Isabel De ObaldíaCarol Damian A world of spirits, transformative creatures, and ancient sensibilities is brought to life in the cast glass sculptures of Panamanian artist Isabel De Obaldía. Through a remarkably modern approach to one of the oldest and most alluring of materials, she transforms its essential qualities of translucency, fragility, and preciousness into evocative sculptural objects that are reminiscent of cosmogonic figures, archetypal gods and goddesses, and ancient talismans. Her works evoke the spirits of the Pre-Columbian Americas and prehistoric past. There are also vestiges of the abstract simplicity found in the ancient stone statues of Egypt and the Aegean that speak of a world of fertility goddesses and mysterious oracles, fantastic winged beings and imaginary taluses. In works that explore the transformative aspects of ancient ritual, she uses glass to recreate the ritual essence of primordial forms. Described with elegant simplicity, small figures take on monumentality and mystery when transformed by this semitransparent material. In her latest works, winged creatures offer an image of renewal associated with birds and flight. Viewed as symbols of rebirth, birds are born twice, an egg first and again as a chick. As soaring creatures, they are communicators to the spirit world; as guardians, they are angel protectors. Isabel De Obaldía’s winged figures console the living against the threat of extinction and promise hope for a new age. The ethereal nature of their transparent configuration makes them appear poised for a voyage to a secret place, and we want to fly along. Her extraordinary images evoke the promise of a fantastic journey to a mythical world of gods and goddesses, with animals and nature, birds and trees, in happy communion. In ancient cultures, trees are used to symbolize the mythical correspondence between animals and nature, especially when the tree is conjoined with the physical form of an animal or human. This union of the corporeal and the organic in tree forms goes back to earliest Egypt and is a persistent motif in religion and art history throughout the world. The Tree of Life is sacred and transcends cultural boundaries. The tree is central to the realm of the earthly and the sacred. As an upward extension of the revered earth, it is venerated as divine. Divine energy rests in its boughs and leafy sprays, and suggests a fountain of vegetative energy. As a pole, the tree represents the axis mundi, the center of the universe. Pillar-trees and figure-trees abound in ancient rituals and take on an exceptional new physical appearance in De Obaldía’s glass forms. Both trees and birds are intermediaries between worlds. In ancient Greece, Artemis, the Goddess of the Hunt and the Moon and a Tree Divinity, embodied the bird, branch, and pole motif. The story of Apollo and Daphne, so magnificently captured by the Baroque artist Bernini in his seventeenth century masterpiece, tells of the flight of the nymph away from the god. As she implored her father for help, he turned her into a tree, leaving only her leaves in his possession to grace the brows of his victors. The image of a human transformed into a tree or dwelling within a tree is one of ancient lore and fairytales. All of these concepts can be found in the works of Isabel De Obaldía. Her winged beings, sprouting figures, and pole or stela-shaped objects take on a life of their own through the medium of glass. There also appears to be a shamanic quality to these figures that gives them a sense of vitality. Shamans are holy persons, containers of secret energy, and considered to be the external image of the soul. They have the ability to speak the language of the birds in communicating with the supernatural, and they have the knowledge and power to transform their physical identity into new realms of shape and form, some disturbingly bizarre and incomplete, as either spirits or humans. De Obaldía frequently creates stelae or pole-shaped forms topped with strange heads that appear to emerge or evolve from an incorporeal existence. What better way to express this most supernatural of beings than to transform its secret entity into glass, or give it wings and capture its metamorphosis in lucent beauty? The world of myth confronts the world of earthly nature in the primordial glass forms created by Isabel De Obaldía, and a mysterious fusion results. Even her technique reflects this concept of fusion. Just as the two worlds meet and become a place of inabsolute reality and consequently sacred, her sculptures are created out of a process in which the ordinary becomes extraordinary. Made of milky glass, they are cast with shards of color that melt into the form’s interior and appear as ghostly x-rays glowing from within, or form skin-like impressions and rough patinas on the outside. Color adds an expressive element to her work and transforms the quiet simplicity of the shapes into vital entities. She also polishes and engraves the surface and will pierce holes or sculpt interesting contours and details to create positive/negative spatial effects. The natural flaws of the glass, as well as the distortions that appear after firing, become aesthetic elements to enhance traditional references to antiquity, especially those reminiscent of Egyptian or Roman artifacts. She employs this variety of techniques to activate the glass and bring it to life with a new sense of energy and content. De Obaldía’s glass transcends ancient or primitive references to become absolutely contemporary in context, while never losing its telluric power.
Florida International University |