art
PROFILE
deep breath Judy Tuwaletstiwa’s new show touches on the essence of life
“I have always used the simplest techniques to go as deep as I possibly can,” says Judy Tuwaletstiwa.
by G u s s i e F a u n t l e r o y
THERE’S NOTHING AS exquisitely delicate and ephemeral as breath, especially in the sense that breath is synonymous with anima, with spirit, with life. This is the sense in which Judy Tuwaletstiwa understands the Hebrew word ruah, the inspiration and animating force behind the Galisteobased artist’s most recent work. Ruah, opening June 27 at the William Siegal Gallery, presents mixed-media works on paper and canvas, incorporating materials and processes as natural and almost as transitory as breath itself. Tuwaletstiwa (whose name, from her Hopi husband, is pronounced two-wallets-tea-wah) gained a broad, highly synthesizing view of art and life from an upbringing that was economically poor but culturally rich. The 73-year-old grew up in the barrio of East Los Angeles with intellectual Jewish parents who ascribed to communist ideals. And while they never earned much money, they introduced their children to many kinds of cultural and intellectual expression, including art, theater, and foreign films. Growing up in a multicultural neighborhood, Tuwaletstiwa was exposed to the rhythm and soul of church music through African American Baptist friends; the hushed stillness of Japanese ruah.flame II, glass and graphite on paper, 12 x 12" temples; the “magical language” of Orthodox Judaism; and the ritual and “cadences of gold,” as she calls it, of Mexican Catholic High Mass. From 1993 to 2005, Tuwaletstiwa and her husband lived at his ancestral home on the Hopi Reservation in northeastern Arizona. “The sounds of the ceremonies of my childhood and those at Hopi entered my heart and influenced my art,” she says. Words and books were among Tuwaletstiwa’s earliest interests, which led to her majoring in English literature at Berkeley and Harvard. In her late 20s, she entered the visual arts through tapestry weaving and later spent many years working with natural materials, including the sand at Hopi. Sand eventually morphed into glass, and her new works incorporate small, thin pieces of matte glass she creates free-form using glass powders fired in a kiln. “I have always used the simplest techniques to go as deep as I possibly can,” she says. William Siegal Gallery Director Eric Garduño describes Tuwaletstiwa as an “O-negative soul type—a universal donor of deep, elemental energy 22
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ruah.black, glass, pigment, and silk on canvas, 72 x 48"
and knowledge. Her current work incinerates traditional boundaries of glass as a material.” With fire as a powerfully transformative yet inherently unpredictable collaborator, the artist explores such elusive, mysterious qualities as memory and perception. The ruah series, she says, represents an attempt to “make breath visible, to reach into that elemental and essential place and give it voice.” Judy Tuwaletstiwa, ruah, William Siegal Gallery, 540 S Guadalupe, williamsiegal.com, June 27–July 22, reception June 27, 5–7 pm