Guardian Angel (Erikae collection)
I meandered into MANO Fine Art Project Space off Bird Road on a blistering late July day to discuss the work with artist MANO (yes, always in caps) and his delightful partner/wife, Cuqui. A neat and tranquil workspace belied the steamy, traffic snarled Friday afternoon cacophony beyond. The three of us chatted amiably as information on the pieces revealed their intent.
Mano is the Spanish word for hand; how fitting the moniker. He was born in Cuba arriving in Miami during Operation Pedro Pan in 1962. Cuqui and MANO commanded the gallery mi Arte in Coral Gables for years until the need to hunker down in this Bird Road studio five years ago became a necessary next step in his art career; concentrating efforts and marshaling fresh forces into his work. He began installation projects, commenting on the effects of social media.
MANO’s art grew physically larger when he moved to the Bird Road location. “The flow is better,” the artist noted. Work includes his Lady Loves sculptural series consisting of old love letters found in flea markets transferred to individual canvas panels collectively forming the skirts worn by each sculpture; then stained with tar, a substance he explores often in his present day pieces. He is “always experimental” and “passionate about incorporating unlikely materials into art; transforming ordinary jute and tree trunks into extraordinary works.”
Jorge Ballard signs the Maleta project.
New pieces include his Tronco series, using tree trunks with minimal intervention from the artists, heads sculpted from ceramic and origami to create installation.
The last show in early summer 2014 had an Ikebana sensibility, I noted — balanced but not symmetrical, mirroring nature. This Allegories of the Koi Moon exhibit, with its distinctly Asian feel, included the Malaysian artist Long Looi Lee along with MANO and Marcy Grosso. MANO’s work was from his Erikae collection, a ceremony where an apprentice becomes a geisha, adopting the white geisha collar. Literally Erikae means “turning of the collar.”
Three or four times a year they invite other artists into their alternative space. This coming October, MANO’s mixed media collection (fabric, jute, found objects, tree parts, paper) will be shown in the artists newest Circa Now work. This will be a tribute to the Cuban Vanguard, a movement towards glorifying peasants in everyday life that began in the early 1920’s. Vanguard examples are Cuban painter Amelia Pelaez, modern primitivism painter Wilfredo Lam and Vanguard leader Eduardo Abela, a painter who studied in Paris, discovering his Cuban homeland from afar and seemingly incentivized by distance and nostalgia. MANO ventures to modernize this movement by using textile and jute (jute is the plant or fiber used to make burlap).
He showed me the burlap collection of many qualities he utilizes; much of it lived a previous life wrapping hand sewn bails of Cuban seed tobacco coming from the Dominican Republic. MANO adds his own bits of needlework and writing to the existing markings, “a reinterpretation of the Cuban Vanguard,” the artist clarified. He explained that his work here was “a metaphor for the separation of the past and present,” also using shapes reflecting a veil of lace from one of the tablecloths he remembers from his youth.
Tronco series
MANO also had a group show asking artist friends to interpret the subject of Meninas, the Spanish word for Ladies in Waiting. He has been known to share the beautiful Menina works in significant bridal shows.
He is currently working on the La Maleta Project, a spin off from Faded Memories, a project about Pedro Pan held in 2010 with photographer Victoria Montoro Zamorano and painter Humberto Calzada. At the 50th anniversary of Pedro Pan (2012), he brought along his work of suitcases painted white representing the faded memory of over 14,000 Cuban children sent to the United States from December 1960 to October 1962. He had now grown Pedro Pan children sign the white maletas (suitcases) preserving the legacy. The La Maleta project consists of canvases exploring the difficult adaptation to a new environment; “It had a lot of impact,” explains MANO. One piece is titled “In my language, I am really smart.”
To visit this topical and multi-inventive artist, MANO Fine Art Project participates in the third Saturday Bird Road Art District Walk (7 to 10 p.m.).
You may also contact the project space for an appointment:MANO Fine Art Project Space
http://www.manofineart.com
4225 SW 75th Ave (2nd fl)
Miami, 33155
305.467.0066
Located just off the southeast quadrant of the Palmetto (SR 826) and Bird Road.MANO Fine Art is one of the founding members of the Bird Road Art Walk.
