And I got a strong feeling of the passage of time. Not the time of clouds and sun and rain and the moving stars that adorn the night, not spring when it comes or fall, not the time that makes leaves bud on branches and then tears them off or folds and unfolds and colors the flowers, but the time inside me, the time you can’t see but it molds us. The time that rolls on and on in people’s hearts and makes them roll along with it and gradually changes us inside and out and makes us what we’ll be on our dying day.
— Mercè Rodoreda, exiled Catalan writer.
Lines from her novel La Plaça del Diamant, quoted by Carlos Velasco with reference to my series of drawings “Time Lines,” exhibited in his Madrid gallery A Cuadros.
English version translated by David Rosenthal.
The experience of living somewhere else for a while, of doing a project outside your own workshop, can be a great opportunity to break with established routines and distance yourself from a safe and familiar place, allowing you to discover new possibilities… a risk with unpredictable results.
But isn’t it possible to make this break without even leaving your city? I’ve been mulling over this question ever since receiving the invitation from British artist Serena Smith to take part in the Reside Residency project.
It seems like the perfect opportunity to reconsider my own working process – a moment of reflection, looking backwards and forwards, but centering on the present moment and the series of drawings “Time Lines,” an attempt to understand the development of my work in relation to my personal space and, most of all, my personal time.
Back to the beginning:
Time Lines drawings
Two months spent as a guest artist in the Spinnerei, Leipzig, alone in an empty apartment in a totally empty building, factory housing from 1904. Silence, interrupted at night only by cargo trains crossing Plagwitz Station without stopping. From the opposite side, beyond the garden, come faraway noises in the daytime, from the artist community working, and sometimes living, in the old disused factory. It is hard to guess just what exactly is going on inside there, behind the broad windows and heavy bricks walls, it looks so distant and unreal.
Inside these old walls, disconnected from the outside world, with no Internet, TV or radio, and coming from the noisy and crowded city center of Barcelona, my perception of time has completely changed. Now fully concentrating on my work, the drawings made of fine lines start growing in a slow but steady rhythm. In a few days the first “Time Lines” drawings completely fill the walls, altering the atmosphere of the room. With these drawings around me, I was no longer alone.
Maribel Mas
Translated by David Burnett.
Thanks to the printmakers:
Thomas Siemon, edition carpe plumbum,
II Hochdruck Symposion.
Maria and Vlado Ondrej, Atelier für Radierung,
Cliché verre project.
Spinnerei, Leipzig.
Thomas Siemon, edition carpe plumbum,
II Hochdruck Symposion.
Maria and Vlado Ondrej, Atelier für Radierung,
Cliché verre project.
Spinnerei, Leipzig.
