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Celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month

by Leon Nigrosh

TIES THAT BIND: CELEBRATING HISPANIC HERITAGE MONTH At the ARTSWorcester Gallery at Quinsigamond Community College, 670 West Boylston Street, through October 28.

Very strong connections to their Central and South American homelands run throughout the work of ceramic sculptor Julia

Vera and painter Juan Carlos Leon. With the work currently on display at the ARTSWorcester Gallery at QCC, these two artists have their own special way of expressing their continued affinity with their native lands.

Leon has chosen to focus his attention on the indigenous people of Ecuador as they go about their daily activities. His 18x36 inch In the Market is awash with bright colors as he centers our attention on the rainbow-colored serapes worn by three customers at a vegetable stall. Leon's women are also wearing traditional felt hats over their braided hair as they stand barefoot while pondering the day's meal.

Both Woman Making Baskets and Chola Making Hats show Indians clothed in their traditional national dress hard at work producing the handmade objects once used for survival but now eagerly sought after by tourists and exporters. In these works, Leon employs small, simple brush strokes to capture the natural surroundings in which these women ply their ancient craft.

Broad, flat areas of color set off Leon's more expressionistic Vendedora de Flores as she stands behind an array of flowers as lively and colorful as she is herself. The same style of brushwork pervades Leon's Vendedor de Pescados in which a yellow-shirted fisherman bends under the weight of his fish-laden pole. A newspaper stuffed in the man's pocket telling of a higher cost of living, little work, and big problems, makes one wonder whether the man is bent under his physical load or something heavier.

Emotion plays a part in the illustrative Immigrant. In this image, a shirtless man is poised in an attitude of hope and determination before his wife and smiling child. Leon proffers a different emotion in his Lagrimas, which borders on the surreal with a large pair of eyes floating in the sky, crying tears that take a human shape with distinct religious overtones.

Vera takes great strength from her heritage as well as Leon, but instead of depicting contemporary situations, she develops her sculpture with inspiration drawn from the ancient myths handed down through the ages by her ancestors. The majority of her works are either made of unglazed stoneware or finished in a smoky raku fire. Both of these finishes give Vera's work a patinated surface much like archaeological finds. Her Lady Bird might well be an ancient Inca fertility figure with its simple cross-shaped form. Lady of the Fields is a modernized version of the same figure, only this one has benign facial features and a tiara of yellow flowers.

Her Maya is a raku version of a crowned face with legs emanating from the chin, much like the wall figures at Chichen Itza. Her Green Man is a face completely festooned with iridescent leaves, suggesting growth and vitality. One of her more striking works is Freedom Soars, which shows a face firmly bound about the mouth. All is not gloom, however, as the hair resolves into the shape of a bird flying upward and away. Her poignant The Spirit of Youth Is Within Me shows the visage of an old woman with the body of a young girl superimposed on it.

As engaging as her wall pieces are, it is Vera's free-standing sculptures that are really enchanting. In New Birth we see a pregnant woman seated nude upon a great swell of numinous earth and verdant vegetation -- which we slowly realize has also been formed as a female, possibly Mother Earth.

Vera's show stopper is a rendition of her Lizard Goddess. We are introduced to this two-foot long creature as it sensuously slithers across its pedestal, its green body serving as transport for smaller amphibians. But instead of a reptilian head, the body is capped with the head of a woman crowned in blue tresses and copper ornamentation. In this one anthropomorphic piece, Vera has captured the mystical spirits who kept alive the curiosity of ancient Americans, and she has also presented us with an evocative contemporary mythic figure to ponder on our own.

The exhibition is open Fridays from 4 to 8 p.m. or by appointment. Call 854-4309.