ROSE ROSENDO DESERT SUN ARTICLE

Rose Rosendo: Sculpting Myths in Cement Rosalie MurphyThe Desert Sun Published June 2, 2015 Before Rose Rosendo starts putting a piece of artwork together, she assembles a little library — a folder full of magazine clippings, annotated pieces of literature and color keys. Early in the gathering process, she creates a title. Then, every time she unearths something related, it slips into the file. Months or sometimes years later, Rosendo opens the folder and begins laying out a collage or sketching a sculpture. Her work is full of symbols and allusions to literature and myth, but each one of the references is deliberate. She plans and executes meticulously. "This (art) is to help people understand their potentiality, their spiritual potentiality, in their lives, for themselves, not for me," Rosendo said. "I mean, I work at it. I meditate, I read books... I guess there's been a spiritual part of me for a long time."Rosendo, 74, spent most of her life in in Orange County. She studied sociology and psychology in college, then spent decades conducting vocational tests for the Veterans' Administration. For most of her adult life, Rosendo practiced printmaking as a hobby and showed her work at Laguna Beach art festivals. She learned how to weld. On the side, she flipped houses. By the time she retired, she was eager to do art full time. "When I got down here, I decided I was going to dedicate my whole life to this," Rosendo said, gesturing around her garage-turned-studio. "I set up the studio and went to work." That was in 2000. Since then she has created a number of sculptures in steel and cement and mixed-media collages using oil. acrylic and ink and has shown them throughout California. Her collages, at first glance, look like paintings, at least three feet square on museum board. Up close, however, layers appear — in one piece, silhouetted mountains are painted in acrylic on paper and glued in place. A earthy desert painted in fluid brush strokes lies on top of them in the foreground. The topmost layer is a stylized outline of a man in bright green ink. Another collage depicts a woman with a halo of turtles. In a third, a woman sits before a cactus beside a tiger and a snake. "Nuestra Senora de los Nopales," it's titled — "Our Lady of the Cacti." "That's why my paintings have animals in them — it's a representation of our connection with our brothers and cousins and sisters of the animal world," Rosendo said. "And also, the figures are see-through. We are connected to each other, and to the Earth." Rosendo's sculptures, while rich with symbolism, are bulky and brazen. She welds steel frames and surrounds them in cement, which she coats in vivid dye that, she said, can last outdoors for a century. Some take the shapes of reindeer, eggs and crosses while others are of humans. Most weigh at least 100 pounds. Even so, Rosendo still transports all of them in the back of her van. One sculpture, an installation she imagines for a place of worship, has taken her years of tinkering to finish. Rosendo imagines a labyrinth where visitors encounter three sculptures — one representing departure, one for initiation and one for return, the steps in "the hero's journey" codified by literature scholar Joseph Campbell. "We need ritual in our lives, and in our culture we have very few. We have baptism, marriage, funerals, confirmation, Bar Mitzvahs. Otherwise, we don't (have many)," Rosendo said. "And our culture is so caught up in the material that we need to touch base with why our soul is telling us what we need to do." If this all sounds a little too mystical know that Rosendo is a voracious researcher. Every piece comes with a detailed write-up, with sources cited, explaining the work's allusions and Rosendo's intended message. The level of study and imagination that goes into each piece is a reflection of her passion for creating art. Rosendo also asks spiritual leaders to direct her. A deacon at San Francisco's Grace Cathedral, for example, guided Rosendo through that church's labyrinth before she started her own design. Rosendo no longer practices Catholicism, the faith in which she was raised, but continues to meditate daily. She hopes her artwork can connect viewers to the same introspection and self-awareness that meditation brings her life. "One thing that meditation or these kind of rituals do for us is help us control our mind, so we can worry about what's important, and not what kind of car we drive. It gets rid of that," Rosendo said. "It makes us have much more humility and respect for ourselves." For all the academic effort that goes into each piece of art Rosendo creates — dozens of magazine clippings, pages of her own writing, hours of thinking and sketching and meditating — she still sees herself as a a student. She has no formal art training except in welding, and since she primarily welds frames for cement sculptures, most viewers never see that handiwork. But she is confident that her pieces carry vital messages to their viewers. And she said she enjoys making art even more now, at 74, than she did when she was younger. Rosendo leans on her four-footed cane as she switches on a string of Christmas lights, which form a halo around a large cement head with bright green curls molded into the crown. She calls this sculpture the "mistress of chaos." "We are in a period of chaos, I think, because we're changing — the information age, we're going into a new age here, and when that happens, there's a lot of apprehension and fear and, 'what am I going to do, how's this going to work?'," Rosendo said. "You don't quite know what's happening until you get there." Rosalie Murphy covers business and real estate at The Desert Sun. Reach her at rosalie.murphy@desertsun.com or on Twitter @rozmurph. Readers can view Rosendo's work at http://artistrosendo.blogspot.com/ and reach her at 760-408-0007.

ARTIST ROSENDO VIDEO

 

Published June2m 2015

The Desert Sun Video and Print Artist Interview of Rose Rosendo

The Desert Sun, the Palm Springs based, Coachella Valley, newspaper interviewed me for both a

print and video piece. Journalists Marilyn Chung and Rosalie Murphy were wonderful to work with and made me feel very comfortable.

