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 the natural world 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, as apples ripen — at the turns of seasonal moments we invite different artists to bring a new time of the year to Foresta by making a seasonal portrait of time, that later becomes part of the permanent Museum of Seasons.
Spring Artist in Residence 2024
Mariana Alcántara
Mariana is an illustrator and writer based in Mexico City. She likes to walk around cities in search of plants, birds, insects, lost treasures and stories.
Spring Portrait 2024
“I tell you. I fell in love with a tree. I couldn’t not. It was in blossom.”
“How many times had I passed that tree already in my life, just walked past it and not seen it? I must have walked down that street a thousand times, more than a thousand. How could I not have seen it? How many other things had I missed? How many other loves? It didn’t matter. Nothing else mattered any more. The buds were like the pointed hooves of a herd of tiny deer. The blossom was like – no, it was like nothing but blossom. The leaves, when they came, would be like nothing but leaves. I had never seen a tree more like a tree.”
“Les cuento. Me enamoré de un árbol. Era inevitable. Estaba en flor.”
”¿Cuántas veces habría pasado por delante de aquel árbol, cuántas veces habría andado por allí sin verlo? Había recorrido esa calle mil veces, más de mil veces. ¿Cómo podía no haberlo visto? ¿Cuántas otras cosas me había perdido? ¿Cuántos otros amores? No importaba. Ya nada importaba. Los brotes eran como las pezuñas puntiagudas de una manada de diminutos cervatillos. Las flores eran como..., no, no eran como nada; solo flores. Las hojas, cuando saliesen, serían hojas y nada más que hojas. Nunca había visto un árbol tan árbol.”
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: Mariana Alcántara