Visions From A World Gone Wrong

By Fred Kasten, RED DOT, A VISUAL ARTS MAGAZINE

I first interviewed Jacqueline Bishop in October 1999. Nearly eleven years had passed since the murder of Chico Mendes, but the Brazilian rubber tapper and ecologist was still very much on her mind. He probably always will be. Chico Mendes assassination at the hands of wealthy slash-and-burn ranchers to silence his campaign to save what remains of the Amazonian rainforest was a galvanizing moment for Bishop. Mendes’ belief in the value of and connections between all forms of life – humanity’s need to work in partnership with the natural world – and the dire consequences of failing to reestablish such a partnership – remains at the core of Jacqueline Bishop’s own outlook.

Jacqueline Bishop is a native of California. She grew up in Missouri, attended the University of Kansas, and lived in the Dominican Republic before moving to New Orleans in the late 70’s. Bishop completed her B.A. at the University of New Orleans in 1978, and earned an MFA from Tulane University in 1982. In the 80’s, Jacqueline Bishop became an integral part of a group of artists pulled together by the late George Febres, and dubbed “Visionary Imagists” by writer D. Eric Bookhardt. She has had numerous solo exhibitions in the United States and abroad; has work in many outstanding public and private collections; and is currently represented in New Orleans by the Arthur Roger Gallery. The following interview took place in New Orleans in late August and early September of this year.

FK: You’ve been profoundly influenced by the life and philosophies of Chico Mendes. When and how did Chico Mendes come into your life and work?

JB: In the mid 1980’s my paintings focused on local Louisiana backyard settings and various species of birds from such areas of political fire as South America, Central America and South Africa. The birds symbolized the soul of man. Their birdhouses were emblazed with fire and matchsticks became cruel perches. I didn’t realize these local backyards were actually Third World forests I would be painting in the future. The mixture of bird species helplessly watched their own extinction. As it turned out, in the midst of ornithological research I found that several of the birds in the paintings were indeed extinct, including birds from Brazil, Louisiana and South Africa. The word “extinct” seemed a very strong word to describe anything. It was not a significant topic in the First World and certainly not the Art World. I was advised to keep my information to myself. The realization of extinction, planetary loss, and ignorance about it affected the way I looked at making art. Then in 1988 I heard that Chico Mendes was brutally murdered by cattle ranchers as he tried to save the forest from disappearing. Chico used peace as his weapon in the same way that Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. did. Each was murdered by the very weapons they opposed. Chico knew the future without the forest. This particular forest where he was born and murdered, where he lived with his young family and worked extracting latex from trees, was also home to 3000 people and millions of plant and animal species, including one-third of the world’s bird population.

FK: Did the images and settings in your paintings change after the murder of Chico Mendes?

JB: The murder of Chico Mendes did not exactly change the imagery or setting in my paintings. My focus on the terrible beauty of landscape remained. However, Chico’s assassination did confirm my deepest intuitions and philosophies concerning social justice, the natural world, and the politicizing of nature. Chico was a speaker for peace and justice. He understood the interconnections of humans with the natural world, but he disappeared in the same way the natural world was disappearing. This confirmation led me to learn Portuguese, travel to Brazil for ten years to interview Chico’s widow, friends, and fellow rubber tappers, and spend time in the forests for weeks at a time to experience the power of the tree world. All of this obsessively collected material ended up in a book titled “Em Memoria:Chico Mendes” which was published by Lavender Ink on the ten year anniversary of his death. Obviously, these experiences have influenced the focus of the paintings.

FK: Your multi-piece wall installation “Terra” is an on-going success, traveling steadily for six years – most recently to the Tyler Museum of Art in Texas, where 20,000 visitors saw it. What are the elements of “Terra” – and what do you intend for it to convey?

