D. Armitage 07 review

Lucy Maki, Invocation Variation, oil and mixed media on panel, 25" x 23", 2007

THE SPACE BETWEEN LETTERS:

LINDA DURHAM CONTEMPORARY ART

1101 PASEO DE PERALTA, SANTA FE

Negotiating rapture is a cultural transaction, a bartering for 
ecstasy since transcendence is bankrupt for those willing to
invest only in the transformation of the self. --David Morgan, 
"Secret Wisdom and Self-Effacement: The Spiritual in Art in 
the Modern Age," from the catalogue Negotiating Rapture

Of all the artist in New Mexico, I cannot think of anyone 
who expresses the longing to transcend the ordinary more 
strongly than Lucy Maki.  Every piece she creates breathes
evenly and confidently inside its quiet state of rapture as 
Maki attempts to bring time to a halt.  This is an impossible
quest as we all know, but the artist offers us valuable insights
from her assembly of materials and final construction.  In this 
new work, Maki situates her longing in a wholly abstract realm
 -- what she refers to as the space between letters. And really,
what can that mean?

There is some text in this new work, but most of it is impossible to read as a coherent narrative. Letters can be discerned,
even whole words, but is Maki directing us to a literal space, or one that is pre-verbal, or non-verbal, or an indication of a
philosophical affinity? Some conceptual space that is paranormal, coming as it does just before or just after a mystical
experience: Following this line of inquiry, I came to a conclusion: For Maki, making art is a form of mysticism. There is
this aura of other-worldliness that radiates from her vision -- not in the sense of a cliched spirituality, but as a quality that is
at the roots of mysticism -- an aura of mystery, an enigma. But if Maki emphasizes the enigmatic in her art, it is her way
of connecting us to the world. While partaking a a hermetic stillness, her work does not take a vow of silence -- letters, after
all, form the basis of language and they are a means to skirt the void by way of associations, or a relational logic.

In the work Thought Form (1), small fragments of text referring to the Cabala are incorporated, fragments such as: actions
radiate to ...East and West...upright axis...the high and the... associate with time... most important one of... of space...
space... It would be easy to miss this text:it is partly whitewashed into the surface, but it is there like the dream of finding
a key to some symbolic puzzle.

I don't want to suggest, however, that Maki forsakes visual pleasure in favor of rarified speculations about philosophical issues.
Her sculptural paintings are not only about text, but texture and color, too, and they focus on contrasts of light and shadow, on
light and shadow, on form, line, and the interplay of two and three dimensions. And there is the dimension of time. Maki's
work is an invitation to go to the edge of the ordinary and think about the coordinates where art, language, poetry, and all
symbolic expression come into being and dodge to and fro among the resulting images, word games, palindromes, invocations,
and all those enigma variations.

DIANE ARMITAGE
THE magazine July 2007