'The land was already speaking to me': The environment inspires Ana Flores's art, on view at Lyman Allyn

July 18, 2021 12:01 am • Last Updated: July 18, 2021 12:06 am

By Betty J. Cotter, Special to The Day

The painting “Gaia” (2012) is one of several works with that title that express Ana Flores’s interest in the ecological philosophy that sees Earth as one interconnected system. (Courtesy of the artist)

The environment inspires Ana Flores's art

The trees have come inside the Lyman Allyn Art Museum.

Some branches reach for the ceiling, as if searching for the sky. Others press earthward, more root than crown.

They spring forth from the unlikeliest of places — a glass vase, a chair — and evolve into ladders and back into branches again.

The works are part of “Forest Dreaming,” an exhibit of sculpture and paintings by the eco-artist Ana Flores that is on display through Oct. 24.

Flores, a Cuban-American sculptor and painter who grew up in West Hartford, has developed a powerful relationship to the environment since moving into her wooded home in Charlestown, R.I., in 1985.

“I would constantly walk in the woods and find all kinds of branches and roots and things that suggested imagery already,” she said. “The land was already speaking to me.”

These found items become the foundation of the sculptures, which are then cast in aluminum or bronze at the Mystic River Foundry.

“In the forest, you always see trees growing together in this kind of mutual relationship,” Flores said. “I was thinking also about the anxiety of the forest during this eco-crisis that we're in.”

The idea of shaman ladder trees melds mysticism and the environment.

“The whole concept of shaman ladders, they sort of became an invention,” she said. “I've looked up shaman ladders and there's not any kind of cultural reference.”

In an early drawing, she imagined the ladder trees borne on unicycles.

“I was thinking about the trees being able to move away,” she said, pointing out a drawing hanging in her studio.

When the wheels proved problematic, she leaned on the idea of the ladder rungs she was using to connect each piece.

“And then I realized they're almost like escape hatches that we might use,” she said. “But also, shaman mythology is such that these people have the power to get up high or into other realms in order to see what we cannot see.”

The most recent works in the show were created during the pandemic, and reflect not only her long-term concerns about global warming and pollution but also her state of mind during the lockdown.

Coronavirus restrictions have been especially hard on public artists like Flores, who rely not only on gallery shows but interactive programs that bring their art into public spaces.

“I was finishing these during the whole pandemic and all the hell we've all been through, so of course there was an element of personal escapism.”

Originally a painter, Flores traces her evolution as a public artist to the work “Gaia,” a sculptural piece that was briefly displayed at Salve Regina University in Newport before the administration grew uncomfortable with it. This experience of censorship opened her eyes to the power of public art.

The work, from a root system she found on her Charlestown property, evolved into a woman giving birth and became a meditation on the earth as mother. It was later exhibited at the National Museum of Women in the Arts.

After the stir the piece caused, Flores felt compelled to create public art.

She developed Poetry of the Wild exhibits for several outdoor spaces, where “poetry boxes” invite visitors to reflect on the natural world, and she was the first artist-in-residence for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

She pursued sculpture, learning how to weld and manipulate chemicals to create a patina on metal.

“I knew that when I made that piece ('Gaia') … that I was somewhere else, that I was not going to be hanging in people's living rooms in the same way.”

“Forest Dreaming” includes work that stretches back to 1999. The paintings and drawings echo the sculptures and, like the woods behind her home, are rich with life.

In “Forest Dialogue” (2015), a barred owl swoops down; “Gaia” (2012) is alive with ferns, leaf patterns, deer, birds, a dragonfly.

Walking a path on her property, Flores speaks of its inhabitants like old friends. There's witch hazel and mountain laurel, the latter providing substantial vines for sculpture.

And barred owls.

“We have so many here, which is a real joy because they talk to each other,” she said. “We have woodpeckers, all kinds of song birds and deer, black snake, wild turkey.”

But she and her husband, sculptor Gabriel Warren, lately have noticed the absence of some species.

“This summer we're both just haunted by the quiet at night, because so many birds are missing. The wood thrush, that had this amazing waterfall noise to its call, is gone ... the tree frog, the gray tree frog that sounds like a tropical bird at night — just gone.”

The Rhode Island forest is starkly different from the land of Flores's birth. Born in Havana in 1956, she fled Castro's regime with her parents in 1962. Her older brothers already had been airlifted out and were staying with an uncle in Connecticut.

While many Cubans settled in Miami, the Flores family came to cold, staid New England, a true culture shock. Her father, an architect, had to retrain to earn the credentials to work here.

Her mother had studied painting and worked as a fashion illustrator in Cuba.

In Connecticut, “she was nothing again, so she began by cleaning houses,” Flores said. “She had never cleaned for herself, ever.”

Her mother went back to school, earned a doctorate in Romance languages and became a Spanish professor at Trinity College and the University of Hartford.

About 20 years ago, Flores returned to Cuba. The result was “Cuba Journal,” an installation that traveled throughout the U.S. for almost three years. The pieces, both whimsical and searing, included a puppet effigy of Fidel Castro.

Today Flores works in a studio of multiple spaces that reflect her process. Downstairs is where the heavy labor of sculpting takes place; upstairs are her painting station and writing nook.

On a typical day, she might start by writing in her journal, then walk through the woods, where she gets many of her ideas.

But for now she is focusing on the Lyman Allyn exhibit.

The museum plans three programs associated with “Forest Dreaming,” the first of which is an outdoor conversation with Flores and visiting curator Jennifer McGregor today, from 2 to 3 p.m.

The program will take place at “Forest Dialogue,” Flores's two bronze chairs that evolve back into trees. The program is free, but reservations are required.

“I'm just letting this work speak now and see where it goes, and I need a break,” she said.

Artist Ana Flores poses for a portrait at her home and studio in Charlestown, R.I. Her sculptures and paintings are featured in the current exhibit “Forest Dreaming” at the Lyman Allyn Art Museum in New London. (Sarah Gordon/The Day)
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The lighting in sculptures such as “Tropism” (2021) is done with intention, creating shadows that are “almost the ghost of what was there and what is there,” said the artist Ana Flores. (Courtesy of the artist)

The image of roots growing upward or earthward is repeated in many forms in Flores’s work, including “Heart of the Forest” (2016).