Diana Greene Winston-Salem Monthly December 2007 Artist in Residence: Nélida Otero Flatow

Artist Nélida Otero Flatow is at home with surprise. It happens in her work all the time. Take the painting of a pelican at the beach she created recently for a friend‘s office. That piece was supposed to be a straight painting, a colorful beachscape with lots of blue sky over a calm sea. Well, what do you know but floating down from that sky came a black dog seated inside a bubble. The pelican’s expression is sternly quizzical, his eyebrows thick and dagger-like.

Explaining the unexpected appearance of the dog, Flatow has a humored resignation. “These kinds of things happen all the time,” she says. “I don’t identify with the surrealists as a group, but it comes into my work. It comes from within.”

And for the Winston-Salem artist, what is within is central. Whether Flatow is making a print, drawing, collage or something that combines all three, the process is marked by converging elements out of which a personal image arises. It is a “magical” experience, she says, one she has learned to navigate and trust. “When you’re cutting and tearing and putting things together,” she says, “you lose yourself and it’s then that the image emerges.”

In Flatow’s studio the light is good, the space is open, and the sense of possibility seems boundless. Piled on her desk are reams of ivory rag paper, each page containing manipulated photographs from a trip to Italy, some etched and printed as intaglio plates. When asked what this project is, she smiles and says, “It will be something.”

It will become something could be Flatow’s artistic mission statement. Given her abilities as draftsman, painter, and printer, combined with her love of color, collage, and text, she creates art that traverses many mediums. Her sense of optimism comes through when she says, “It’s endless what you can do.”

Take, for example, a pair of seagull wings. Flatow found them washed up on the shore and that discovery, eventually, provoked a series of monoprints reflecting her opposition to the Bush Administration and the Iraq war. The prints were included in her recent show at Artworks Gallery.

“The wings looked like a mangy W,” she says. “They took on an ominous taunting nature after President Bush was reelected.” On Election Day 2002, Flatow began drawing. In these prints, the “W” is turned upside down and appears vulture-like, a black line swooping down the center. In one monoprint, “Muzzled Speech,” words scrawl across the image. At first glance it appears easy to read the capitalized words, but the words are inverted as if reflected in a mirror. Look closer and three clear words subtly rise to the surface of this jumbled text: muzzled, speech, war.

Politics are rarely the focus of Flatow’s work, but the pull of politics is something she, no doubt, understands. In1961 as a six-year-old, Flatow and her older brother were airlifted out of Cuba as part of Operation Pedro Pan. For one year, she lived at the Sacred Heart Home in Colorado waiting to reunite with her parents, who eventually landed in New York City.

That childhood story of cultural identity and change is just one of many influences that converge and emerge in Flatow’s creative process. What inspires this printmaker is life – the one she is living now, the one she imagines, as well as the one she once lived. Where some people prefer neat separations, she relishes the layers. Art becomes exciting, she says, “when it’s not that literal.”

When did you realize you were going to live a creative life?

When I was about ten, we lived in Ohio and I got very sick. I was in the hospital for weeks. My doctor gave me pads of papers and pastels. I drew constantly for two weeks in my bed, in my little isolation chamber.

Where do you find your inspiration?

Life. Just every day. I cannot force something. Anything I’ve done that’s successful comes easily. When I force something, it just looks forced.

What do you do to overcome a creative block?

I do get blocked. Sometimes I just sit and stare at a page. I’ll just make a mark, make a mess. I just work. I just make a mark.

What do you think of failure?

That’s a discussion I’ve been having lately. Does being successful mean commercially successful? I can’t do commercial work. I just can’t do it. I’ve tried. Conformity is a way to failure for me.

What quality do you most admire in other artists?

I like artists who are able to really express what’s inside them. People who are true to themselves, whatever that is.

What artists do you admire?

Egon Schiele. Rembrandt, especially his etchings. Goya. Japsper Johns and I’ve always loved Richard Diebenkorn.

What would surprise people to find out about you?

I think if anything perhaps, I can say that I want to be taken at face value, that what you see is what you get with me.