CENTER

From 1996-2000, Laura Aguilar was awarded opportunities to travel and produce works through several artist in residency grants she received from ArtPace in San Antonio, Texas. Her previous travels to San Antonio to exhibit at the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center had connected her to a nurturing community of women and artists who supported her work. At ArtPace with both financial and community support, Aguilar was able to delve more deeply her self-portraiture in nature. Aguilar wrote candidly about her experiences in Texas and the production of her three series, Stillness (1999), Motion (1999) and Center (2000) in the following edited text. 

A Journey to Center by Laura Aguilar 
”In the spring of 1999, I received an International Artist-in-Residence slot at ArtPace. My residency at ArtPace provided me with a lot of space to create new work, good funding, and new experiences.   Because of my previous trips to San Antonio, during my ArtPace residency I was able to draw on previously established acquaintances with people I had met at the Esperanza.  As these acquaintances grew into friendships, I also found the models I could use in my work.  During this time, I had the good fortune to connect with San Antonio’s Southwest School of Art and Craft and with Tim Summa [who, at the time, served as their department chair of photography].  Tim and SSAC extended their friendship and facilities to me, allowing me to make use of their darkrooms.  This rich mix between the opportunities of my ArtPace residency, the good people at SSAC, and the relationships and community I found at the Esperanza made me feel wholly welcome as a person and nurtured as an artist.  It made me feel grateful to San Antonio and to Texas.   

Stillness drew from the experiences I had caring for my father and his dying process.  It focused on my father’s death and how his body was fading away. As his caretaker, I was glad for the experience of caring for him, witnessing peace come over him as he surrendered to his illness and finding peace for the relationship between us. This process began to make me think on my own spirituality.  It was the beginning of my opening up to exploring myself.  Thinking about stillness and dying made me think about how we find serenity, how we grow to discover grace in dying and in life.

In the fall of 1999, I returned to San Antonio and at this time I began my series Motion. With Motion I began to look inward.  I’d been dealing with my body, finding forgiveness for hating my body, learning to accept grace within myself, within life and nature.  At the time I was developing Motion, I was starting to do more physical movement in workshops, learning about my breathing—asking people how they found their peace.  I was struck by how close the word motion is to emotion.  Motion is moving, and in this series I’m moving. . .my body is moving, my thinking is moving, my spirituality is moving. In Motion #59, I look at that piece and it stands out to me about my time in San Antonio. In the photograph, two women cradle me with their bodies.  The pose is symbolic of how I feel protected with the support of others as I create my work.  When I look at that photograph I see that it’s about how the creative part of me is being nurtured.  It speaks to my feelings about San Antonio and the community I find here.     

My work for Center finds me becoming more rounded and finding the importance of kindness, how powerful kindness is to take in and give. I don’t like to name things, so I try to give my work one word names, and at this time I kept thinking about gravity and my body in relation to gravity, and I came to the word “center.”  After Stillness and Motion, I felt really connected to the earth, so “center” seemed to fit as the title for this next series. Center also reflects my growth.  For instance, in the six sequential images of Center #79-83, I am doing a lot of movement and really going inside my body in a visual sense. Through visualizing my breath, seeing it go into my body, down my spinal column, I believe I am really starting to get in tune to my body and its muscles.  I am discovering new elements of myself.  I would never have posed in these positions several years ago.  Now, posing in this way and listening to my breathing for long periods of time is very peaceful for me.  I’m starting to feel more centered:  physically, spiritually, and philosophically.” -Laura Aguilar