My pink, sun-kissed two-year-old daughter, giggling, building a sandcastle near the water’s gentle edge with her grandpa. A Caribbean woman passing by with beads balanced on her head, calling out “Hair braids? Who wants hair braids?” with a richly accented singsong. Shockingly different worlds exist here around me, just as in Shantaram’s Bombay. I want to know the woman selling the art of hair braids, in the way that Linbaba would have known her, fully, deeply. Her brown eyes open wide despite the relentless sun. Maybe she has children in a modest home by the sea. Maybe her family has lived on this island for generations. Well before this tourist resort ever existed. I want to describe her with the level of detail and proficiency that Roberts uses to describe the multitude of characters that populate his novel. Like he describes Rukhmavai Kharre, the mother of Linbaba’s beloved guide and best friend, Prabaker.

“… Rukhmavai Kharre was forty years old, and at the peak of her personal power…Her black hair, gleaming with coconut oil, had never been cut, and the majestic rope of it reached to her knees. Her skin was tan brown. Her eyes were the color of amber, set in rose gold. The whites of her eyes were pink, always, giving the impression that she’d just cried or was just about to cry. A wide gap between her front teeth gave an impish mischief to her smile, while the superb hook of her beaked nose endowed her serious expression with an imposing authority. [2]”

And that’s just about a third of the initial description that brings her to life.

Roberts’s novel is written with a wholly empathetic gaze. He examines each character, no matter how minorly featured in the story, no matter how downtrodden, criminal, or dislikeable, with consideration and care. He describes the faces, postures, lives of each person in his story, as if he is describing his beloved. Seeking the components that make us all neither good nor bad, but fully human. The novel shows his wisdom for life and that to know someone, truly, the good and the bad, is to love them. “Love is the passionate search for a truth other than your own; and once you feel it, honestly and completely, love is forever. Every act of love, every moment of the heart reaching out, is a part of the universal good…” [3]

The author lived, once, like I am, within a family, within a society, but he also lived as an addict, criminal, prisoner, and fugitive. I think only someone who has lived in many factions of society, within its bounds, and also outside, can truly offer his perspective. I remember something that my AP English teacher said to me sophomore year of high school when I told her that I wanted to be a writer. “To write, you must really live,” she told me. “Become worldly. Experience everything. Try. Fail. Make sure to fail.” I was a painfully shy and studious girl in high school. It took me years to begin to heed this teacher’s advice, and in these years of living, I learned about the world, and the people in it. I got hurt, I messed up, and I looked up the word “worldly” many times, to see if I yet embodied it. Roberts is nothing if not worldly, and it shows in his every line of writing.

“Nothing in any life, no matter how well or poorly lived, is wiser than failure or clearer than sorrow. And in the tiny, precious wisdom that they give to us, even those dread and hated enemies, suffering and failure, have their reason and their right to be, [4]” says the narrating character. I’m calling him Linbaba, though he is called many names throughout the book (Lindsay, Lin, Shantaram, to name a few), by those friends who come to love him. His having many names is appropriate for this story which is ultimately a record of his trials and transformations, as he seeks to find his identity, his true self, amidst the chaos of his life. This is a mission most of all of us find ourselves on, I think. We are all trying to understand ourselves in the world. Conjuring a philosophy that makes sense, which can get us through hardships and through the day.

Shantaram has given me much to contemplate. After my allotted seven days of warm waters, endless buffets, and family time, I am nearing the end of the Shantaram story as we prepare to depart Turks and Caicos. Alongside Linbaba, I’ve made it through wild adventures and passions, gotten to know India and the Indian people, suffered death, grief, and relapse, and I’m savoring the meaningful ending of the book as I sit in the crowded, stiflingly hot airport packed with agitated tourists. There is disorganization in this small island airport. Chaos. It is not like the U.S. with crisp air conditioning and endless rules. My daughter is throwing a tantrum on the floor, there is nowhere to sit or even stand, the boarding lines weave endlessly on and though we are well past our boarding time no one can tell us if our plane has arrived. My sister-in-law proclaims, “I’m never coming here again!” And I think of the families living in the slums of Bombay, the heat and the crowds akin me to them. Their tolerance of the hard parts of life, their ability to overcome and embrace joy in the face of struggle, is not only a strength but a virtue. Many people suffer from their lack of tolerance, the world suffers from it. Linbaba says it best:

“That unequivocal involvement, one with another, and its unquestioning support… was something I’d lost when I’d left the slum to live in the comfortable, richer world. I’d never really found it anywhere else, except within the high-sierra of my mother’s love. And because I knew it with them, once, in the sublime wretched acres of those ragged huts, I never stopped wanting it and searching for it.” [5]

My trip to the soft white-sand beaches of Turks and Caicos would have lacked a certain richness, without the companionship and contrast of Linbaba’s perspective by my side. Linbaba’s mentor, the big-hearted and brutal gang leader Khader, explains his philosophy of the world by saying:

“I think that we all look for an objective way to measure good and evil, a way that all people can accept as reasonable, we can do no better than to study the way that the universe works, and its nature… the fact that it is constantly moving towards greater complexity. We can do no better than to use the nature of the universe itself.”

