The sky is the source of light in Nature and it governs everything.

—John Constable

In the sky we had rediscovered the moving principle of any work of art: the light, and the motion of color.

—Sonia Delaunay

Edwin Vasquez installation view at MOAH

Edwin Vasquez captures the colors of light in the night sky. His recent “Light Refractions” installation (in the “Light of Space” exhibition at the Lancaster Museum of Art & History [MOAH]) involves two hundred digital depictions of colorful abstract discs spinning, like planetary fantasies, through the infinite reaches of the universe. One is an earth-like green and blue orb wreathed by three red rings and crossed by a trilogy of small moons. Another is a glowing orange sun framed in concentric spheres of vegetal green, then molten crimson, then a final spiral of silver. Although created on a flat surface, the prismatic illumination is so intense, it seems to take on three dimensions.

Edwin Vasquez, “Collaboration”

From a distance, Vasquez’ wall of two hundred global visions reads as a modernist grid. (Think of Joseph Albers situating spheres inside his honored squares. Or Frank Stella replacing his protractor curves with circles. Or Sol LeWitt adding bright colors to his repetitive geometry.) Yet Vasquez distinguishes himself from his famed predecessors through his use of new technologies (i.e., computers rather than the historically preferred paint on canvas) and his lavish infusion of intense pigment. This intensity turns the wall into a bejeweled mural or perhaps a postmodern digital mosaic. It shimmers. It sparkles. It points to the vast beauties of the natural world.

Edwin Vasquez, “Stop Racism”

Born in Quetzaltenango, Vasquez immigrated to this country and settled, with his family, in the Antelope Valley. There he paints, experiments with new technologies, builds sculptures, and assembles multi-media compositions. He also curates and writes poetry. Vasquez has designed a billboard for a public art project. He attended the Kipaipai workshop in 2019. Currently, he is the artist in residence at MOAH during the 2020 census.

Edwin Vasquez billboard

Immediately before installing his “Light Refractions” at MOAH, Vasquez participated in the “Collaborate & Create” exhibition curated by Andi Campognone at the Loft at Liz’s gallery in Los Angeles. Vasquez was paired with Jeanne Dunne. Together, the two artists made “The Birdhouse Where Nobody Lives,” a combination of painting and sculpture accompanied by a poem Vasquez wrote with Dunne’s assistance. The poem, which recalls hiking through the landscape after a devastating fire, begins:

Edwin Vasquez work

            Everything is charred on the mountain—

            the once-perfectly arranged pine needle clusters

            and the large pinecones scattered on the ground,

            hopeless, decomposing, waiting for what is to come.

 

            Those beautiful trees, once full of life,

            were once giant clusters of jade green;

            now they stand still with broken, charred branches,

            fragile like wires stripped thin…

Edwin Vasquez, “Angel”

Vasquez’ references to decomposing pinecones, charred branches, grey ash, and desolate hills, as well as the absent bird of the title, remind us of the recent wildfires here in California as well as the fires that were raging over Australia when the exhibition opened. The lament over the losses of nature’s gifts is a theme continued in other Vasquez works, such as his most recent small-scale works that pair painted image and stenciled text. The one with “NATURE” scrolled across it diagonally has depicts what appears to be a fiery wound.  Environmental devastation cannot be denied. And yet, Vasquez’s work is never pessimistic. His radiant color and inventive compositions point to hope. To quote another American poet,

            “Hope” is the thing with feathers –

            That perches in the soul –

            And sings the tunes without the word s-

            And never stops – at all –

                                    —Emily Dickinson

Hope is the bird who built Vasquez’s birdhouse. Hope is the art that lights the way.