TRANSFORm

AN ESSAY ON THE VALUE OF EXPERIMENTATION

The most consistent and enduring aspect of my work has been the concept of transformation. The subject matter and source of inspiration has always been the landscape, architecture and the architecture of writing. Yet the vantage point, the scale, material and process is continually changing.

At some point in early life the artist must commit to a discipline and resolve to satisfy and justify fascination of observations by industry and production. At the time I was engaged in the study and practice of carving mountains in stone. I had been informally studying Chinese landscape painting and it’s companion art of stone selection for years and felt that this might be the highest ideal attainable with regard to interpreting the landscape. I had heard of a Chinese master carver living and working at an orthodox Buddhist monastery North of my home in Santa Rosa, California in the town of Talmadge. I asked to become a student and four months later I entered the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas for what would become a two year period of very little contact with the outside world while I immersed myself in the study of Yuan and Sung Dynasty landscape painting in an attempt to endow the carvings with greater currency.

Often we think of classic Asian landscape painting as being rather naturalistic. But a close examination of the history reveals a competitive desire for innovation and stylistic skill by the painters. As a consequence of this some of the achievements of Sung Dynasty painting show reductive tendencies through their license of interpretation. I sought to work within this tradition and in time I did developed my own language of reductive form for interpreting phenomenon which now defines both my sculpture and painting. Every artist amasses a collection of languages employed to transmit the inspiration. Mine were honed from observing ink.

Over a four year period I carved approximately forty mountains in a variety of stones: alabaster, limestone, basalt, granite, and various marbles. I exhibited these carvings primarily at Gump’s in San Francisco where they were very well received given the fact that Gump’s was the first importer of rare and fine Chinese artifacts in the US and the first art gallery in San Francisco. It was a wonderful blending of two worlds. Modern and interpretive renditions of an archaic art shown in a classical setting. However, in time, I was overcome by the feeling of being trapped in an archaic world which held little relevancy to my own place and time. The comfort of that identity waned and I became disenchanted with it.

The revolution brewing was an examination of the need to alter the stone at all. My studies had naturally included the Japanese art of stone selection and arrangement. I started to leave portions of my stones unaltered; the strength and conviction this required resulted in a satisfaction which carving could not compete with. In 1984 I abandoned carving altogether, traveled to Japan and with a landscape architect whose job it was to care for the stones of the Japanese Imperial Palace in Kyoto I studied the art of stone selection, canting and placement. I visited every major and many of the smaller of the over 400 gardens in Kyoto during the day and at night would discuss my observations with my teacher. I accompanied landscaping companies to their jobsites to watch the master arrangers set the stones. My thinking was that the natural stone is my metaphor for the landscape and transcends stylistic anything possible in carving.

During this time I became familiar with ‘The Way of the Brush’ as it was through the information contained in Chinese landscape painting that Japanese stone arrangers looked to for methods of organizing highly sophisticated horizontal and vertical tensions in their designs.

I spent a year wandering through creek beds and coastal regions in Northern California collecting stones. But after years of immersion in an ancient albeit timeless and esoteric practice which still held little relevancy to my own time and place in terms of the role of the contemporary artist in society I felt it was time to move into a different direction.

Some of my earliest sculptural designs concerned a relationship between the earth and the effects of humankind’s industry and architecture on the landscape. The question now remained as what kind of architecture would serve as a point of departure. I had always been inspired by Asian architecture and as an exercise in skill I carved a series of Indian Stupas and Chinese Pagodas in stone; thinking that the exercise would be a grounding for further explorations into architectural scale.

The history of the Pagoda’s roots lie within early Stupa architecture. The first were simple burial mounds which looked like man made hills and during the great course of Indian architecture became extremely tall and elaborate yet retained their identity as metaphor for mound or mountain. The connection between structure/landscape was for me becoming nearly interchangeable as I progressed with a series of sculptures which were not merely about the role of building on the landscape but rather both entities existing within their respective context. But the truly fascinating phenomenon was to look back at the first Chinese mountains I had carved some ten years earlier and to observe how strikingly architectonic their stylization was.

