Jeffly Gabriela Molina

El Azul (Faith) 2017
collage on Arches watercolor paper 300 lb.
15 x 15.25 in.

In January of 2017, I began to create series of collages that were inspired by readings, personal writings, and observations.

The series ‘El Azul,’ emerged when on the morning of Sunday, February the 5th I read a passage within a book of poetry titled ‘Bluets’ by American author Maggie Nelson. Wave Books published the book in 2009. A dear friend gifted it to me the night before I began to read it. That Sunday was (for me) a sad day masked beneath a cloudless blue sky in Chicago. The passage I found unassumingly compelling read as follows: ‘Eventually Mallarme began replacing “le ciel” with “l’Azur” in his poems, in an effort to rinse references to the sky of religious connotations.’ The words ‘El Azul, (‘the blue,’ in Spanish) echoed in my mind for several days and their sound began to infuse the most quotidian tasks with a sense of recognition and awareness. This awareness, or, desire? began to follow me everywhere—to the lake when I biked to the studio, to the park as I walked to the museum, to the sidewalk, even to my living room, where large windowpanes allow for a clear view of the Lake Michigan, and Water showed me El Azul’s most captivating image.