The Calligraphic Dancer - Beginnings

My next project is called The Calligraphic Dancer. I started in 2012, yet after my Fall graduation I paused due to a number of reasons. It's been two years and it feels really nice to return to something a tad more conceptual and full of layers. Painting is wonderful, but I'm ready for new things.

An artist talks about their experiences through the mediums they feel are appropriate. In doing so, they reveal their own sort of "language." For me the fun part is watching the beauty of chance and the beauty of failure reveal themselves. This project can go in so many ways and I'm not sure if this visual exploration into Middle Eastern Dance will work. As a source of inspiration, John Cage's special words hang on the walls of my studio: "Art is not an escape from life, but rather an introduction to it."
So if my work is an introduction to Middle Eastern Dance, I hope that it will be a tasteful, perceptive and fresh one.

Serpent's Hip Circle

This week I worked on the basic shapes and started with "circles." What are movements in Belly Dance that make "circles?" We have three sizes of hip circles, small (omi's), medium and large. We also have circles of the ribcage, shoulders and head (which can translate more to swinging and flipping your hair). So many more, but I'm sticking to basics....

So far out of about 50+ tries, the image to the right has been my favorite. I call it the Serpent's hip circle or hip circle with heel taps.

For you dancers out there, can you dance it?

For you non-dancers (yet *wink wink*) or beginners, take a look at the image below with numbers. Imagine you're breaking down a large hip circle. You'll start in the middle. Then, slide your hip to the right and tap your heels to the floor creating a small bounce of the body (that's one). Two, slide back and heel tap. Three, keep your hips back but slide left and heel tap. Four, follow the smooth line by bringing your hips forward again and finish the circle! How did it go...?

Stay connected for more on my progress! 

The future had loads more research and involvement, I promise it'll be fun.
Thank you!

Review on Adrian Molina's "Perpetual-In-Terra-Action"

I once titled this review "What Jackson Pollock wished he would have thought and where Albert Einstein would have felt magical" because Adrian's scrolls have many "action painting" qualities that Pollock made famous. And as for Einstein feeling magical - well... I would imagine that man was always feeling magical with all the beautiful things that came out of his fathomless mind! Adrian's art is an intricate and continuous figure-eight of creativity, science, physics, philosophy and pure fun.

I wrote this in 2011 after my first trip to Boston, re-editing it recently just a bit (Isn't it crazy how we look at things later and are like... man, I write better today than I used to! We're either ashamed or we laugh about it - I laughed.) I'll always remember this wonderfully, successful show and I'm very proud of my brother for conjuring such intriguing work.

Hope you enjoy the read!
_____________

Looming Scroll, 2011
Photo by Adam Moskowitz

It's Friday, November 11th, 2011 and I'm in Boston, Massachusetts. My brother, artist Adrian Molina is exhibiting his first full show of work, which has already blown my mind. Located at Yes.Oui.Si Gallery, a block from the Boston Museum of Art, this quaint yet lively space is charming and exciting my curiosity.

“Of course you can touch it. This isn't a museum.” –Adrian playfully clarifies in the midst of a crowd exploring his Looming Scroll or what I like to call The Mother Machine (image above). As in many cases with his work, I feel that he always had the intention for the viewer to become physically and intellectually involved. It is very much evident with this multi-media project.

The show had everything; sound, visual, touch, mind power, and human interaction. It had all of the traditional qualities of fine art (painting, drawing and sculpture) blended with less tangible medias such as real-time video, live music and concept. The gallery set the perfect cozy and home-like atmosphere for this intimate experience. Guests packed the space from 6:30pm and on receiving at least 100 plus throughout the night - a fantastic turn out for this young space.

Cleanly and well curated by co-founder of Yes.Oui.Si. Olivia Ives-Flores, there were two main rooms that held the intricate project. In the main room sat The Looming Scroll. There the journey began with you and one other person turning the wheels of the da Vinci-esque contraption to view the scroll of time that it presented. Above us was a camera which captured live feedback that was being shown in the second room. 

Surrounding the main experience were visual extensions of the show - meditative scrolls titled After Thoughts, a gravity-defying, surreal self-portrait halfway between painting and sculpture and charming mid-sized assemblage's, many found on his tumblr on pages 2-3, click here!