During the next few years the content of the architecture which I was using gradually changed to an abstracted version of ancient city plans. Axis and section became vital structural elements in my designs and the bas-relief of massive and complex cityscapes became the dominant theme. The more I bore into the details of cityscape representation it became apparent that the subtractive method of carving was particularly unsuited to representing that which is complexly constructed. So I began a series of wood constructions which in time became more about the geometry of the built landscape and referred less to the natural landscape. And in time these constructions became very much about modern architectural idioms and the look and feel of the constructions began to be hard edged and precise. A further transformation began to take hold during this time as the format for delivery of surface articulation translated into a series of cubes and pillars; the former being a compacting of design while the latter saw an elongation and more elegant almost figurative development.

At this point in the development I began experimenting with showing a predominance of either vertical or horizontal shapes. This fascinated me as I remembered from my stone studies that two essential ways to present a stone: as a standing upright stone or as a reclining resting stone beg some philosophy; Upright or prone. The Eastern philosophies are esoteric and complicated on this subject, they involve life and death, yin and yang, action verses non action and so forth. This dynamic became central to my design and over time. Bas-relief works became composed of solely horizontal or vertical pieces of wood. And as these works began to assume an organic attitude by the ever increasing selection of rougher pieces of wood became a metaphor for the natural world. Seeing these works as tapestries, the transformation of the language to painting became a deceptively simple challenge; the idioms could not merely be flattened but required expression through the craft and technique of painting.

I began making paintings during the stone carving period as a means of realizing a finished product faster than it took to create a carving. The labors of carving are severe and it takes months to finish a work. Painting and particularly India ink brush painting served as a contrapuntal discipline to sculpture as it’s very nature as liquid is an antitheses to the hardness of stone or the dust and debris of woodworking. The tactile experiences of watching fiber absorb ink or pigment in solution work it’s way across a picture plane are soothing and compared to making sculpture they are pleasant events for me.

The content of the paintings had also come from three basic sources: as derived from technical drawing for sculpture; the exploration of written pictographic languages/calligraphy and the synthesizing of these two entities. There have been times when the searching brush is in one moment attempting to define an imaginary street pattern and in the next write some unknown language; the structure of human endeavor and thought in graphic imprint. Usually done with a very wet brush in black over a white ground I allow the brush to figure out this supercharged dilemma on it’s own; an emotional interpretation of a written character or the place where an alley abuts a building? Exclusively vertical or horizontal shapes or the combining of them both in a matrix? I chose not to decide and allowed the struggle lodgings.

Consistent with the content of the paintings made at that time mirroring developments in sculpture the solely vertical or horizontal paintings were born.

A simple exercise which shows how much of our environment is organized by parallels is to pick a place to stand in any urban situation; a street corner or an interior space and visually count the number of vertical divisions in your field of vision. Now count the number of horizontal divisions. There is a linear grace and tension of our environment and I like coding how plastic phenomenon is organized. This is the function writing serves: to organize a set of symbols which represent thought and reality so that they can be conveyed. Painting is to satisfy curiosity, to communicate findings.

Material drives form. The transformation of scale by material choice is particularly fascinating to me. In the studio found pieces of wood used in their unedited state employed to create a cityscape give the execution a quicker and more lively attitude than if they were fashioned individually. A monumental scale can be achieved within an extremely small format and using the debris from the cutting table to fashion a design sometimes allows a piece to resonate with far more interest to me than the piece which produced the discarded pieces.

I attribute the delicate quality achieved by the recent bronzes to my experience as a painter insofar as the ‘one stroke’ method of painting translates into constructivism. The landscape is a particularly heavy and cumbersome source of inspiration for sculpture. The key to their lightness has been to sculpt as I paint; with one stroke.

