Cover, Tree Talk Series catalog, Ljubljana, Slovenia, 2013.

Cover, Tree Talk Series catalog, Ljubljana, Slovenia, 2013.

MEG Photo Urska Boljkovac (MGLC) Archive, 2013.jpg

María Elena Gonzalez, Ljubljana, 2013.
Photo: Urška Boljkovac. Archive: MGLC (The International Center of Graphic Arts).


  A Conversation with María Elena González: A Trajectory of Sound

Julia P. Herzberg©

I first saw Skowhegan Birch #1, the player piano roll made from the pattern on Birchbark, at MAD (Museum of Arts and Design), in the summer of 2013, not long before the work was awarded the Grand Prize at the 30th Biennial of Graphic Arts in Ljubljana. By all standards, it was an amazing work, as were the accompanying works on paper and framed bark pieces. The following year, I visited María Elena González’ studio several times, where we talked about her work in Tree Talk Series. For the catalogue essay for the exhibition Tree Talks Series, shown at the 31st Biennial of Graphic Arts in Ljubljana, María Elena thought it would be revealing to talk about the development of sound in her sculpture that began in 1989 and continues, intermittently to the present.

Untitled (November 1989) and Rotunda (June 1990), two early sound pieces that I selected for Installations: Current Directions, in the fall of 1990 at the Museum of Contemporary Hispanic Art (MoCHA) in New York City, were interactive pieces that invited the viewer to touch them. (Illustrations 1 & 2) Since the artist’s experimental nature of sound has not been previously written about or published until now, it is our expectation that this conversation will broaden an understanding of sound, a carefully and conscientiously conceived element that eventually exploded into music in Skowhegan Birch #1 (2005-2012) and Skowhegan Birch #2 (2012-2014). (Illustration 3 & 4).

(Illustrations follow text)

Julia P. Herzberg: Let’s talk about the work chronologically with an eye to your material and conceptual processes. And when we conclude, we will have drawn a fuller picture of how and why sound eventually became music, and why music, so central to your very being, was so unusually created in some of your work between 1989 and 2014. Let’s begin with T for Two (1989), the first work that had sound.  (Illustration 5)

 María Elena González: T for Two is a furniture-object-sculpture in the shape of a small stepladder. There are two steps on either side, with different graphic markings indicating a place for one’s knees and bottoms. I thought of constructing the stepladder so that one or two people could kneel on the first step and/or sit on the second step. In either case, they would face each other. Then they could become actively involved with the piece and tap the rawhide insets on the top. The rectangular rawhide insets serve as drums. As you know, rawhide is a principal material used to make drums, and in Cuban music, in percussion, rawhide reigns supreme. Drums, gongs, and maracas are all percussion.

JPH: What inspired you to title the work after Ella Fitzgerald’s famous song “Tea for Two,” even though the spelling is somewhat different?   

MEG: I grew up listening to music pretty much everyday and still listen to music all the time. And since the mid-1980s, I have mostly listened to jazz in my studio—I must have been in an Ella Fitzgerald phase. As far as the spelling is concerned, T has a structural, architectural look to it, while playing with language is a result of bilingualism.

JPH: Immediately following T for Two, you began working with rawhide, wood, and rope, materials used in Untitled (1989) and Rotunda (1990), and in two other similar sculptures at that time. All of these were intended to include sound and be interactive. Would you elaborate on their production, and their anticipated presence in an exhibition venue? 

MEG: At the time I made these rawhide sculptures, I was not only interested in having sound emanate from the works but equally in having the viewer physically interact with the sculptures to get involved with the pieces. I was tired of seeing viewers in the gallery  just looking at the work without ever touching it. I wanted people to touch the rawhide in the sculptures, to get involved in their spatial dimensions, and to be accountable for the sound they were making. Even though the viewers were not going to play a symphony, they could still touch the rawhide and strike up a beat, just as in T for Two. Allowing for that kind of engagement through sculpture was a huge leap for me. 

JPH: Untitled and Rotunda were attached to the floor and the ceiling by rope that alluded to the strings of musical instruments. 

MEG: Exactly, the tensioned rope alludes to strings, suggesting a strong visual association to musical instruments. And, as I have said, the rawhide insets were intended for people to play on them. The only thing I didn’t do, when exhibiting these sculptures, was provide a pair of drumsticks!  

