Photography by
Ángela María Ortíz S. Tumbleweed Productions Los Angeles, California, U.S.A. amosart@sbcglobal.net © Ángela María Ortíz S. Copyright 2006 © Photographs 2000-2006 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior permission of the publisher.
First Edition _______/500 To Rosa and Gabriel, I love you.
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Reaching. In nature and in human design, we reach–towards light, towards warmth, towards the open air, towards each other.
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Inedible corners. In the original world, edible things have corners. (We manufacture many, but we find none at all.) On land or sea, the semi-circle rules, an echo of the open mouth–a clue for the hungry eye.
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Blossom. The slowest explosion on earth occurs in every flower, every leaf, every spreading petal. It is the almost undetectable opening of nature’s hand, over and over, everywhere, forever.
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The Curve Rediscovered. Machines made us forget for a while, then better machines allowed us to remember: we are comforted by curves. They bring us back to earth and to ourselves. We are curves, after all. We are quite comfortable when they are wrapped around us.
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We are not the only ones with veins.
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Unintended textures. For most of architectural history, the designer concentrated on shape, because it could be controlled. It was permanent and unchanging. Texture, in its constant evolution-devolution, was secondary or forgotten. But now, time and chemistry in equal parts awards us with the best kind of gift: an unexpected one.
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Extending endlessly. The aggressive inventions of man and nature conquer the vertical: trees, towers, mountains, missiles. The sly inventions conquer the horizon: grasses, pavement, ivy, urb. And the more powerful, the more dangerous is‌
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Push, push, push. Squint at it one way, and much of nature is simply evidence of pressure: the impact of rain, the compression of magma, the grind of stone against stone until no stone remains. We learned that lesson when we made the first brick: the evidence of pressure endures. (And squinting is a kind of pressure, too.)
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The love of the linear. Nature abhors straight lines. It is almost entirely absent in the original world. Humans, on the other hand, adore them (maybe because nature does not?), and lays them out wherever they can: in art, in engineering, in architecture. Lines as flat we can make them, lying on top of and hiding inside the relentless curve of the natural.
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PHOTO: GABRIEL P. RODRIGUEZ
Ángela María Ortíz S. Birthplace: Colón, Panamá An accomplished graphic artist, designer, and consultant in publishing, fluent in both English and Spanish. And throughout her youth and adult life, she has created art on a daily basis. “As far as I know,” Angela says, “I’ve been creating art all my life.” The worlds she began creating on paper as a child were the beginnings of a style she has come to call “primitive expressionism”—a style she continues to explore in a wide variety of media, including (but certainly not limited to) oil, charcoal, pastels, stone, wood, ceramics, photographic images and the digital palette. In all her work, the rich, almost overwhelming colors that are part of her cultural and personal perspective spill out of the images and fill the surrounding world, while the images themselves continue to surprise with their simplicity and strength. Through its continuing evolution, the goal of Angela’s work has always remained the same: to recreate or capture the images and inhabitants of our commonplace, real world, investing them with new life and power, creating “a little space,” as Angela calls it, “a window into the world of my imagination.” “I’ve always said I was not out to change the world—the art world or the world in general.” But as she gets older, “I realize as artists we do make changes even if we don’t mean to.” Angela says. “My main goal is to bring pleasure to my audience…and to myself.” Special thanks: Wendy Osmundson for all your encouragement, Brad Munson for finding the words for me, Sandra Mastroianni and all the CActuS characters, Anselmo “Chelo” Ortiz and everyone who’s always supported me—you know who you are. Design: Ángela María Ortíz S.-AMOS Art Studio, Eagle Rock, CA. Printer: Tony Hanna-InstaColor Print, www.instacolorprint.com, Glendale, CA.
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