These days artists use polyurethane foam to carve their originals for bronze. The material is lightweight and carves very easily. As this is a subtractive method of sculpting rather than additive as in the armature method I realized that a profound transformation in reverse was taking place in the way I now approached my forms. I could carve the foam in the manner I had previously done in stone and fine detail work could be fashioned in wood. The next series of nearly two hundred pieces were a product of working in what is essentially plastic; for a translation into metal and finished to the effect of stone and it was an extremely satisfying process

Chinese mountains have passed into distance. Their lessons are kept for me on a leading edge. The modern artist works in a state of suspended challenge; half way between what we know and that what we don’t. i think the value this elasticity brings to the work is that the discoveries which occur in both sculpture and painting inform the content and delivery of each other. It’s there that I feel the source is, its where the transformation takes place, the spaces in between.

Michael Costantini
Puerto Vallarta, 2006

The city I live in, Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, has a lovely river which runs through the center of town. It’s called the Cuale. Many years ago, during a torrential rain, the river Cuale divided into two forks which created an island that has become the city’s municipal park. The part of the island nearest my house is accessed by a foot bridge crossing one fork of the River. There is a cultural center, a consenonair of a restaurant and hundreds of examples of indigenous and imported tropical flora typical to the sub-tropical latitude which Puerto Vallarta inhabits. The second part, towards the Ocean is populated with stalls of vendors selling Mexican handicraft culture. The stalls are little raised huts and lay beneath truly large and magnificent mango trees.

My morning walk sometimes takes me through the length of the island. I have been doing this for years and I know most of the vendors by sight. The only person who does not have an actual hut is a young man I noticed one day, sitting at a folding table, working very intently on some very small pieces. He said his name is Xavier (Francisco Xavier Arrujo), that he is 23 years old and a straw artist, He is a practitioner of “Tecknica en Popotillo“. One day I introduced myself to him, told him that I to was a professional artist and that I had been admiring his work. I would stop and watch and talk with him and listen to his complaints about the mangos falling and how he could hear them falling past the branches and leaves and could judge by the sound if one would hit his head or his work. And he would explain to me what he does. The literal translation of popotillo is ‘craft in straw’. We have had some discourse about the use of the word tecknica as in Latin culture ‘arte’ is most often used to define a creative expression and tecknica is used to define a craft, yet he thinks of himself as an artist but declines the higher cultural nomenclature on most days.

Popotillo is a matter of laying extremely thin lengths of straw into a beeswax-coated card stock to form a picture. It’s not one of the ancient indigenous arts of Mexico but it developed in the 18th century, in small pueblos as a means of making small, exacting paintings without expending currency. The technique of arranging feathers to form a picture goes back to pre-Colombian times and Popotillo is a descendant of this craft. And it fits into the immense history of Mexican art as one of the crafts which uses simple and found materials to create art. This is practiced in India and other countries; there was a craze in 1930”s Paris for inlaid straw furniture. In Mexico this is Michoacan practice.

Although Xavier has the appearance of a typical Michoacan, his ancestors are from Mexico City by way of Acapulco. He is more Indian than Mestizo, meaning that he has more Indian features than Spanish physical characteristics. His face is round with almond eyes, he has an Indian stance, feet always firmly in touch with the ground. Xavier’s nature is quiet and he is soft-spoken. His voice invites you to lean towards him as he speaks. Given the diminutive nature of his materials, this invitation seems as if he is saying “come closer and look carefully at what I do”. He is a passionate artist.

Xavier and I have developed a casual friendship. And my understanding and appreciation of his work has grown. I’m a constructivist in my painting and I employ materials in ways which are similar to Xavier’s method of employing lines to build a picture. Most of my painting is concerned with reducing visual phenomena to extremely abstracted horizontal or vertical rails. Popotillo is concerned with creating any picture with hundreds, sometimes thousands, of micro-thin lengths of dyed straw. Xavier once told me that he thinks this is how a computer creates an image but I think he meant an ink jet printer which is interesting as I know Xavier had not, by virtue of his own admission, ever used a computer. Someone must have told him this.

