Editor’s note: When Kaua‘i artists Margaret Ezekiel and Rosa Silver met while installing their individual exhibits at galerie 103 in Po‘ipu, both were awestruck by each other’s work. Ezekiel’s charcoal and pastels on paper awakened an outpouring of emotion in Silver. In return, Ezekiel was struck by the honesty and uniqueness displayed in Silver’s two-wall installation.
This inspired them to write about each other’s work from the artist’s point of view. Enjoy their uniquely paired reviews.
Rosa Silver writes about “In The Between”
When Margaret arrived to install her show at galerie 103, I could barely see her behind the large frame she carried. As this first piece was turned and set down, I got my first glimpse — a glimpse of rare mastery of technique mixed with mindful choice.
A four-foot image of a woman and man engulfed in darkness and their embrace overtook me. Being in-person with her drawings, experiencing the depth of colors and the intricacies of layering and saturation produced a quality of connection not possible with simply a duplication or photo.
Tears rolled down my cheek, as it has for others. I did not have control, nor did I want it. A clump emerged in my body. I was immersed in emotion. Not only was the intensity of application and color an opening beyond soul and thought, the imagery added even more. Margaret has a talent for choosing a slice of a moment, a sort of frame from life, or all of our lives, which we universally share. When my brain acknowledged the familiarity, my heart sang, “Yes. Someone else has also felt the same as I; somebody has been there too.” Maybe it was an instantaneous healing, or maybe relief that I am not alone.
Images such as a body floating or hands reaching out to a figure from darkness can be a metaphor for our shared human needs for freedom, caring or even safety.
Interestingly, seven panels from 2004, originally shown at The Contemporary Museum in Honolulu, are not for sale. The images carry such a deep meaning for the artist she does not wish to part with them, yet a desire to share exists. Each panel can stand alone and offer a multitude of entries to its meaning, or the panels can be taken in together and tell a more definitive story. Her newest charcoal drawings are an interesting return to the figure after Ezekiel’s last solo show composed of emotional skyscapes. Having a chance for Kaua‘i to witness such a mastery of the chalk or pastel with an intuitive talent for noticing those universal images packed with emotion is a gift I hope all of us take the time to witness and appreciate.
Margaret Ezekiel … on watching Rosa Silver
Walking into Rosa Silver’s multi-faceted installation piece, “VERITATEM PROPONO: Garden Island Immersion” at the Contemporary Museum Honolulu Biennial of Hawai‘i Artists IX was wondrous. But it was pure magic watching Rosa distill its essence into her subsequent installation, “RE-APPEAR AT SOURCE,” thereby bringing her work home as an offering of gratitude to the island, her original source of inspiration and transformation.
Rosa approaches her work with the mind of a scientist — observing, studying, analyzing and recording. But she creates it with the heart and hand of an artist. Her own life is the subject of her research, and she shares the results with revealing honesty.
The many pieces of her life — captured in small intricate sculptures, delicately detailed drawings, richly colored paintings and intriguing bits of video — are held together by sky-blue lines of watercolor pencil drawn directly on the gallery walls. The totality becomes a deeply personal blueprint of the complex emotional machinery holding all of life together.
From a place of new and deeper understanding, Rosa created “Opening to the Intellect” specifically for this installation; the work is a map drawn on a scroll of tracing paper, cascading down over an actual gallery doorway, still faintly visible behind it.
In life as in work, Rosa is articulate, passionate and fearlessly expressive. During installation week, she welcomed the world by live webcast to witness her creative process, a process that for many artists often remains private and nonverbal. For Rosa it was an intimate way to celebrate connection and oneness.
In that spirit, a video, boxed high on the wall, plays a continuous loop of what appears to be a single eye, but is in reality a composite of her eye and, in sequence, the eyes of her two sons, her husband and animals and birds of Kaua‘i, all gazing back at us as one — blinking, moving, always engaged and observing.
• Both artists will be on view until April 30th at galerie 103 in Kukui‘ula Village, Poi‘pu. Meet the artists from 6 to 8 p.m. Thursday, April 21, during Kukui‘ula Village’s Thursday Art Night.
