Critical MAS 2020: Mayor’s Choice 3-D

“Painting in Isolation – Covid19” by Rob Varela

Awarded Mayor’s Choice, 3-D, Mayor’s Art Show 2020, Eugene, Oregon.

Written by Leah Wilson

Rob Varela has created a work like a breath of fresh air in a suffocating year. Covid-19 and isolation are serious matters, but with Painting in Isolation – Covid19, Varela has chosen to approach the relentless social isolation of the pandemic with tender care and a touch of whimsy. Varela has given us the gift of delight, as so much of the world feels heavy and threatening. Like an alchemist, he has transformed isolation into something precious, something worthy of collection and protection. 

His chosen media are literally precious metals. Varela uses the time intensive lost wax method to create his artwork, combined with metal smithing techniques. The combination of methods is what allows him to achieve such complexity and diversity with his metals. I find it amazing that the only patina he uses is black. All of the other colors found within his work are from the metals’ own lustrous properties.

Varela began to use the lost wax method to make jewelry after he was unable to find a suitable wedding ring for his fiancée. He was driven to create something for his love that was much more personal. His jewelry, even in its miniature scale, contains whimsical narratives. As his narratives grow, the artwork becomes larger than a piece of jewelry can support, and some have become wall pieces. Time is a crucial element in Varela’s process and time is also a crucial conceptual element of Painting in Isolation – Covid19. Process and concept are intertwined.

In many ways, it seems our worlds have shrunk with Covid-19–imposed isolation. Because of the sculpture’s small scale and intricate attention to detail, Varela invites us to peer closer through the glass dome that simultaneously protects and isolates the scene within, encapsulating it with a sense of wonder. What I find in this sculpture is a quiet, meditative moment in time, separated within a larger sense of time felt proceeding at a monotonous molasses-drip pace.

While presenting a motif of caged-in isolation, Varela’s introspective sculpture simultaneously offers a sense of relief and acceptance, like a warmly received invitation to cherish the lowering of the glass dome. The scene occurs on a narrow platform hovering roughly halfway up the dome. The platform suggests a room, an intimate interior space that is populated only with the bare essentials needed for creativity and companionship. It is a quiet and tranquil scene. As an artist, I often long for exactly this sort of unhurried time, now imposed by Covid-19 restrictions. But because of the sickness, death, and fear that follows in the wake of the pandemic, the enjoyment of creative time is now is often accompanied by guilt, stemming from the seemingly selfish gratitude I feel for the creative opportunity. Varela’s artwork gives me permission to feel grateful by removing the conflict that dichotomous poles unnaturally produce.

Within the context of COVID-19’s sheltering in place, it feels as if this scene has likely repeated itself, indistinguishably, as time lazily meanders into days and months. A little gold parrot sits perched behind the chimpanzee upon a swing, or it may be a cage. If it is a cage, the cage is open and the bird is free to fly. A chimpanzee, possibly a proxy for the artist himself, is firmly planted on a large pedestal-like book with the artist’s initials carved into its spine. The tome provides a firm foundation for the chimpanzee’s creative imaginings of an elephant striding freely across an open savanna. The bird cannot fly far, and the artist-chimpanzee — contemplating its own in-progress painting with paintbrush firmly clasped in one foot and a can of paint grasped with a hand — cannot join the elephant in its travels. Yet each figure appears to be content, the former to observe and most likely to provide commentary, the latter to imagine and create.

One single bare yellow light bulb hangs above the chimpanzee’s head. I am reminded of other bare light bulbs in paintings: Philip Guston frequently hung a single bare lightbulb above a figure, but his painted light bulbs cast a sickly pink light into smoke-filled rooms of isolation filled with dread and despair. Varela’s light bulb is much more playfully hung. It sheds light into a scene that suggests that the figures within have more agency to use their isolation as a quiet place to transcend — to perform a deep dive into their own inner beings with the hope of re-emerging, not into despair but with transformation. The idea that this is a space of creativity, imagination and growth, rather than of despair, is accentuated by the table behind the artist that holds another can of paint, waiting within reach until the artist finds a need for it.

A ladder leans into the platform, connecting the room with the wooden base below. The bird and the chimpanzee can ascend and descend, but the ladder is also contained within the dome. They cannot leave, they can only move up and down. Down is barren, up leads to the cozy interior space, and above that is open space — suggesting potential. The open spaces above and below prevent the little scene from becoming claustrophobic. The openness is instead an invitation to dwell in a space that is more sublime, until the glass dome lifts and exposes the frenzy of the rest of the world.

Varela is a relative newcomer to Eugene. He and his wife relocated here sight unseen and equipped with what they could fit into their Subaru, trusting that they would like what they found when they arrived. Winning the Mayor’s Choice 3-D Award was like a warm welcoming into the community. You can find more of his jewelry and sculptures on his website: robertvareladesigns.com.

“Painting in Isolation – Covid19” is on display in the old Lane Community College window, 1059 Willamette St. More info at https://www.eugene-or.gov/4479/Mayors-Art-Show—Rob-Varela