His subject matter ranges between the very typical, what he thinks people will buy, and his interpretation of scenes more to the abstract than purely representational.

There are Vallarta sunsets, Palms trees in silhouette, men in sombreros, landscapes, mountains with the hues of the sky done in careful gradation, which he is very, very good at. Scenes of everyday life. Bart, Liza, Homer and Marge, Spiderman, Superman, Betty Boop. And the quality of his work is beyond reproach. But I tease him about his subject matter. Xavier has been to my studio and I could tell that he understood what was going on. He remarked that he would like to make nonobjective work but feels he needs to make the images he makes to sell and thus support his son and daughter. But when asked directly what he enjoys doing most about his work, he will tell you that it is the abstract quality. The more ‘abstracted’ he says of an image, the greater is the connection to himself. I loved to hear him say about a geometric scheme he has devised that “It’s in my mind”.

I had been thinking that we should collaborate on a work and when business was good I had the money to commission Xavier to do a piece. I had watched him do some sports logos for a group of American tourists. I generate a good amount of income from commissioned work and could see that Xavier also knew how to deliver the goods. I chose a complicated painting of mine based on the form and remembrance of the twin towers in New York.

I showed him a copy of the painting and asked if he would be interested in replicating the image in his technique. He said that it would be difficult, that he would like to try and we agreed upon a price which was not surprisingly inexpensive. This young man knows how to calculate the value of his time. The painting I chose was particularly suited to the endeavor as the ‘Twin Towers’ is comprised of hundreds of horizontal lines performed over a height of fifty-six inches and a width of forty-five inches. The original ‘Twin Towers’ painting resides in Manhattan. The thought of having Xavier doing the piece without a direct knowledge of the significance of the image, would be an interesting coalescence of our disciplines; The content removed from commerce or the philistine, two cultures, two artists, one work and a perfect match of vision and craft.

A Popotillo begins with laying down a layer of fairly rawbees wax onto a flat surface. Originally, the base was sheet copper as it will not deteriorate in tropical humidity and will not rust. The lengths of the straw are not cut to their desired width but rather they come naturally that way in the various thickness of the sheath way the straw naturally grows. The smaller widths are at the center of the stalk and become wider at the outside of the growth. Vegetable dye was the original dye but, Xavier uses fabric dye as he says the colors are richer. The straw is boiled in the dye for a moment to set the color. He will dye the straw in batches of blues and greens, reds, yellows and oranges, violets, purples and pinks, etc. He begins with a light mix of one color of each color group and darkens the mixes by adding varying amounts of additional colors of the group to achieve a gradated collection of straws. He works with a pallete of nearly forty colors, although he sometimes uses just twenty in the same picture or even just two. I have seen his full pallete of nearly one hundred colors and they are as extraordinary in their intensity as they are in the subtlety of their gradations.

Xavier’s studio is portable. The metal cart he uses to bring his works to the river is an old modified fork dolly whos tires constantly need inflating hence the bicycle pump tied to the handle. He takes his work back home with him at the close of each day. His space where he works and sells is under a mango and between two huts. The giant base of the tree has high above-ground roots and he nestles himself in between their ridges. A two and a half feet square plastic table and matching plastic chair and a pegboard display easel completes the set up which are tied to the tree at night with a heavy chain and padlock.

The technique of Popotillo is uncommonly simple for complicated work. Xavier sometimes makes a drawing on the card stock which can be read through the transparent wax. His method is entirely freehand. He selects a length of straw, points one end into the starting point, lays it into the wax and with his fingernail sets the ending point. A quick and sharp bend of the straw length upwards and it’s cut. The process is repeated in rapid movements, with the selection of straw pieces being reached for as new colors are required. Like a laser printer that shoots out lines of information he processes his materials quickly, skillfully and without wasted movement. He keeps the nail of his right index finger trim and sharp. This is his cutting tool.

