After spending some time making my 8.5 x 11 charcoal pieces I decided I wanted to create a large scale piece.
I had some heavy duty drawing paper so I laid it out on the studio floor putting weights on the ends to avoid having the paper curl and began spreading loose charcoal around with my hands wearing nitrile gloves to protect myself. After I laid out a few ikebana books open to select pages and began to carve out the image using an eraser and charcoal sticks.
At some point my mom called me. We began talking on the phone. My mom likes to talk about religion and Catholic mysticism. So she began sharing the story of Sister Lúcia dos Santos , one of the three kids who witnessed the Virgen of Fatima miracle and who was given visions of the end of the world. As she described the story of Fatima, the apocalyptic visions and the “Miracle of the Sun” that took place on October 13, 1917, where where the sun appeared to change colors and rotate, I continued to draw.
My mom is very present in this final piece. As I look at it in it’s final form I’m certain remnants of our conversation seeped into this drawing. A drawing which manifested itself with no prior planning. In the making of this I also thought of her home town of Zapiguri in the mountains, I thought about my dreams, portals into other mystical spaces, stories of the supernatural I grew up hearing all resulting in this piece.
A Visionary Call from Alicia. Charcoal on drawing paper. 90 x 48 in. Chicago.
Image taken of the setup with the main studio lights on June 9, 2021
Typical lighting situation for my charcoal drawing setups, main studio lights turned off with a few spotlights lighting the work area / piece