JB: “Terra” was created in 1986 and first installed at Galerie Simonne Stern in 1988, six months before Chico Mendes was assassinated. It was a 4 x 5 foot grid-like system comprised of small, hand-painted bird portraits. This piece was my interpretation of the first bird list created by Swedish biologist Carolus Linneaus between 1735 – 1758 and titled Systema Naturae. Each portrait is of a different bird, drawn from a global mixture of birds that are variously extinct, endangered or readily available. “Terra” is a wall memorial. After sixteen years “Terra” is 65 feet long and comprised of more than 350 bird portraits framed in garbage collected from around the world. Also included are journal entries written over watercolors made from Amazon River water, assemblage, collage, discarded bird nests. A few years ago I worked with New York composer Chris Becker, who wrote a sound installation titled “Two Hundred Birds” – an eerie electronic piece that adds another dimension to this landscape. I consider “Terra” as one landscape painting that is hung from light to dark, representing the course of one day. It is a continuous changing landscape. When one piece is removed it is understood that “Terra” will never exist the same way again. It has been altered. “Terra” symbolizes the delicate balance of the human psyche and its interconnections with the ecosystem. “Terra” is a reminder of the human need for intimacy with nature and for intimacy itself.

FK: Your most recent show at the Arthur Roger Gallery – “The Texture of Memory” – was a sustained and revealing essay on the color brown. Why brown?

JB: There are no roads in Amazonia, the rivers are the roads. The only way to have first hand experience with orchids, birds, forest fires in the interior was to travel by river for days. I relied on the Amazon River for bathing, cleaning dishes, washing clothes, fishing, swimming and mixing with watercolors. The Amazon River is the color of tea, brown ink and paint. Over a period of time I was probably infected with the calmness of brown from the river and like malaria it doesn’t leave the blood. Brown is the color of dried blood, skin, memory and shadow. Brown began to dominate my palette, and bright colors started to disappear. I realized that living a few blocks from the Misissippi River and later visiting the Ganges River in India had a flowing affect on my color sensibilities.

FK: One of the intriguing elements in your work is the way you make explicit the connection between the natural world and the feminine – a woman-shaped orchid in “Elements of Grace” – or tree trunk with breasts in “Inga Tree.” I imagine one of the things you are doing with these images is simply underscoring the fact of archetypically feminine shapes recurring across numerous life forms – but suspect there is something deeper involved as well. Is there?

JB: Obviously I see the natural forms of humans in an orchid, bird nest, leaf, rock, twig each with their own little natural system. I’m interested in the “Doctrine of Signatures”, the relationship between medicinal plants and human illnesses, especially now with numerous, new illness appearing and the natural world disappearing. There is no question that we are completely interconnected with the natural world. The bottom line is that no matter how technological the world becomes the world remains biological because we are organically created from part of the feminine. The psychological and spiritual connection to the feminine seems to have been cut centuries ago for convenient reasons through religion and politics. Religion and politics are sometimes inseparable. Tribal thinking celebrated the power of the feminine. Disregarding the feminine means ignoring the mystical and spiritual which are vital ingredients for the imagination. The use of imagination often goes against many religious views. Without imagination, the thinking process becomes rigid, narrow and psychologically unhealthy for the ecology of life. This way of thinking eliminates diversity. It is men who have spoken for the world by designing religions, weapons, wars, policies, governments, laws, women”s commodes, lipstick holders and sanitary items. It is men’s positions that have allowed their inventions and policies to destroy much of the planet’s landscape. In Third World countries it is the women who use the landscape to sustain their families, but the polluted natural resources make their work almost impossible. Lives are cut short. In Bangladesh for example, women walk for miles with heavy containers to collect water for their children. The water near their homes is infected with arsenic. Women in Amazonia are unknowingly cooking fish containing mercury and feeding it to their children. Women in the US are feeding polluted water to their embryos. The rapid denudation of the natural world dramatically shifts everything near and far. If we cut our fingernails, hair, skin, veins, we have been altered no matter how subtle or dramatic the act. The landscape works the same way. Denudation of the landscape affects the pysche, imagination and reason for existence. It seems that going back to the source for recognizing or reconnecting to the feminine is the only option available when all others have failed.

