In the autumn of 200[ ], Gareth Jones and Jerry Gordon organized a day-long art show in a retired Japan Railways train tunnel near present-day JR Takedao Station, Hyogo, Japan--near Kobe . The exhibition, called The Tunnel, included 10 artists from 7 countries. In works ranging from drawing, painting, photography, sculpture and sound art, the artists used the tunnel as their common theme, exploring its physical, aural, photic, metaphoric and historical qualities. Held in October, the one-day show was well attended by people from the arts and foreign communities of Osaka, but also enjoyed a steady stream of unexpected viewers due to the popularity of the site for hikers. "The show wasn't aimed at gangs of Boyscouts and elderly ladies in boots, but they seemed to enjoy the surprise of finding weird stuff happening in the dark," said Gordon.
For the show, Jones created a series of 18 small pencil drawings on paper. Mounted on boards, the 18 pieces were hung along one of the wall of the tunnel and each piece was lit by a single votive candle attached to the bottom of its frame. The flickering small lights dotted the central length of the slightly curving tunnel, serving as a signal of each piece's location in the dark, cave-like interior. Drawing viewers further into the blackness, the candle light also made each piece appear like a tiny altar, setting up something akin to a rhythmic series of micro-illuminated make-shift niches for obscure saints or martyrs. "The drawings were small within the large space and the candlelight could barely reach their surfaces. The faces in the drawings were not easy to see, and so people had to lean close to see through the dark. They had to create a private and intimate space in which to see the pieces. This is how I wanted people to view the works."
The 18 drawings were inspired loosely by milagros (ex-voto offerings), which Jones had seen on a recent trip to Mexico.
The word <> means "miracle" in Spanish, but also is the name for small, metal ex-voto offerings that are a part of Hispanic folk custom. Milagros commonly come in the shape of various body parts--such as arms, legs, hearts, eyes, etc--but can also be found in the shapes of farm animals, fruits and even contemporary symbols of urban dangers--cars and handguns. If a person is in need of blessing or protection, he or she buys a milagro and attaches it to a cross or sculpture of a favorite saint. For example, if someone had a cow that was not giving milk like she used to, the owner might buy a cow-shaped milagro and use it as the vehicle to negotiate blessing. Milagros are often times small, flat, stamped-metal forms bought ready-made from vendors. When attached to a popular saint, they can cover or layer the statue's surface like the scales of a fabulous metal fish.
After seeing Jones' drawings in the tunnel exhibition, Gordon got the idea to write poems for them. He said, "When I saw Gareth's drawings, I felt that there was something of an open narrative running through them. He told me about what milagro are and how they are used in Mexico, and I was facsinated by their modularity and by how the individual anatomical pieces are both personal and shared. A person buys a milagro and attaches it to some sacred object in a church with the hope that the power of the holy object can help him. That's a personal wish. But, also, these things are mass produced. As well, the meanings of the images seem poetically open. I mean, if someone buys a migagro of a heart, is his goal to get healed from heart disease or heartbreak?"
"For me, Gareth's drawings do something similar. Anatomical parts get reused or echoed in different settings. The images feel very iconic and somewhat sacred, but they're not of religious figures. They feel more like neighbors or familiar strangers riding the subway. That's the church that interests me. So, I wanted to try and hear the story that I felt was floating around them. I carried photo-copies of the 18 drawings in a file in my bag for a couple years. I would pull them out on the train or in cafes and write on their backs. I tried to respect the open and dissolving narrative that the group has on its own, but also wanted to layer something into it, to imply subtle and shifting directions which come into allignment along certain echoed gestures, without turning the series of poems into a buttoned-down tale. I wanted to be able to climb inside their story as if it's my own."
The layouts of drawings and poems that follow in this book--an image on the left facing a poem on the right--maintain the pairings which occured when Gordon composed the poems on the backs of the drawings, but neither Jones nor Gordon think that this is the exclusive way that the pieces should function together. The poems are not descriptions of the illustrations. The artist and author suspect that future presentations of this collaborative work will probably take different forms, such projecting the images on a wall while the poems are read, neither following a set ordering or a strict one poem for one drawing pattern.
perfection.