I believe that Roberts’s novel Shantaram is, itself, propelling us toward seeing the very complexities of human nature. The baffling and striking intricacies of life. The tolerance for all kinds and ways. And this clearer vision, can make the world a better place.

[1] Shantaram, pg 929
[2] Shantaram, pg 125
[3] Shantaram, pg 740
[4] Shantaram, pg 872
[5] Shantaram, pg 893

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The Importance of Art in Community – RAIZ Exhibit

ZO International — Tue, 18 Apr 2023 15:19:33 +0000

RAIZ Exhibition and the Importance of Art in Community

By Catie Jarvis

https://zomagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Dugo-Sol-Poniente.mp3

“Sol Poniente” – Dugo

Sculpture by Aof Smith

The hills of Glendale surrounding the Brand cultural center are a brilliant electric green after the winter rains. It’s a color that doesn’t hold in Los Angeles but that sets the perfect stage for the bright and captivating NEXUS IV: RAIZ Exhibition inside the gallery. The exhibit is a diverse collaboration between the Brand, Thinkspace Projects, and Tlaloc Studios. The multi-artist experience works at “creating a platform,” as the Brand library explains it, “for young and emerging artists from around the world to exhibit alongside LA-based artists working in the New Contemporary Art Movement. ”

The Brand gallery is empty during my mid-week morning visit, there is a buzzing silence broken only by my own breath and footsteps, a far cry from an art show opening night, where people commune, full of vibrant energy. Viewers slink thoughtfully from piece to piece; voices point out the details that speak to them. The artists stand by, ready to discuss their art. I like the energy of those opening nights, but today I feel the power of solitude. Instead of the voices and vibes of people viewing art around me, I hear the artwork itself. Creations from over sixty artists, speaking with and to each other.

It feels right that this collaborative exhibition is the topic of my first article for ZO International Magazine, itself a community space to showcase artists across the globe, to bring them together. It also feels right that as I enter the main exhibit space, hanging just past the open doorway, is the curious creature composed by Thai contemporary artist Aof Smith, who won a ZO Magazine expo back in 2015 with his piece “Summer Chaos.” Like an art gallery, ZO Magazine follows the careers of and continues to support featured artists like the Bangkok-based pop-surrealist, Aof Smith. This is an important mission. Engaging in art, whether by viewing it, promoting it, talking about it, displaying it, writing about it, or creating it, is what keeps art itself, alive.

ART IN COMMUNITY

Clumsy Soloist by Aof Smith

I step forward to admire Smith’s oil painting on canvas. I gaze into the wide turquoise eyes of the furry main character of “Clumsy Soloist,” who holds a brightly colored, futuristic sort of banjo. I can almost hear the otherworldly instrument playing, clunky, off-tempo and eager to please. A song of longing and chaos. The painting is philosophical, political, farcical, and fantastical. Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy meets The Never-Ending Story meets The Great Warrior Wall. It is a unique piece, but also very much fits into this exhibition full of art which reflects this moment of time in which we live, right now. Art inspired by the city of Los Angeles, set beside art from around the globe. Together, the works feel loud and rich and collective.

I can see other works in the show complement and contrast with “Clumsy Soloist.” The bright blues, reds, oranges, and pinks in Smith’s work, draw out similar bright colors, used in different ways, and pull them to the forefront. Like the springtime green jacket and puppeteer hand, in “I’m Not Your Puppet,” by Daisy Velasco, an LA artist who speaks in vibrant shades. A green reminiscent of the grass on the surrounding hills outside the museum. The bright colors in the collection, tell their story against the backdrop of the more muted-toned works. The burnt orange in Conrad Ruiz’s “Bye Bye Bulls Eye,” and the pale earthy browns and greens in Brek’s “Broken,” and Emiliana Henriquez’s “The Little Death” and “El Passo,” all Californian in a stark desert way. The colors, bright and muted, paint a larger picture of the pallet of our world.

Another contrast I see working to tell us the story of the RAIZ exhibition is that between the bluntly real and the enchantingly otherworldly. Imaginative, colorful, and broken universes, such as in Mr. B Baby’s “Love Makin”, call out in contrast to the intimate realism of a girl shaving her legs on a tiled bathroom floor sprouting leaves, in Genavee Gomez’s “Overgrown: Sprouting from the Underground Through the Concrete.” Together, a contemporary statement is created. About who we are as a people. About the severity of life and how creative expression, fantasy, and parallel worlds, are ways to make sense of it.

The NEXUS IV: RAIZ show feels like I am stepping into someone else’s dream, but not one person’s, a collective dream, which encapsulates the present human experience. The artworks call out to each other. They work in the way a great anthology of short stories works. There is cohesion, distinction, common themes, and contrasting ones, all strengthened, and deepened, by each other. Bound as the art of now. Showing the viewer that artworks, like artists, and people, are stronger, together.

Catie Jarvis is an author of fiction, as well as a yoga instructor, a competitive gymnastics coach, an English and writing professor, a surfer, and a mom. She has joined the ZO Creative Team as a writer and editor and we are all looking forward to her upcoming column “The Fiction Portal!”

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