JPH: Rotunda actually has a more pronounced drum-like shape, a form similar to another sculpture you did a few months earlier that is not illustrated here. 

MEG: Well, the stringing part is similar, but not the shape. Rotunda is the perfect circle, with a beautiful gradation of surface. I feel it has a very sensuous curve, and its finish is not unlike the wood on congas. 

JPH: At the same time you were making Rotunda, you were also making sculptures using rawhide but without sound. Then you made Pod and Mambo Mango, which had sound, and were placed on the floor, intended to be played like drums. The sculptures are formal departures from the work discussed above. Let’s talk about these. (Illustrations 6 and 7)

MEG: I began working with ideas I thought were clear but, actually, I was working toward something that was not immediately apparent. Fortunately, I like being lost, because that feeling is what thrills me about making art, finding my way to something new, which is just what happened when I made Pod (January) and Mambo Mango (July). Both pieces are based on nature’s forms—pods and seeds. I made a lot of drawings and some prints of these shapes both before and during the time I made these two sculptures. Mambo Mango references both tropical fruit and tropical dance. I also made a wall piece based on reading Mambo Kings Sing Songs of Love, a work I still have. In looking back, I feel that Pod and Mambo Mango, as well as the other works mentioned, were important for their inclusion of sound and because they gave agency to viewers. 

JPH: Pod and Mambo Mango are hollow cones that appear to be illuminated from within. Am I correct? 

MEG: Yes. They are made with thin segments of transparent rawhide, so that light appears to emanate from them. I started working with the rawhide because of the sound and its relationship to congas and making sound as music. But as a sculptor, when you start working with materials, you start noticing their properties, and one of the fantastic things about a particular type of rawhide is its translucency and luminosity. Because of the thinness of the rawhide, these pods seem to transmit light from within. The ability to achieve that kind of luminosity represented another creative leap for me. 

JPH: Black Bean Rain Sticks were inspired by rainsticks, objects in the shape of a long, hollow tube filled with small stones or beans. When turned upside down, the small stones or pebbles make a sound similar to rushing water or rain. How did you make this small percussion instrument? (Illustration 8)

MEG: Again I used rawhide to make the cylinders. Using a drill bit, I made holes so that I could insert thin bamboo rods to interrupt the flow of the black beans in order to create sound. The black dots that appear on the outside, at the ends of the pieces of bamboo rods, are accentuated with a dark epoxy that holds the rods in place and incidentally creates a graphic surface pattern. When the cylinders were closed at either end, I put lead caps on them, much like one would with a precious container.   

JPH: Actually, Black Bean Rain Sticks is a very elaborative piece despite the simplicity of the two elongated tubular shapes.

MEG: You have pointed out something quite relevant, which is the cylindrical shape of this sculpture. So, where am I now: a player piano roll (Skowhegan Birch #2), which is a cylinder. And where does the music come from? The birch tree, another cylinder, which has marks that are translated to sound.    

JPH: Your choice of black beans is self-referential. It speaks to Cuba.

MMG: For sure, black beans are a basic food in that country and in other parts of the Caribbean, for that matter. I consciously used them because of their relationship, like the drum, to my background. My work is not overt in the sense that it is branded: “I am Cuban.” But I have my own way of speaking about my heritage, about where I come from in my artwork.  

JPH: For Untitled (Circle), a work you did two years after Black Bean Rain Sticks, you continued using wood and rawhide, but you added metal leaf and metal. (Illustration 9) There is a great deal of luminosity in this sculpture, as there was in Pod and Mambo Mango. And, similar to those works, Untitled (Circle) has a very tactile quality; and it, too, can be touched. 

MEG: This goes back to what I was saying about how I continued to discover the amazing qualities of rawhide: one, its translucency; another, its ability to project light. This particular piece makes me think of the word ‘oh,’ because it reminds me of the shape my mouth makes when I say that word. So, that is how I refer to it even though it is not the official title. I had discovered that different rawhides have different densities and tones. For Untitled (Circle), I selected a particularly thin rawhide that was colorless rather than amber. The rawhide used for drums has an opaque amber quality, whereas the rawhide used for Untitled (Circle) is the most clear. The background is a piece of wood that is gilded with a silver-like metal leaf to create a reflective surface that allows the light to come in and bounce back out. The rawhide really lights up in a very ethereal, even magical way.    