The footage includes me welding in my studio on my piece, La Luz de Vida. This piece is for an installation concerning ritual.

Here's the link to see The Desert Sun piece:  Rose Rosendo: Sculpting Myths in Cement
 At 74, Rose Rosendo has just begun her second career as an artist. 
 Check out this story on desertsun.com: http://desert.sn/1ySYYLc

A Feminist Viewpoint on the Heroes Journey

The reality is that every man, woman or even children can be a hero.  This person is often called forth by circumstances, without the realization of the challenges that lie ahead.  It is within us all when necessary and called upon: even if that calling comes from within.

The hero is you--if you can listen to your heart and express what you know to be right in your heart.  That is your "true unique spiritual creative potential."  No one else has your unique gifts that are going to help save humanity
and the planet.

'THE QUEST"--that is your spiritual journey.  The journey of your life is to find and give expression to this unique creative potential, regardless of opposition.

"To thine own self be true"--the "Ring Bearer" is within all of Us"--and  "the Force is with you!!" It's the LEAP OF FAITH!!

La Luz de Vida - the Light of Life

A tool for transformation and change of consciousness.

The is the second part of the Hero's Journey.  Initiation, this is the time of the tests and challenges for our Heroes

Drawing, INNER TRUTH by
Rose Rosendo
 

He or she has to explore the labyrinth.  Using the silence within, and experiencing that which opens a hidden door within the self.

The movement of walking the labyrinth: this movement takes away the excess psychic energy that hinders our efforts to quiet our thought processes.  This enables us to reach a higher level of consciousness.  This peaceful place allows the mind to enter a receptive state.

Using the imagination the mind now quieted and expanded beyond every day consciousness opens a path to the sacred.  This sacred within introduces us to the vastness of the spirit.  The sacred within each of us.  This is a process of change-to release, to empty to quiet-letting go of things that block our higher power.  Letting go of all the things we try to control to allow ourselves to be fully present in the moment.  Giving us fully the potential of time.

Coming to the center with illumination and clarity.  This union with the sacred gives us the confidence to fully realize "our creative spiritual potential."  And to risk taking our unique gifts to manifest in the world.

We then serve the world with an active, self aware, compassionate and conscious manner.  Thus we bring out our own heroic potential, which  gives us the inner strength to act on it and be fully human.

Additional Comments on the Hero's Journey

Segment of Painting by Rose Rosendo

This vision can create a life of its own--First there was the word-and the word became God-The God within us--"Our Divinity"--Thus creating the Rainbow Bridge".  Each of us can be extra-ordinary, we can focus on the idea of going beyond ourselves.  Authentic evolution and change--We are a (Process.)  Not limitations only "Possibilities" - Epiphanies.  Connectedness-producing light -sparks- Illuminations for ourselves and others.  Becoming a "Unity"- we can participate in the secret that every revelation is --we are part of the mystery-we are force fields of energy.  The power of our imagination to manifest our needs and the needs of our planet.

We have got to break our stereotypic vision of our reality and create a new one.  We have to teach ourselves to see what we had failed to see.  The primordial gaze-the
gaze that thinks-the gaze of our first ancestors and its continuum as we are today.  Our reality is not what we see but what we discover.  This is a pathway to the spiritual leap to adventure.  An experience to invent new models.

Letting go of preconceptions moving between worlds - between fact and feeling-Body-Mind-Soul.  The sense of sacred.

Compassion-Things speak to you.  Trust in the process of what happens.  Our greatest suffering is attached to outcomes.-We need to be less concerned with whether we will suffer or what will happen next.  This is life of the spirit, incorporating our integrity of living life as a human being.

On the brink again of the "Evolution of Our Consciousness."  Finding our "Souls" and the sense of Awe and Mystery within ourselves and the world.

The Hero's Journey the La Luz Steel Sculpture

La Luz de Vida by Rose Rosendo

INITIATION is the secondary stage of the Hero's Journey.  This is the part of the Journey where the Hero is tested and faces the challenges to be able to complete the Journey.  For the stage of INITIATION, I have created an installation.  This installation is designed so that when viewed by the pilgrim (viewer) the pilgrim will also be performing a ritual.  This ritual is not tied to any organized religion.  It is spiritually motivated to help us become aware of the spiritual dimensions of our lives and our own special gifts and potentialities.

By utilizing ritual I am creating a journey that will put us in touch with the spiritual and mystical part of ourselves which is timeless.

I have created a welded steel life size figure, (sculpture) called LA LUZ DE VIDA, THE LIGHT OF LIFE.  This is an androgynous figure as the soul has no gender.  The figure will stand in the middle of a Labyrinth.  The pilgrim will be given a light stick.  When the pilgrim reaches the figure, having walked the Labyrinth: they will then light the light stick and return from the center of the Labyrinth with the stick alight.

This winding path leading to the center serves as a mirror to reflect the movement of Spirit in our lives.  It awakens us to the rhythm that unites us to ourselves and the light within.

This ritual meets the longing for a change of heart and challenges us to refine the way we live together; it also provides energy, vision and courage for the world of the 21st century.