Las Hermanas Iglesias: Sisters Bring Heartfelt, Mind-Opening Art to ICA North, Encinitas

 By Lonnie Burstein Hewitt. Photos by Maurice Hewitt.

 

Tres Iglesias. Artists Janelle and Lisa Iglesias, with their Norwegian-born mother, Bodhild, who still lives in their childhood home in Queens, NYC. (Iglesias is the family name, from their late father, born in the Dominican Republic.)

On August 16^th, on the ICA San Diego North campus, there was a special CU Saturday: In Celebration of Las Hermanas Iglesias. The sun was shining that afternoon on sisters Janelle and Lisa Iglesias, who actually live 3,000 miles apart, and getting to hear them talk about their very personal, love-hope-and wordplay-infused collaborative artworks was something worth celebrating.

 They had artworks in ICA’s street-level galleries but Maurice and I especially loved the ones uphill in the Artist Pavilion.  The first thing we noticed was their Holding Hands series, plaster casts of their hands, their mother’s hands, and one of their son’s hands too. Family and community are very important to them, and it was great to meet Bodhild and Lisa’s son, Bowie, and have them pose with their plaster-cast hands. (An interesting footnote to the hands: 70 percent of the proceeds from sales of these pieces will benefit migrant families.)

 

From the Holding Hands Series

From the Holding Hands Series

Note: All the hands are holding something, and Bodhild & Bowie are also holding hands.

Heart Before the Course (Get the wordplay?) Made of cast beeswax, foam, copper tubing & hardware, steel footings.

 

Plumb & Fathom (Sea Change) Made of wool, natural dyes, copper tubing, plaster cast hands, found objects.

Wontloversrevoltnow  Neon, on the wall above Plumb & Fathom. (More wordplay: it’s a palindrome, reads the same backward and forward!)  It’s also the title of the exhibition.

About the artists: Janelle Iglesias lives in San Diego and is assistant professor in the Visual Arts Department at U.C.S.D.  She has written: “I trace much of my creative impulse back to my parentage…Scandinavian folk tradition/modern design and the Latin world approach that makes the most from the least.”  She was one of SDVAN's SD Art Prize recipients in 2023. 

Lisa Iglesias lives in Massachusetts and is Associate Professor in the Art Department at Mount Holyoke College and Chair of the Art Studio Department. Both sisters do individual artworks in addition to their long-distance collaborations, which started out by mail when they were in grad school. And they like to keep a sense of improvisation in their work.

“We have circular ways of thinking,” Lisa said. “Heat gets things moving around in different configurations, so we use hot beeswax. We are percolating all the time.” 

“Making art is a practice of freedom and curiosity,” said Janelle. 

As ICA San Diego Curator Jordan Karney Chaim pointed out: “Their structures can be read from many directions. Their hands are a metaphor for care, and the shells are like ears--they’re about listening.”

The following close up details and videos  photographed  by Patricia Frischer

and from the lower galleries...

Notice the bronze hands holding this herbal wreath

Las Hermanas Iglesias:wontloversrevoltnow
On view at ICA North through December 27.
1550 El Camino Real, Encinitas 92024
Open Sat and Sun only 12-5 p.m. (last entry 4:30 p.m.)
info@icasandiego.org   760-436-6611

Lonnie Burstein Hewitt is an award-winning author/lyricist/playwright who has been writing about arts and lifestyles in San Diego County for over a dozen years. You can reach her at hew2@sbcglobal.net