Walking the Gray Area

I’ve born and raised in Lisbon but my portrait goes beyond the borders of my nationality.
I think, write and speak daily in portuguese and english and in between I dare to introduce a few words in german. I live for 13 years with my german man who inevitable influences me everyday. From the mixture of languages we end up sharing a kind of alternative ‘dialect’ in which portuguese words get german prefixes and english is mixed with german in one single sentence.
I’ve studied in Portugal, Holland and in the USA.
Professionally I am linked worldwide and I couldn’t think of it differently.

photo, LH 2009

Hi Miguel!
Gray area is like fog. We perceive it but we can’t actually grasp it.
We may trespass it but we can’t exaclty determine where we’ve started and where we end to.
Like a neutral surface it invite us to project mental tracks from which we guide ourselves.

How do you walk through a gray area?

Hi Leonor,

I was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico and grew up throughout the U.S., have traveled back and forth always.. I currently live and work in Brooklyn, NY.

How do I walk through a gray area?.. maybe with an umbrella, but as a metaphoric in-between cultural space, then its a daily commute..

Hi Miguel nice to get linked!

What metaphorically commuting is your umbrella shading?

I’ve taken this photo 2 days ago while walkin through a narrow stony path in Santiago do Cacém, a western portuguese village. The path is surrounded by a long white wall. In that wall there are many marks of  time.

LH, 2009

And remember, no matter where you go, there you are.
Confucius

Hi everybody,

I’ve updated my site with a selection of photos thinking in this project and reflecting upon ‘transition’. You’re are invited to visit http://www.leonorhipolito.com

Let him see therein an infinity of universes, each of which has its firmament, its planets, its earth, in the same proportion as the visible world; in each earth, animals, and in the last mites, in which he will find again all that the first had, finding still in these others the same thing without end and without cessation. Let him lose himself in wonders as amazing in their littleness as the others in their vastness.

Blaise Pascal remarked of the sights revealed under the lens of a microscope

Hi Francisca thanks for addressing the nice photo to me. It reminds me the human footprint on the moon.

Recently I saw a very interesting documentary about the origin of life and how Earth and Moon depend on each other. Both wouldn’t exist without one another. They need to be in permanent interaction. It’s like communication in human beings. We need this correlation to live. Communication is for me the core of this project. The synonimous of gray area. Crisscross of thoughts, the blurring of frontiers, and a frame of  reference. This blog is like a web in which 40 artists and more weave their thoughts. Like the caps of the bottles on your photo it is within the grouping of units that an image or idea gains pattern.

Dear Jose thank you very much for your inspiring moderation. Due to the lack of time my interventions are brief and intermittent. I’ld like to write more on your review later on.

For now I am posting a fragment of my work. This in particular is about communication, possibly one of the most abstract forms of “collecting material”

from the series 'Human Patterns, LH 2008

‘Human Patterns’

A moment of silence. An intermittent but endless line of silence.
A blank space our mind can fill in with thought.
Stories embodied in fragments of repetition.
Memories looped in a waiting line.

How many seconds make a moment?

We might fold the line into a circle while time keeps slipping away.

Leonor Hipólito
2008

Lab was made during my artist in residency in the University of Applied Sciences-Trier, in the city of Idar-Oberstein in Germany.

It can be seen in the group exhibition On the other Hand until the 9th of October at the Gallery Reverso in Lisbon.

Lab, LH 2008

Can we by means of knowledge and experience attain the forces of nature?
Can we encapsulate the sensations the material upholds? and extend ourself to all sides, into Nature, till the volatility of our sensations enable us to feel life as a form?

Lab, LH 2008

Hello Leonor

Here I am, with my desire to cross the border and push beyond my limits. I’m tempted to move to the other side without losing my sight …

Dear José The thought of a moment is indeed a good title and it can be applied in a broader sense to my work.

Since the first years of my practice I realise it wasn’t enough to play around with the form/material/usage without a previous purpose different than simply ornamentation. I did spent hours and hours during my studies trying a patch work but soon this exercise did lack meaning to me.
I am fascinated by the human body and the small scale attracts me. These two elements seemed to form a strong conjunction in my decision to follow jewelry. I keep finding challenging the exercise of constraining meaning in such small objects and then use them as “psychological mirrors” of a person, group or society.
Moreover this relation small/large replicates universally and once more I see myself fascinated by the psychological duality this represents. Humans always needed to scale things and preferably at hand size.

It took me years of experiments to realise my relation with jewelry is that of mental correlation rather than material. Materiality is indeed great part of the process but not the leitmotiv. I am very focus on stretching my thoughts about specific concerns. I am keen in scrutinise some facets of the human psychology and defy the borders of perception.
Jewelry is controversial and therefore an interesting open subject.

überstein, LH 2008

wishing you good luck for your artist in residency. I would really enjoy to join you there.

Kisses, Leonor

I-O, LH 2008

unicellular beings/protozoa (emilypic.jpg)

Protozoa are microscopic creatures, one-celled and the smallest of all animals.

They do breath, move and reproduce like multicelled animals.

They are found in almost all soil, all water and their spores fill the air.

Every time we drink a cup of water we swallow millions of live protozoa.

14ID, LH 2000

Hi Miguel welcome back!