When John Brandi moved to New Mexico in 1971, he designed and built a small cottage near Guadalupita, north of Mora. Opposed to the Vietnam War, he had served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Ecuador and begun publishing poetry as part of what he calls South America's "mimeo revolution." Using a Rotary Neostyle hand-operated mimeograph machine, he founded Tooth of Time Press in his cabin and thus brought the revolution north. Brandi published the work of other writers in addition to his own, and his press became known for attractive books of poetry. From the beginning, he combined writing poetry with making art. Currently a resident of Rio Arriba County, Brandi is the author of more than three dozen poetry collections. He has also created many works in a format called broadside -- poems printed with artwork on large sheets of paper and designed for display. Born in California, Brandi began his creative endeavors early. "My parents encouraged me to draw and to write at a young age," he said. "My dad was an accountant for a newspaper in Los Angeles. At the end of the month, he would ask the pressmen to cut end rolls into 8-by-10 sheets for me. He gave me a coffee table to work on and said, 'Draw the places you've gone with your mother and me.' My mother would always add something like, 'Write about how you felt when you were standing on those rocks with all those waves crashing around you.'"
Ecuador RPCV John Brandi is the author of more than three dozen poetry collections
BROADSIDED BY DJ VU
Nov 24, 2006
The Santa Fe New Mexican
When John Brandi moved to New Mexico in 1971, he designed and built a small cottage near Guadalupita, north of Mora. Opposed to the Vietnam War, he had served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Ecuador and begun publishing poetry as part of what he calls South America's "mimeo revolution." Using a Rotary Neostyle hand-operated mimeograph machine, he founded Tooth of Time Press in his cabin and thus brought the revolution north. Brandi published the work of other writers in addition to his own, and his press became known for attractive books of poetry. From the beginning, he combined writing poetry with making art.
From 5 to 7:30 p.m. Friday, Nov. 24, Cruz Gallery celebrates the opening of an exhibit of Brandi's recent watercolor paintings, collages, and mixed-media works on paper. He has been widely exhibited, but he said "this show contains some of the cream of the crop of I what I made in each of these styles during the last three years." Brandi reads his poetry at 6 p.m. during the opening.
Currently a resident of Rio Arriba County, Brandi is the author of more than three dozen poetry collections. He has also created many works in a format called broadside -- poems printed with artwork on large sheets of paper and designed for display. Born in California, Brandi began his creative endeavors early. "My parents encouraged me to draw and to write at a young age," he said. "My dad was an accountant for a newspaper in Los Angeles. At the end of the month, he would ask the pressmen to cut end rolls into 8-by-10 sheets for me. He gave me a coffee table to work on and said, 'Draw the places you've gone with your mother and me.' My mother would always add something like, 'Write about how you felt when you were standing on those rocks with all those waves crashing around you.'"
Brandi's parents were inveterate travelers who took him camping in the Mojave Desert, at Big Sur, and in the Sierra Nevada. "They believed in learning about the world by going out into it and being surrounded by nature," he said.
In a sense, Brandi's work is all about traveling inner and outer landscapes. His poems and drawings may be thought of as of notes to fellow travelers. He traces the roots of his work to a tradition hailing back to the poet-painters of ancient China and Japan.
"At 16 I got my first old Chevy and drove down to Mexico," he said. "To get away from the draft, I disappeared to Canada, Alaska, and back to Mexico. In 1971, I landed in Mora County, New Mexico. By 1979, I wanted to break completely from the Western Hemisphere and go where nothing would be culturally familiar. I went to India and Vietnam, visiting Hindu and Buddhist temples and shrines."
While trekking in Asia, Brandi followed in the footsteps of his father. "Even though I hadn't been to these places before, I had a sense of deja vu," he said. His father had been drafted toward the end of World War II and sent to the India/Burma theater. "They posted him in various places in northern India -- including the sacred city of Benares, with a bunch of kids. He had nothing to do, so he got a bicycle, rode out into villages, took photos, and wrote about all the places he visited. As a kid I helped him develop a lot of those black-and-white photographs. My childhood was filled with photos of exotic and strange places in Asia.
When I went to India and Burma I asked myself: Am I really here, or am I in a photograph?"
The sense of life being a collage pervades Brandi's work. He often combines what he calls "found graphics," or cut-outs from magazines and books, with earth pigments, postage stamps from a childhood collection, and pieces of gold and silver foil gathered during travels in Asia. "I may combine a cutout from an art book about Italian Renaissance masters with 1930s nature books for children in a kind of photomontage," he said. "I might combine Leonardo da Vinci with two frogs rising from a stream."
Brandi's colors sparkle with intensity because he uses natural pigments. "My studio is full of jars and jars of earth I have collected," he said. "The red in my work is from oxide in the Nevada desert. Yellow and ochre come from the earth on top of a mesa near Abiqui. Gray tones are often from roadside dust."
Brandi divides his work into two basic categories -- rough-hewn "quick sensation portraits" (in words or images) that arise directly from the unconscious, and more deliberately planned works. "If I'm dealing with an image I have upon waking from the dream state that I can clearly see, I paint it or make a mixed-media collage. If I wake up and I have words clearly in my mind, I go to my journal and write them down. If the images are less formed, I let them stew. One half of my studio is devoted to writing and books, and the other half is laid out so that I can paint or make collage. When I'm working I may go from one side to the other.
During the day I carry a spiral notebook. At the end of the day, I take material from the notebook and transfer it to a larger, ongoing, more elaborate journal, fleshing out phrases, thoughts, or images. When the words come so fast my hand can't keep up, I go to the computer."
How does he know whether to turn his inspirations into poems or paintings? By way of answering that question, Brandi replied, "Bob Dylan once said anything he could sing he called a song, and whatever he could write that he couldn't sing he called a poem."
details
Paintings, Collages and Mixed Media Works by John Brandi
Opening 5-7:30 p.m. Friday, Nov. 24 (poetry reading at 6 p.m.); exhibit through Dec. 8
Cruz Gallery, 616 Canyon Road, 986-0644
