Visual Strolls
seasonal residency
Visual Strolls is a residency space for artists who share an affinity for landscapes and wilderness, inner and outer. Foresta is changing with every season as the real forest does. In cyclical circularity it celebrates changing seasons of nature and of our lives. As snow melts away, as days grow longer, as leaves change colour, as they fly with the wind, as stillness settles in, as warmth returns, as birds cross continents — at the turn of each seasonal moment we invite a different artist to bring a new time of the year to Foresta by creating a portrait of time that later becomes part of the permanent Museum of Seasons.
Winter micro-seasons
In winter ‘Visual Strolls’ at Foresta becomes a space alive with diverse encounters. In the spirit of the entangled pluriversal visions, we invite artists to share seasonal moments they observe and experience across geographies. We are also inspired by the Japanese culture where the understanding of seasons stretches beyond the four times of the year with varying temperature and length of daylight: there are 72 micro-seasons, 72 kō, 72 poetic moments of the year closely observed as things change in the living world around. This winter at Foresta 5 artists from different parts of the globe are sharing their visions of the season.
Winter 2020/2021 Portrait: When the Snow Curdles
By
Blanca Gómez
Blanca is an illustrator and picture book maker, living in Madrid. Scroll down for a selection of Blanca’s work, inspired by winter days, and snow storms that have visited the city of Madrid this year.
“La nieve. Recordar la nieve, anhelar la nieve. Mirar por la ventana
y de repente, un día, después de mil años, ver que nieva.
Esperar a que cuaje, desear que cuaje. Nunca cuaja. Pero quizás cuaje…
Levantarse un día y ver todo nevado. De verdad. Y escapar al bosque a jugar”
“The snow. Remembering snow, longing for snow. To look out of the window
and suddenly, one day, after a thousand years, to see it snowing.
Waiting for it to curdle, wishing for it to curdle. It never does. But maybe it will...
To wake up one day and see everything covered in snow. For real. And run away to the forest to play.”
About Visual Strolls
Visual Strolls is not only an online gallery, an exhibition room, a portrait into the work of the invited artist. It is also a part of our long-term research, understanding arts and creativity as forces that change human states of attention in manifold ways, as forms of cognition and perception, divergent perspectives and poetry of vision, access to intuition and imagination, and empowerment for conscious creation of culture. You can read more about Art into Life research here.
Cover image: Blanca Gómez