JPH: In our conversation, you talked about the possibility of doing a public artwork, for which you have a very distinguished record, in the form of a labyrinth. How did these individual sculptures of ear labyrinths evolve? (Illustration 10)

MEG: When I was doing a residency at Eternit AG in Payerne, Switzerland in 2001, I worked with fiber cement. I experimented with the possibilities inherent in that material, one that depends on its density to absorb and to carry sound. I became really interested in the idea of a public art piece where the viewers would hear bits and pieces of conversations as they walked through the labyrinth. With those ideas in mind, I started envisioning an acoustical labyrinth as a public art piece, where you could talk to the wall in one part of the labyrinth and someone else would hear you in another part. The work I envisioned was not about getting lost inside; it was about being lost in a cacophony of fragmented conversation.  

JPH: How and where did you make these pieces that form the maquette?

MEG: I made several maquettes at Eternit. During the time I sculpted these, I also made many drawings of labyrinths. If I had the opportunity to do a labyrinth as a public art work, I would make it out of either fiber cement or cast cement.  

JPH: As a public artwork, would the sound bounce back and travel so that the people in different parts of the space could hear one another?  

MEG: I believe so. However, I would have to do a lot of research to get the results in order to fabricate the labyrinth correctly. Were I able to secure funding, it would be a matter of testing what works and what does not.  

JPH: Your short video Fountain Fest (2011) is very light-hearted and whimsical. (Illustration 11) It presents about twenty to twenty-four individually created fountains, bearing names such as Wally, Ambilic (Illustration 12), Saint Sebastian, Balzac, Wonderland, Raupen (Illustration 13), and so forth. The fountains are made from ordinary buckets, with electrical cords for the water pumps. Tell us about this most unusual grouping of sculptures, each one made from a little of this, that, and the other.

MEG: During a two-year period from 2009 to 2010, I made these fountains from recycled PVC buckets left over from a body of work I had just finished, my solo exhibition, Suspension (2008), for which I made molds and cast them in Aqua-Resin. The process was tedious; it demanded precision and lots of planning. So when I finished that work, I felt I needed to do something spontaneous and relatively unstructured. It turned out to be such fun and so liberating to create the fountains from the leftover buckets and hardware I had on hand.  

I also liked the idea of recycling the buckets because I do not like wasting materials. Being frugal with my materials comes from my Cuban background, where I had to make do with little, so I learned to create with few means. Over time, making do with little became part of my mindset. 

JPH: Let me ask a couple of technical questions. How did you create a water pump, which recycles the water?

MEG: The fountains are self-contained. The water falls back into the buckets. Since this project was about recycling and being self-contained, each of the fountains has a certain amount of water that is constantly recycled. I used a pump similar to one used in a small fish tank. The spigots in each fountain regulate the flow of water, making some stream really fast, some trickle, and some just have a barely visible but steady flow. As you saw in the video, when all the fountains are arranged in close proximity and run simultaneously, it’s like hearing a symphony.  

JPH: How did you create figures that seem personified?  

MEG: I used expandable foam and parts of things I had in my studio. Their personifications are related to personal and private associations, some of which come from my studies of art history. 

JPH: Were these ever shown anywhere? 

MEG: No, they were not formally shown in a gallery, I showed them to a few individuals in my studio. Most of the fountains are destroyed, but I kept about four or five of them. 

JPH: Given that you are premiering Skowhegan Birch #2 in Tree Talk Series, your solo exhibition during the 31st Biennial of Graphic Arts in Ljubljana, let’s end by reflecting on Skowhegan Birch #1 for which you received the Grand Prize at the 30th Biennial of Graphic Arts in Ljubljana in 2013. 

MEG: Skowhegan Birch #1 is a player piano roll, played by a pianolist on a player piano. Skowhegan Birch #2 will premiere in this exhibition, Tree Talk Series, and now I am ready to begin work on Skowhegan Birch #3. From my view, Tree Talk Series will conclude when the three player piano rolls are played simultaneously, so that the listeners will hear a forest. Although there may be more than one way to accomplish this, I envision having the three piano rolls, individually transcribed into sheet music that would be played by pianists on standard pianos. I would need at least two pianos per roll because of the number of notes on each composition. Accordingly, I imagine six pianos playing Skowhegan Birch #1, #2, and #3 simultaneously in a music hall. And that will be the end of Tree Talk series. I have a couple more years to go with this. (MEG laughs.)

