The Sun Valley Center for the Arts will hold a mid-exhibition celebration with Boise artist Alma Gomez on Friday, Jan. 11, from 5:30 to 7 p.m. at The Center, 314 S. Second Ave. in Hailey. The public is invited to meet the artist and enjoy wine and appetizers.
Gomez features several retablos, which are small devotional paintings of saints and holy figures. Catholics in Mexico and Latin America have been painting these icons, as well as praying to the saints the paintings represent, for several hundred years.
"I sit in my studio with my reading glasses on and a magnifying glass to paint the details on the faces, and it's very personal, very intimate," Gomez said. "It's a way to reconnect with Catholicism and my childhood and memories of going to church with my grandmother."
Gomez grew up with these images, and advocates their original intent even though popular culture has reinvented the idea with made-up saints sold at hip boutiques.
"I don't want to make something up," she said. "I saw these images all the time when I was growing up. Adding text in English that tells who the saints are, and why a person might pray to them, is the only way I've reinvented these."
"Retablos: Reinterpreting a Tradition" is part of the multidisciplinary exhibition, "Trabajo Mexicano/Mexican Work," organized by the Sun Valley Center for the Arts to explore issues of Mexican immigration and labor. In addition to the exhibition in Hailey, "Trabajo Mexicano/Mexican Work" includes an exhibition of work by seven contemporary Mexican and Mexican American artists in Ketchum, plus lectures, performances and family activities in both Ketchum and Hailey.
On Sunday, Jan. 13, families are invited for a "Made in Mexico" free family day activity to enjoy Mexican hot chocolate and churros while watching Mexican folk dances and making their own retablos, at The Center in Hailey from 3 to 5 p.m.
There will be Mexican folk dance demonstrations by five local dancers and activities that will be led by Woodside Elementary School teacher Elizabeth Ornelas.
For more details, call 726-9491 or visit sunvalleycenter.org.
?San Miguel? by Alma Gomez. Oil on canvas at the Sun Valley Center for the Arts in Hailey. Photo by Sabina Dana Plasse
