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Lot Essay
Happiness is a butterfly, which, when pursued,
is always just beyond your grasp,
but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.
-Nathaniel Hawthorne
As once stated by Friedrich Nietzsche, a person who did not fear a forest or a night of dark trees, was destined to find banks of roses underneath the cypresses. Such is the work of Geraldine Javier, reconstructing Diana's sacred grove. A viewer who dares to penetrate the mysterious forest which she has created will uncover a jewel box of full of fragrant wonder and delicate thoughts.
Closely related to the series of works in her recent exhibition, Always Wild, Still Wild, this present work draws on similar themes of an orphic forest woven from the fabric of her childhood. A fragile, feminine mirage shrouded in opalescent hues, overhung with delicate filigrees of lace tatting and embroidery butterflies, Chopsticks on a Saturday Fun Machine Morning evokes a deeply emotional experience, awakening a viewer's nostalgia for the early days of childhood solitude and the boundless capacity of a child's imagination.
Like the Dianic shrine, Javier has created a spellbinding sacred space, within which a young acolyte is sheltered from the corrupting influences of the external world. It is the enchanted forest of fables, the realm of Hansel and Gretel following a dream-path through the woods. However the witchery of this tale is the psychological darkness pervasive within each human heart, as it departs the golden road of childhood innocence.
The young girl, standing on the cusp of life, represents Javier's younger self as she practices her piano scales. Focused entirely on her music, little is she aware of the verdant canopy of fear and fantasy hanging overhead. She is playing 'Chopsticks' an elementary tune which all children know, learnt from friends in the schoolyard rather than through formal music lessons. Like a young child itself, the tune lisps and prattles, in an infantile yet charmingly whimsical manner. Javier likens its staccato rhythm to that of a sewing machine, which can produce the elaborate stitching and embroidery of this work, but also the stuff of fairytale and fantasy, sewing a complicated web of dreams.
is always just beyond your grasp,
but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.
-Nathaniel Hawthorne
As once stated by Friedrich Nietzsche, a person who did not fear a forest or a night of dark trees, was destined to find banks of roses underneath the cypresses. Such is the work of Geraldine Javier, reconstructing Diana's sacred grove. A viewer who dares to penetrate the mysterious forest which she has created will uncover a jewel box of full of fragrant wonder and delicate thoughts.
Closely related to the series of works in her recent exhibition, Always Wild, Still Wild, this present work draws on similar themes of an orphic forest woven from the fabric of her childhood. A fragile, feminine mirage shrouded in opalescent hues, overhung with delicate filigrees of lace tatting and embroidery butterflies, Chopsticks on a Saturday Fun Machine Morning evokes a deeply emotional experience, awakening a viewer's nostalgia for the early days of childhood solitude and the boundless capacity of a child's imagination.
Like the Dianic shrine, Javier has created a spellbinding sacred space, within which a young acolyte is sheltered from the corrupting influences of the external world. It is the enchanted forest of fables, the realm of Hansel and Gretel following a dream-path through the woods. However the witchery of this tale is the psychological darkness pervasive within each human heart, as it departs the golden road of childhood innocence.
The young girl, standing on the cusp of life, represents Javier's younger self as she practices her piano scales. Focused entirely on her music, little is she aware of the verdant canopy of fear and fantasy hanging overhead. She is playing 'Chopsticks' an elementary tune which all children know, learnt from friends in the schoolyard rather than through formal music lessons. Like a young child itself, the tune lisps and prattles, in an infantile yet charmingly whimsical manner. Javier likens its staccato rhythm to that of a sewing machine, which can produce the elaborate stitching and embroidery of this work, but also the stuff of fairytale and fantasy, sewing a complicated web of dreams.