JPH: Thank you very much, María Elena. This has been a splendid opportunity to learn about the development of sound in some of your sculptures before it reached full blossoming in Skowhegan Birch #1 and #2. I look forward to hearing Skowhegan Birch #3 in full concert. 

I appreciate receiving permission from Bozidar Zrinski, curator of the International Center of Graphic Arts (MGLC), to reprint my essay together with the artist’s images.

Artwork and photos © María Elena González
Photo of María Elena González, Ljubljana, Slovenia. © Urška Boljkovac. Archive: MGLC.


Illustrations

Unless otherwise noted, all artwork and photo credits belong to the artist.

Untitled, 1989 #1.jpg

Illustration 1.Untitled (November, 1989, 12 ft. high x 7 ft. wide x 4 ft. deep. Wood, rawhide, and rope.

Rotunda, 1990 #2.jpg

Illustration 2. Rotunda, 1990. Wood, wood putty, lacquer, rawhide, and rope, 12 ft. high x 3 ft. wide x 3 ft. deep.


Illustration 3. Skowhegan Birch #1, 2012. Installation view, The 30th Biennial of Graphic Arts, MGLC, Ljubljana, 2013. Photo: Jaka Babnik

Illustration 3. Skowhegan Birch #1, 2012. Installation view, The 30th Biennial of Graphic Arts, MGLC, Ljubljana, 2013. Photo: Jaka Babnik

Illustration 4. Skowhegan Birch #2, 2012-2014, Piano Player Roll.

Illustration 4. Skowhegan Birch #2, 2012-2014, Piano Player Roll.

Illustration 5. T for Two, 1989, 30 1/2 in. high x 40 1/2 in. wide x 20 in. deep. Wood, rawhide, graphite, chalk, and lacquer.

Illustration 5. T for Two, 1989, 30 1/2 in. high x 40 1/2 in. wide x 20 in. deep. Wood, rawhide, graphite, chalk, and lacquer.

Illustration 6. Pod, 1991. Wood, wood putty, graphite, lacquer, and rawhide. 22 in. high x 48 in. wide x 22 in. deep.

Illustration 6. Pod, 1991. Wood, wood putty, graphite, lacquer, and rawhide. 22 in. high x 48 in. wide x 22 in. deep.

Mambo Mango (front view), 1991 #7.jpg

Illustration 7. Mambo Mango, 1991. Wood and rawhide, 21 in. high x 52 in. wide x 21 in. deep.

Black Bean Rain Sticks, Dec. 1992 #8.jpg

Illustration 8. Black Bean Rain Sticks, 1992. Wood, rawhide, lead, epoxy, and black beans, 32 1/2 in. high x 11 in. wide x 5 in. deep. Collection Roger Mayou, Geneva.


Untitled (Circle), 1994 #9 (1).jpg

Illustration 9. Untitled (Circle), 1994. Metal leaf, wood, metal, and rawhide, 26 in. diameter x 3 in. deep. Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, New York.

Illustration 10: Ear Labyrinth Maquette, 2001, Fiber cement, 1.2 in. high x 14 in. wide x 10 in. deep, approximately.

Illustration 10: Ear Labyrinth Maquette, 2001, Fiber cement, 1.2 in. high x 14 in. wide x 10 in. deep, approximately.

Illustration 11: Fountain Fest, 2011, ]Recycled PVC buckets, copper, rubber, water pumps, and water, 20 to 24 fountain-sculptures. Dimensions variable.

Illustration 11: Fountain Fest, 2011, ]Recycled PVC buckets, copper, rubber, water pumps, and water, 20 to 24 fountain-sculptures. Dimensions variable.

Ambilic (from Fountain Fest), 2010 #12.jpg

Illustration 12: Ambilic (from Fountain Fest), 2009, 19 in. high x 12 in. diameter, plastic, copper, electric water pump, wood, hardware, water.

Raupen (from Fountain Fest), 2010 #13.jpg

Illustration 13: Raupen (from Fountain Fest), 2009, recycled PVC buckets, plastic, copper, electric water pump, wood, hardware, and water, 24 in. high x 12 in. diameter,


_JPH doing frottage in ME G.jpg

Julia P. Herzberg doing frottage in the artist’ studio, July 28, 2014.