Lee Baldwin visits Patti Ortiz

Visual Conversations Past and Present

By Lee Baldwin

Patti Ortiz tells the story of an artist who likes to visit museums and sketch the masterpieces. When asked why he would copy other artwork, he replied, "I'm having a conversation with it." As Ortiz points out, when you begin working with any image it starts talking back to you.

Ortiz in 1993 became aware of Chumash petroglyphs around Santa Barbara, California. At first she was interested primarily in the listener role of the conversation, making drawings and paintings of rock art verbatim. Later the voice of her own ideas began to express itself, and she found the Chumash stylistic cues appearing in her own designs.

These people occupied the three northernmost Santa Barbara Channel Islands, and a large area that now includes Ventura County, California. Largely pre-Columbian, Chumash petroglyphs range from simple geometric symbols to complex and often bizarre human figures. Their intended meaning is not available to us, but most scholars believe Chumash art conveys shamanic voices, speaking from the spirit of a culture which sought understanding of the supernatural worlds.

Ortiz's conversation with these images has taken many trails, with interesting milestones at every turn. Los Dos Corren Juntos (The Two Flow Together), completed in 2005, is such a work. Speaking of the growing imprint of Spanish Catholicism on Chumash culture, a Chumash woman of the 1900s, pointed out, "When one fails the other helps." In reflecting this thought, Ortiz's design presents a marvelous visual conundrum. Our eyes are trained to distinguish foreground from background—so does the cruciform of small rectangles occupy the foreground, or are those merely openings into the main image? The joy of this particular piece is that it provides a good deal of play for the eye. We can view the painting relative to either Chumash spirituality or Catholic order. The image never rests.



Another aspect of the conversation theme is evident in "extended ear" images at sites in Canyon De Chelly and Canyon Del Muerto to the south. The shamanic figure in Ortiz's Listening at Butler Wash is derived from a petroglyph site located along Utah's San Juan River. These images suggest perception beyond the capability of human ears, perhaps listening for messages from multiple dimensions.

One of Ortiz's visits to the Chumash exhibit at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History led her to a life-sized ceremonial diorama. On a shaman's face there were painted a little group of stars, the Pleiades (Seven Sisters), representing an open star cluster in the constellation Taurus. For Ortiz, this extended her cultural connection with the Chumash into the movements of the night sky, into astronomy, leading to her series, Pleiades Calling Me Home. The subject of an Arts Prescott exhibit in 2004, this is a unique collection of work inspired by Chumash and African rock art, Mimbres pottery, early Mexican retablos, and yoni rock formations. In each there is reference to the four basic elements—earth, air, fire, and water—and, of course, some echo of the Pleiades star cluster.

As to technical approach, Ortiz first puts down a colored medium containing grit, draws over that in pencil, then fills in the design with various thicknesses of acrylic paint. Ortiz's style is primarily graphic, her works are designs as much as they are paintings. She maintains the general color scheme of some particular Chumash rock art, following a palette she has evolved over the years. Possesed of a keen intellect and interests spanning literature, art history, and art education, Ortiz reads widely and follows her curiosity wherever it leads. She is looking for the story, listening to the conversation, and through her paintings consciously shares the experience of her study.

But does the viewer need the thesis to appreciate the work? Ortiz responds that anyone would need the storyline to know exactly what she meant, but could appreciate the image without her explanation for different reasons. Of course the same is true for the original petroglyphs. Those artists are gone, the message remains only in images on weathered rock, and the question finds its answer in the impact those ancient works have on us today. Sometimes we must travel without a map.

Were the Chumash petroglyphs the work of shamans or that of artists? Is Patti Ortiz a modern mystic, or simply an artist in the usual sense? Need there be a distinction? This observer prefers the notion that there is a smooth continuum of artistic expression ranging from spiritual imagery to naive artistic play, and that any artwork uses elements from the entire range. You should definitely draw your own conclusions.

You can view the work of Patti Ortiz at:

Arts Prescott Gallery
134 S. Montezuma St
Prescott, Arizona 928 776 7717

Arizona Handmade Gallery
13 N. San Francisco St. #100
Flagstaff, AZ 928 779 3790

Huckeba Gallery
227 West Gurley St.
Prescott, AZ 928 445 3848