FK: You were just in Bangladesh lecturing on your work, looking into the problem of arsenic in the water, and taking part in a panel on “Globalization and the Third World.” On that same trip you gave a paper at the “World Conference on Mysticism, Reason, Art and Literature” in Calcutta, India – where you had previously been a presenter at the “World Peace Conference” in 1999. Is there a direct connection for you between these kinds of activities and your art?

JB: As a landscape painter the direct connection is landscape. I’m interested in landscape painting and the politics behind it. For example an orchid is beautiful, poetic, medicinal, but also political. The orchid becomes a political symbol because of the polarized views for its habitat; to protect or destroy it. When the orchid, tree and landscape are destroyed so are the people, cultures, languages. It is interconnected. The images artists make sometimes touch a deeper level than words can which is another form of communication. This is the beauty of imagination. Being included in these recent Third World conferences has allowed me to introduce another audience to the work I do in North and South America. It has raised questions about the role of art. I’ve met incredible artists doing installation and painting. Even though most of these artists are isolated from First World art markets we discuss the fact that every fifteen years the Art Market declares that “painting is dead.” Painting is quite alive, but it is actually the landscape that is dying. It is interesting that scientists are studying medieval paintings to identify the birds, plants and mammals that are now extinct. Traveling to Third World countries has clarified for me the issues of globalization and the First World, where there is little sensitivity to preservation and social justice. I’ve had the opportunity of seeing first hand the side effects of globalization and the suffering of people, species extinction, and aggressive abuse towards those who are desperate. When I recently explored a forest in Bangladesh and saw secondary growth with no flora, and few birds, it felt ominous. Perhaps we have to accept this new landscape for our future. At the moment I have a need to express this characteristic of humanity in my work through the beauty and mystery of the natural world.

FK: You debuted a major installation – “Ghosts” – to critical acclaim at your most recent exhibition at the Arthur Roger Gallery. Who – or what – are these “Ghosts?”

JB: “Ghosts” refers to the soul, spirit and shadow of trees in the past and future. It is a metaphor for the inner landscape inside human consciousness. We are either connected or not. We either feel the soul of a tree or not. “Ghosts” is a paper forest, ceiling installation of 1000 hand cut butterflies made from discarded newspapers from Brazil, India and Louisiana. For me these three landscapes have similar botanical and political sensibilities. Each paper butterfly was dipped in beeswax then attached to fishing wire through a thorax that was made from broken paint brushes or chopsticks then hung with a safety pin to a distorted butterfly net. Hundreds of strings of dangling butterflies created a delicate, but dense forest that was suspended from the ceiling. The Brazilian newspapers were made from trees in Amazonia. I collected the newspapers on my travels in the region, and stored them in suitcases. I essentially brought the Brazilian forest to Louisiana. The forest floor was covered with newsprint fragments, empty bird nests, an armadillo shell, animal skulls, snake skins, and Brazil nut casings. There is a winding path inside the forest. Some viewers chose not to enter the forest but walked around it; others entered the forest and didn’t want to come out.

FK: In writing about your recent “The Texture of Memory” exhibition, critic and essayist Thomasine Bartlett asserted that, “In many ways, her work is about weaving – is weaving…” Do you think of yourself as “a weaver”?

JB: Weaving symbolizes many things. It is meditation. I do approach the paintings methodically like weaving a tapestry using layer after layer of metaphor, symbolism, ideas, paint, and imagery until it feels completed. The process of installing 400 small pieces of “Terra” was as labor intensive as is nest making. Hanging hundreds of strings of paper butterflies to create the forest “Ghosts” was the closest thing to weaving a nest. Am I a weaver?

FK: Yes. A weaver and a mender.

Fred Kasten is an award-winning radio producer and air-talent for 89.9 WWNO in New Orleans, where he currently serves as Program Director and host for the station’s popular Saturday Night Jazz. Kasten has conducted and produced for broadcast hundreds of interviews with writers, actors, musicians and artists.