An essential problem in all construction and engineering is how to cut material and thats a place where demons and angles reside. Xavier has perfected one, perfectly simple, easy-to-maintain method of cutting material on the tip of his finger. Brilliant.

When I brought the ink laser copy of the ‘Twin Towers’ painting, Xavier’s eyes popped. He had seen the color band paintings in my studio but nothing as complicated as this. I had divided a vertical canvas measuring fifty-six inches by forty-five inches into four vertical bands which mirrored the shape of the buildings. I then organized a series of horizontal bands, some of which bisected all four shapes and some which did not. The horizontal bands represent the various floors of the buildings and the human activity which took place in the stratus. The painting’s organization is so perfectly suited for Xavier’s craft, he asked me if I had made this painting for this commission. I explained to him that I did not, but that I wanted him to replicate the painting exactly as shown and in the scale of the nine inch by six inch copy I had presented him with.

Xavie charges by the square inch. He measured the copy and after computing the area, came up with his price and said it would take ten days. I gave him an anticipo and said that I did not expect to see the work in progress unless he had questions. We had a problem with the cornelian blue. He could not get the dye to color light enough to approximate the robin’s egg blue in the painting. So I dyed them in my studio with a hot oil solution of my painters oil paint. Beyond that, I did not participate in the work. Actually, Xavier never offered to show the work until it was complete and had no questions except for resolving the blue dye issue.

When I saw the completed work I saw just how grounded Xavier’s confidence is. He had invented his own means of interpreting my information according to his materials. In his replication of the original work, he tells us that he understands the physical esthetic of the painting sincerely and has studied its construction in earnest. The transformation was honest and made upon his authority. When presenting me with his work, Xavier said that he wished he could do more work like this. I explained that he could. I also explained the significance of the image. He is just old enough to remember September 11, 2001. He thought we had made a good work and he thanked me for the commission. He said it was the most difficult piece he had ever made. Shortly after this I and a bilingual translator held a formal interview with Xavier just after TV Azteca, Mexico’s national station, aired a short piece on him. When I asked him how he saw his future as an artist his response was, “I would like to have a better place to work where I’m not always having to listen to the mangos falling to see if I should move my head.”

More than ten years have passed since I have last written of the artist now known as just Reiva. He has changed his name to a Mayan one to assert the fact he choose his identity. His looks and manner haven’t changed much. He is still boyish, innocent and impish. Our friendship has developed far beyond the casual to one of mentor and muse and we are now very close. His art has progressed to great maturity and he has enjoyed a consistent and considerable string of successes. In the larger picture of what defines an artist I would say his life is clearly that of a dedicated, impassioned and fully realized creative force, one which has not been compromised by the stones and rails found in the paths of those who seek to share their special vision of the world. And it is this strength of character residing in the heart of Reiva which has compelled me to once again tell his story. Compelled, for no mere stones have been set in the path of this artist’s journey but barbs thrown to destroy the spirit by demons representing the worst of humanity.

The success Reiva has enjoyed is due in part to our relationship. I have introduced him to many of my clients and associates who have embraced his art and endearing personality. It would be true to say that a minor cult has formed around the collecting of his work with some members fostering status by the sheer number of Popotillo works they possess. It is often the case in the world of art that our progress is a result of collaborative events. Teacher teaches pupil, patron supports talent, Mentor guides disciple and Muse delights elder and our association has fulfilled these dynamics neatly.

