Sailing Stones March 31 - October 31 2015 – hOMe by José Luis Avila
Testing Avila's large scale installation at Street Road.
The Ice Speaks: Photographs of Traveling to Jökulsárlón, Iceland’s Glacier Lagoon
Artist's book by José Luis Avila, part of his installation hOMe and available online here. |
As part of Sailing Stones José Luis Avila presents hOMe, an intermedia work using large scale projection, installation, and printed matter which continues his exploration of photography and its relationship to landscapes - both external and internal. Avila writes:
One of my greatest influences has been John O’Donohue, the Irish poet and philosopher. In 2009, the summer after his passing, I was able to hike on his ancestral farm, in the West of Ireland, with his friend and fellow poet David Whyte. O’Donohue believed that the wild bleak landscapes were pivotal forces which informed his thoughts: “I think that was one of the recognitions of the Celtic imagination: that landscape wasn't just matter, but that it was actually alive.”
Three years later, on Thanksgiving Day, I, by chance, found myself on another wild bleak landscape, this time on the farm of Thorbergur Thordarson in southeastern Iceland. Thordarson, O’Donohue’s kindred spirit, is one of Iceland’s national literary treasures. In his famous novel, “The Stones Speak” he writes: “I enjoyed listening and talking to rocks when I came up to them, and sometimes I pressed my ear to them and listened to hear if they were telling me something. For me it was quite natural to think that you could hear voices from them and understand their thoughts if you just listened hard enough and were astute enough to understand.” I did not plan to stand over an ice lagoon at midnight, any more than I had planned my own birth. As O'Donoghue has observed that we are called to be born by the longing of our parents for each other, I was called to this place at this time by my longing for the divine. Setting up my camera and tripod, I photographed at random, allowing the sensor to detect the slight, distant brightening of the still-invisible aurora borealis. The horizon beyond the glacier seemed unreachable, yet the stars appeared palpably close. Contemplating this paradox, alone in this severe landscape, I became fixed on the red life-ring on the dock at the glacier’s lagoon edge, and so crossed a symbolic threshold to heightened perception. Entering, I sang these words from Canzon Mixteca, by Oaxacan composer José López Alavez: |
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¡Qué lejos estoy del suelo donde he nacido!!
inmensa nostalgia invade mi pensamiento;! y al verme tan solo y triste cual hoja al viento,! quisiera llorar, quisiera morir de sentimiento.! ¡Oh Tierra del Sol! Suspiro por verte! ! ahora que lejos yo vivo sin luz, sin amor;! y al verme tan solo y triste cual hoja al viento,! quisiera llorar, quisiera morir de sentimiento.! |
How far I am from the land where I was born!
Immense nostalgia invades my heart; And seeing myself so lonely, sad like a leaf in the wind, I want to cry, I want to die from this feeling. Oh Land of Sun! I yearn to see you! Now that I'm so far from you, I live without light and love; Seeing myself so lonely and sad like a leaf in the wind, I want to cry, I want to die from this feeling. |
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Lost in the vastness of the universe, I recalled learning that a distant black hole emits the note chanted in that most sacred of mantras, OM. It was then that I recognized how the life-ring, by imposing human scale on an otherwise dimensionless landscape, symbolized the birth passage connecting me with the divine. With this revelation, I was welcomed “hOMe.”
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José Luis Avila holds a Master of Architecture, from the University of the Arts, Philadelphia (1993), and a Bachelor of Architecture with a Minor in Philosophy from the University of Kentucky (1990). He works with Photography and Ceramics.
Born in Puerto Rico, Avila learned to walk in Madrid, to speak English in Tennessee (by listening to Johnny Cash albums), is a passionate listener of spoken poetry and is a devoted husband and parent. 
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