{"id":65836,"date":"2022-10-31T12:01:57","date_gmt":"2022-10-31T18:01:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=65836"},"modified":"2022-11-02T12:29:00","modified_gmt":"2022-11-02T18:29:00","slug":"the-illuminated-desert-and-tommyknockers-samantha-dasilva-at-alpine-gallery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/the-illuminated-desert-and-tommyknockers-samantha-dasilva-at-alpine-gallery\/","title":{"rendered":"The Illuminated Desert and Tommyknockers: Samantha DaSilva at Alpine Gallery"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Samantha daSilva, “Wise Power,” acrylic & mixed media on canvas, 36 x 48 in.<\/p><\/div>\n

In Alpine Gallery, situated on South Temple Street between a pastry shop and a bridal boutique, Samantha daSilva\u2019s<\/a> works on canvas have the feel of a trip into and out of the depths of a mine. Exactly what any bakery or bridal shop (or mine) must dread most \u2014 any sort of accident \u2014 makes up the gravity-rich natural beauty of most of daSilva\u2019s work, rich as a rockslide or a sudden brilliant pool of water. Gravity wins in pieces like \u201cDivine Trust\u201d and \u201cBeauty as a State of Being;\u201d they look like the call of the cliffs to the river bed, or the song of the large veins of ore to the lost fines (crumbles). Silver, gold, and sometime even a determined vivid bronze rain or pour down, offset by fields of a soft, dull mushroom-taupe or gray, or a white with a sometimes dulled and waiting quality, like a dimmed light bulb.\u00a0<\/span><\/h4>\n

Samantha daSilva, born in Brazil, is always looking for material to texturize her canvases: lately she has used \u201ciron-rich Utah dirt, salt from the Great Salt Lake, local newspaper, plaster\u201d \u2014 and, rarely, at request of the bereaved, crematorium ashes \u2014 blended into acrylic paint. Or she focuses more on canvas, in its plainer, flatter, form, sometimes ripped and gashed: \u201cIllumination in the Desert,\u201d the painting which is namesake for this show, has regularly-spaced rips in canvas which can even make you think of a type of lace called \u201ccutwork\u201d (sometimes still used in christening gowns, or bridal gowns \u2014 in those garments always very carefully trimmed bits of cutouts, usually cut out in floral or leafy shapes, are trimmed in thread usually exactly matching the fabric, usually cream or white in color). But daSilva\u2019s cutwork is a series of small rough gashes, suggesting also, somehow (think of the canvas as a flat plane\/plain) the crumply beauty of luminarias (stubby long-burning candles nested in sand in small brown paper sacks): set out at regular intervals around houses at the darkest and coldest time of the year, lit, they give the effect of not-yet-risen stars, a dot-to-dot grounded constellation waiting to rise.<\/h4>\n
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Samantha daSilva, “The Illuminated Desert,” acrylic & mixed media on canvas, 36 x 60 in.<\/p><\/div>\n

Or: the regular gashes in \u201cThe Illuminated Desert\u201d might represent plants or animals in the desert, looking upward, open-mouthed, needing relief from thirst.<\/h4>\n

One work here is<\/i> animal: \u201cThe Golden Calf\u201d is one cowhide painted gold, stretched flat: but its darker furrow of back ridge, once a natural watershed with two directions just like a mountain\u2019s ridge or peak, has lost its watershed, or natural gravity, it function. It is as flat as a piece of paper (or canvas).<\/h4>\n
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Samantha daSilva, “The Golden Calf,” brazilian cowhide & gold on canvas, 30 x 40 in.<\/p><\/div>\n

Almost shoulder-to-shoulder in this gallery, these paintings are unusually comfortable very close to each other (even, somehow, the cowhide piece): they radiate calm, even when their titles suggest strong emotion, even turbulence (in an artist statement daSilva lists “the universal experiences of abandonment, heritage, and eternal sense of home” as influences).<\/h4>\n

DaSilva is a yoga devotee; most of these paintings would be at home in a yoga studio, with titles like \u201cYou Be Home\u201d suggesting arriving at peace after turbulence. DaSilva writes that in her truly mixed media she has even used \u201cforaged sawdust after the hurricane-strength winds in Utah in 2020.\u201d 2020 was also, she notes, the year of the sudden death of her father, an event which pushed her into a creative overdrive. Many titles, like \u201cThe Solace of Open Spaces,\u201d suggest resolution, rearrangement. Other titles, like \u201cThe Neurology of Love,\u201d seem to be demanding answers from, or mocking, the gods of nature and science, just as \u201cThe Golden Calf\u201d demands clear explanation from, and mocks, religious gods \u2014 about sacrifice. DaSilva, who champions \u201cunrelenting feminine power,\u201d challenges all the gods.<\/h4>\n
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Samantha daSilva, “The Neurology of Love,” acrylic & mixed media on canvas, 24 x 36 in.<\/p><\/div>\n

But all of Samantha daSilva\u2019s works seem, too, like the offerings to the tommyknockers of mines \u2014 offerings to the supernatural. Once in the old mining days in England, Cornish miners daily carried their wives\u2019 or mothers\u2019 homemade “Cornish pasties,” or “hand pies,” with them into mines: daily they tossed the Cornish pasties\u2019 last, sturdiest bit \u2014 a heavy, rounded, crimped crust on one side, made this way so the pie could be held, by that crust, in one hand \u2014 down into the mine, after consuming the rest. Though they knew the rich thick crust would be the best part to eat, they knew better than to eat it: the hand that held the pie was likely dusted with the mine\u2019s poisonous arsenic, so they always tossed the thick handmade crusts down into the dark. An offering, they told each other, to \u201cthe tommyknockers\u201d \u2014 gnomish, subterranean spirits of the mine \u2014 which might in turn (they hoped) give them luck: even save their lives someday.<\/h4>\n

Similarly, daSilva seems to have taken the bitterest and most arid and also the richest and most beautiful, glittering, ores of life, and has folded them into her canvases: explorations, hopes, sacrifices, even, for future luck.<\/h4>\n
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Samantha daSilva, “Go in Peace,” acrylic & mixed media on canvas, 30 x 40 in.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Samantha daSilva: The Illuminated Desert<\/em>, Alpine Art<\/a>, Salt Lake City, through Nov. 11<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Alpine Gallery, situated on South Temple Street between a pastry shop and a bridal boutique, Samantha daSilva\u2019s works on canvas have the feel of a trip into and out of the depths of a mine. Exactly what any bakery or bridal shop (or mine) must dread most […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1568,"featured_media":65855,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65836","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-exhibition_reviews","category-visual_arts"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/img-4433_orig.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-23 18:33:04","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65836","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1568"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65836"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65836\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65859,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65836\/revisions\/65859"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65855"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}