Offerings: The Art of Giving

Offerings through human history have been associated with religious and spiritual connotations making them an intricate part of human love and suffering. Even if we are beings with a very defined individuality, we have always lived with a group of peers crafting community and culture. Since we have developed ourselves as makers, giving has been a common practice in our own nature. Every time we create, we do it sharing, sometimes unconsciously and sometimes with a specific purpose. Being makers and creators compels us to give.

Although giving is a common form of offering in every community, artists and poets have made this practice a cultural conversation about spiritual connection, which is an ongoing practice. By recognizing the complexities of historical rituals of offering, we could add our own voices to our contemporary cultural conversation through the art of giving. Art speaks to us as a spiritual force that shakes our conform zone feeling devotion, passion, love, discomfort, distress, and pain.

The Art of Giving is a series of installations of printmaking works using the techniques of Collagraph, Etching, Linocuts and Silkscreen, all inspired by works of poetry that explore devotion, gratitude, and pain.

NESTING A PLACE THROUGH LAYERS, an installation consisting of 12 Collagraph-Intaglio 6 x 6 inches each on archival paper, inspired by the poem Love is a Place by E.E. Cummings framed (8x10 in) and presented with three wooden vessels painting in white as a resemblance of the offering of life.

DOES IT HURT ME? an installation comprising 16 Intaglio-Etchings and charcoal drawings 8 x10 inches each on archival paper, inspired by the poem Humorismos Tristes (Sad Humorisms) by Mexican poet Luis G. Urbina framed (11x14 in) and presented with four wooden knifes painting in black as a portrait of the offering of pain and suffering.

© 2019-2018 Belinda Flores-Shinshillas