When Reiva decided to improve his profile amongst the throng and line of souvenir vendors on the Island by building a kiosk with funds generated from a fairly lucrative set of commissions facilitated by one of my introductions, I did not think much of it but on the whole thought it was a little unnecessary. I felt his little table at the base of the Mango tree was rather charming and set him apart from the other vendors gaudy and overabundant display of merchandise. However, his desire to not have to wheel his complete inventory and materials for working while selling back and forth from his house was completely understandable. So he commissioned a welder to build a metal table with a locked enclosure beneath the top and a roof just like all the other vendors. He moved across from his spot beneath the Mango tree with all the permission papers from the Gobenor de Permisos in order. I saw them. There were a lot of blue ink stamps and seal impressions which looked very fine and official.

As Reiva and I lived on the same street at this time, he just a few doors East of me, I would now watch him walking to the island unencumbered by the burden of his cart and quite jauntily fueled by his new and updated image that ‘all is right with the world and life’ is bounce in the step young men are famous for.

His attitude is somewhat different than the other island vendors. He is the sole owner and commander of his space permit and kiosk. Most of his neighbors are part of system whose method of ownership is not unlike the medallion system of taxicab permits in large cities. They work for the owners of the permits. A few people own and control most of the permits and lease permits to second and third parties or employ people to sell from the spaces they control on the island. The larger part of the vendors are not from Puerto Vallarta. There are about five families who control these multiple permits. Reiva refers to this system as a ‘mafia’. The vendors employed to sell for the cartels are generally ungracious persons, unhappy with their lot in life and rude to buyers when their usually dour faces feign friendship. They sell overpriced ‘handicrafts’ often made outside the state of Jalisco which is a violation of the manifest charter of the islands use for selling the work of artists of Puerto Vallarta. As Reiva is extremely unique in being one of just three out of nearly sixty vendors who actually produces what he sells which is a high quality product there is an undercurrent of resentment amongst the other vendors which dramatically increased once Reiva installed himself in his new metal kiosk. No longer the least successful and most minor player in the heirchy of the sellers lot he attracted better customers who paid well and a heretofore never seen new scorn from his neighbors.

One night his kiosk is mysteriously vandalized. The next day his landlord askes him to vacate his premises in two days time under a threat of bodily harm by one of the selling families who also owns the building where Reiva lives. A complaint is filed with the police regarding both the vandalism and eviction and Reiva is notified by the Governor of Permisos that his permit to sell on the island had been revoked. In keeping with the bylaws of what constituted grounds for revocation of a permit he had violated one of the major rules which is defined as “having a problem with the police” and as he had filed two formal complaints so his “record” now lists multiple “problems” with the police.

I have always admired Reiva’s ability to weather downtimes in his stream during the rainy and off seasons, the trials with his former wife and falling mangos yet the day he rang my buzzer saying he needed to tell me of the events which had just occurred he brought a tale to my door with the heaviest heart that I had seen in a man. As he told me of what was happening he began to slowly cry which turned to uncontrollable sobbing. His tears would not stop and he shook so violently he nearly collapsed. I made the decision to give him sanctuary in my home and a place to store his belongings and art and. He spent the afternoon moving his things and making the room I had given him, an ample storage bodega. That night he went to his mother’s house for the first time in a long time and slept there. When he came the next morning I saw a man clutching papers. The claim to his space on the island, his police report and permit to sell, all of his identifications ready yet incapable of knowing where to begin but knowing that the papers in his hand were to be needed as part of an as yet undefined arsenal of action. He seemed ready to right the wrong. The next day the shock of being assaulted on multiple fronts sets in. Reiva does not sleep for two nights but walked for hours thinking of nothing or so he says. And after so many days of being locked out of his livelihood, his funds diminishing rapidly, he was exhausted both physically and emotionally. Finally, Reiva revealed to me that he believed that the demons and ghosts of the underworld had inhabited his life and were now living inside of him. That the forces of harm and chaos had entered his body and there was no understanding of how to expel them.

The entrance to my building consists of a rather nondescript door fronting a bustling street called Francisco I Madero. After entering one proceeds down a long narrow hall to a dark set of stairs which winds via nine winding flights up to the top floor. It’s kind of spooky but when you enter my apartments the light is clear and lovely.