The place was on fire with conversations about the work!

I tried The Looming Scroll several times with different people and of course one round with Adrian. I rolled it forward and back taking in all of what it communicated to me. The language of the work was alluring, gently pulling you in to respond to it. The wheels turn harmoniously together creating a relationship with two people - who possibly may not know one another. This echoes a desire for universal human communication - an essential, innate collaboration. It took a few people, without Adrian's guidance, to get this momentum - but when they happily figured it out, it was a great little ride for them.

On another level, Adrian involves time travel and scientific elements - an interest owing to our father Nestor Molina for his philosophies and research in science. The scroll is the constant and the timing it rolls is relative to the variable (the people maneuvering the machine.) Add a bit of a philosophical spice with the content of the scroll and the observer gets pulled into the deeper, intellectual pockets of the project.

The first way the sequence of the narrative scroll rolls is towards the "future" and the second is towards the "past." Respectfully one can interpret the sequence of narration in reverse. The "past" begins with calligraphical characters Adrian's subconscious has produced seeming to narrate the beginning of time. Then nature and a bird in flight appears as we follow it towards the future morphing into a plane and then into "energy" as we pass through the land, an industrialized age and eventually into space and the universe.

In action or stillness there is mediation. Meditation on the images, on the interaction of the two manipulators or observers, and on a more grandeur scale, the manipulation of “their voyage in that life.”

What I found to be enlightening was how the community was open and humble and easy to converse with - a quality that I desire so much in the Miami art scene, and I know I'm not the only one. Everyone was excited, both young and old.

The collective that is Yes.Oui.Si. is rare jewel in the art world - or at least to my eyes. They work gracefully and constructively building unique and inspiring projects. Adrian's Perpetual-in-Terra-Action exhibit was a success within the collective, the community and for his own growth.

If you have questions for the artist, contact him here: admoart@gmail.com

Want to see the Machine in Miami? Email me your interest and I'll get working on it! (hello@alexandra-molina.com)

Art as an introduction to life, not an escape.

:::Inspiration is jasmine tea and rain. - What has turned into a self-critique [of my work.]:::

It has come to 2014 and I've passed my first full year out of college - in the real world. It is exciting to think it's just the beginning and that my career is already at jump-start.

Writing while there's a soft rain outside and surrounded by the flowery aroma of Jasmine tea, I pick up my Art History Thesis I wrote two years ago. Quoting John Cage "art is not an escape from life, but rather an introduction to it," I continued writing, "he valued the inter-connectedness between people, objects and nature as well as experiencing the present moments" and reshaping them into art as his way to introduce an audience into his world - what he sees, hears and how.

This indulged a few questions and observations swimming in my mind in regards to 2013 and the beginning of my artistic career. They asked - how is your work an introduction for an outsider into your life? Is it enough?

I want to answer them with a "no," that satisfaction is famously never granted to an artist. It's also too soon to for my portfolio to give such answers.

I do agree that an artist is a reflector with many filters; a magical mirror into the same world yet communicating different views about it. Our goal is to understand our own behaviors, challenge them until we can control them to our artistic advantages. For example, confronting an inhibition (such as social or body issues) and understanding its life in you. Then by overcoming it we use it to reflect ourselves in our work. With this we are on the road to fulfilling John Cage's quote that art is a reflection of ourselves, not something that we are not.

There are things that I battle within my work - particularly when dealing with Middle Eastern Dance and certain misogynistic connotations of sex and seduction. How much sensuality do I portray? Is it subconsciously giving into the male-societal imprints that history has hammered on us, male and female alike? Am I portraying the beauty of the feeling in that movement? Is it powerful enough? Is it weak? ...Is it true to me?...

With my personal questions and a deep desire to clear the taboos towards this dance, it is no wonder I once received a constructive critique that the dance was taking my art hostage. It was not complementing art. It is clear there is a fear I wish I did not have for something I truly love.

And so John Cage came to the rescue reminding me about the essence of art. It came at a very good time and I am currently letting it examine my fear.

So artists, let's set ourselves up to be true to one's self, our work and life. Honesty and courage will only make for better work.