Flip Turns

Akin to the memory of a floor tile in grandmother's kitchen

Ramblings

Juan A. Franco Ricardo. Untitled (Brooklyn Sky), 2024. Digital photograph. [A scroll down a large dark space — a slow reveal of speckled light. Clouds in their grain, specks floating in the sunsetting sky. A once reddish, fusia, and fire orange sky turned black and white, a perceptual reduction(?) A tendency for the monochromatic. A small silhouette of a balcony peers through at the lower left corner pointing at the other silhouette, a plane coming towards JFK.]

My last journal entry dated 20241123 stops suddenly, “…a warming choice for the cold” I was writing at a restaurant where I would overpay [willingly] for the most decadent chicken dish I have ever devoured. There is no more to say about it. So, 2024 eclipses itself into yet another version of time. Undoubtedly, its cyclical nature brought again two gifts: a dream•nightmare and a sickly anxiety of the brain-vomit kind. Perhaps, the excessive amounts of coffee, the end-of-year dance of the workplace and the perceived need to “wrap things up” has got me feeling this tumultuous. This transition from the imposing darker sky to the glow of light-covered clouds invokes hope more than fear. In this chaotic time, I have found respite in water and moving freely through it. Moving the arms to move forward, tucking the body to turn from one direction to another. Taking a breath every three strokes and trying to never breath right after a flip turn. It’s about controlling this dance, this underwater choreography, where sound is muted, and gravity’s pull lessens.

...a gesture,
                     one [i feel] nervous to perform,
i have filled my mind with worry
 unsure(?)
from what may come after (sweet) sweet(?) delight
               kisses that warm the knees
                like a hand under the table
                                                     hand.
                                                                                                                [i have roses in my bag]

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Studio

Juan A. Franco Ricardo. Growth, 2024. 35mm film scan. [Look at me, I am at it again, another black and white image. Foliage, grass, plants dominate the picture plane from all directions: prickly grass holds the bottom third of the image, a spiny pine tree dangles its arms from the left across the overexposed sky. In the middle, a beautiful weed, dancing in the glow of the sun. There is some rocks, a boat(?) and the East River barely visible on the right, but feel free to ignore that part. No shame.]

There were moments this summer where I made parks my studio. After getting comfortable riding a bike in New York City, I made these devoted journeys. I filled the backpack with charcoal, paper and a camera. Some of these drawings became gifts to be lost to misunderstandings. The rest are studies of summer days: sculptures, flowers, weeds, trees, pollen, memories. A collection is made, there is no need to see them all. These drawings took place.

I recently attended Tsohil Bhatia’s This Fire That Warms You where the metaphor of kitchen evoked a fiery hunger. We are served an invitation to this domestic space – one that is gendered, violent, nourishing and redundantly transformative. I knew a meal, a gathering, had taken place, but that would have been true regardless of its actual happening. The exhibition creates a memory for us: the splash of water on the dishes we have to clean drunkenly after everyone leaves, the pressure cooker that has been on since before the sun came up and the sounds of banging pans after being rattled awake.

I remember my grandmother’s kitchen in Colombia, a floor tile with a pale white, a shadowy blue and a sea moss green. I can imagine the pattern, but I will keep it to myself. I sat at the table in the kitchen smelling the inevitable garlic, cilantro, tomato and onion. Lately, my studio has been the kitchen, channeling my grandmother, cooking and nourishing, banging pans (on accident) and rattling my consciousness.

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Scraps