In the dark hall everything is on eccho and its impossible not to sound clikiti clakity on the stairs. Near the street one passes a simple door which contains a gigantic and ancient leather punch cutting machine used by the landlord’s family to cut pieces for their sandal making business. When in operation the heavy thump of the press reverberates deeply throughout the building and all the way up the stairs to my apartment. When I first heard this noise I was struck with how deep the sound was as it echoed up the stairwell. It is one of those sounds which one feels in addition to hearing it. When Reiva first heard the sound I could tell by the expression on his face that he truly thought that it was the sound of a ghost just for a moment. There is a man who believes in ghosts, phantoms and demons residing in my house.

In a few day’s time Reiva showed up with his mother. Their relationship is not good due to Reiva’s lifestyle of free living and the departing of his wife with their two children. His steadfast refusal to seek employment to fill in the gaps of what he makes form his art is the central issue which divides them. But now mother and son are in unison and united to do whatever is necessary to put right what is wrong. The desperate son looks to the mother for help and the mother’s instincts to protect her progeny overcome their differences. But I can tell it is a frail relation and I do not trust the mother’s motives as she begins the conversation with an admonishment of Reiva’s life and puts blame on him for the circumstances he has, in her mind, created. They wish for me to be a witness to the situation when they bring the injustice to the courts. I cannot do this as my lack of an ability to communicate in Spanish would be an asset to the opposition and I am fearful for my own state of life and retaliation from the mafia. My agenda has it’s own troubles which need attention and the mother uses my decision of declining to help as fodder for her disapproval of me. I can see it in her eyes, and later Reiva tells me that she feels that I am not in earnest with regards to him. That I cannot be trusted.

This begins a dark time for my friend. There is shuffling in dreary corridors and florescent lights. His mother wears a housecoat and I know he hates this time. The kiosk has been closed for weeks now and leaves have gathered around it’s base. The regime of bus rides to places he does not wish to enter and forced to rely on his mother has made him go mad. He tells me there are dreams of slaughtering his foes with rudimentary instruments of death, retelling these fantastic death scenes to me each day. I am the person to perform the exorcism of these thoughts from his mind. In tandem we work to rid bad things as they come to him. I try my best to explain that the workings of government are complex; that everyone has a crisis in time; that he must face the realities of imperfect solutions; that his best efforts may be futile. My work does not suffer during this time. But my energies are diminished by the constant grind of Reiva’s mighty struggle and I must protect myself from transference of demon’s energy. These are difficult days and my friend’s happiness has vanished altogether.

On a good day a god appeared in the form of the administrator of the Puerto Vallarta cultural affairs office. It seems that word of Reiva’s struggles percolated upwards and this man used his voice in the government to speak on Reiva’s behalf to a personage of even higher office. Together they pronounce the following decree: “That the artist known has Francisco Xavier Aruho should occupy his right to sell his work in the Island without interference from any persons and the penalty for disregarding the edict would be an immediate revocation of all permits, licenses and privileges of any conspirators”. They sent a police representative from the city who visited the island and had a chat with most of the vendors and got the word out pretty clearly. Reiva resumed his place on the island and I am certain that the quietude which accompanied his return was a result of his exhaustion, he was pretty beat up by this time and he just wanted to resume himself.

I still walk to the ocean every day and I am happy to see my friend. There are prickly sensations of mental darts sometimes. The coop to destroy Reiva failed so perfectly that those who sought to harm him have nothing left but what’s in their heads. And light has returned to Reiva’s eyes as he has returned to the discipline of making art and the struggle of seeking remuneration for his efforts. He has reclaimed his right to happiness and we regale the history of battle over quarts of beer. I have seen my friend grow arrows which rest silently within his quiver. And I have witnessed demon’s retreat to darkness.

Michael Costantini

Puerto Vallarta, 2016

Popotillo