BACKGROUND
The stories collected for The Altar to Our Lady of the Shining Silver Sun are based on strong personal experiences from events that affected me and my family over 15 years ago. To make this project is to go through the therapeutic effect of expressing these things to another person or to the community at large and to document one person’s path through what was a dark and stormy path. Because the stories associated with a psychotic break are sometimes very personal and sometimes disturbing in nature, there is a certain confessional quality to the work and the viewer may feel like they are “in” on a secret or hearing something of an intimate nature. This is in keeping with the personal/public nature of the retablos.
Why were retablos chosen as a format for The Altar to Our Lady of the Shining Silver Sun? The answer can be understood by breaking down the language of the the retablos. Though strictly speaking, retablos are paintings, they are a unique form of communication that are also akin to comic books and literature. Retablos are storytelling in one panel. Like comic books, there is a certain additive or almost interactive quality to them where the viewer is given just enough details to build upon and then must fill in the blanks. The viewer experience is roughly as follows: the viewer reads and takes in the information, the viewer understands and compiles on a literal level, then a bigger grasp of the abstract concepts associated with the image bubble up. This last part is what makes retablos unique– quite simply retablos are a communication between human and God, and there is something quite revealing about the human condition when we hear what people pray about. These stories told with simple images show a way of thinking where God and life are inextricably linked, a world where everything that surrounds someone is imbued with symbolism, where every thought is a prayer. As such, the fact that they are an insight into a different sort of logic makes them a perfect device for illustrating the story of visions and mental illness.
photo by Kristen Smart