Anna Maria Chupa: Fava Milagro

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Artist(s):


Title:


    Fava Milagro

Exhibition:


Creation Year:


    1998

Medium:


    Lightjet Print (C-Print) on Semi Matte Paper

Size:


    10 X 10

Category:


Artist Statement:


    Fava Milagro receives its title from tiny votive offerings called milagros and from fava beans. Fava beans are considered lucky because the fava plant was the only plant that thrived during a major famine in Sicily. Reprieve from this famine was attributed to St. Joseph’s intercession.

    Documentation of religious shrines has influenced the artist’s work in digital media for the past three years. Her most recent digital collages are inspired by devotional sites in Holy Land (Waterbury, Connecticut USA) and Ave Maria Grotto (Cullman, Alabama USA) as well as the more temporary altars created in celebration of St. Joseph’s feast day in New Orleans. Other conceptual influences derive from Celtic illuminated manuscripts and African-Atlantic altars. The transformative powers of these devotional works are echoed in the personal stories told by those who create them.

    The artist’s digital collages combine idiosyncratic fragments of personal narratives with universal archetypes. By manipulating scale, contrast, and relative visibility of detail, she maintains a tension between accessibility and obscurity. Although the symmetries suggest order and control, the actual process of making the patterns is more like automatic writing or glossolalia.

    Fava Milagro and Mary’s Helpers are part of a body of work created for a traveling exhibition, Saints Among Us, funded in part by the J.W. Criss Fund and Mississippi State University. Participating artists were Anna Chupa, Anne Hanger, and Kristen Woodward. For more information, see:

    www.erc.msstate.edu/-achupa/saints/

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