Ciruelas, gorriones, pan dulce (Barcelona, 2023)

This work is a talc box made entirely by hand from a large block of talc from the open-sky quarry at Trimouns (France).

Talc must be worked with great delicacy because it is very soft and has a lamellar structure, which can lead to cracking or splitting. In these works, the natural shape of the piece of talc extracted directly from the quarry has been respected in the lid of the box without altering it. The base and the inside of the box have been worked by cutting, sculpting, polishing, and assembling the pieces to create a perfect fit.

The inside of the box contains three poems by the poet Mariano Zaro printed on sulphurised paper and wrapped in found paper. The poems thus have a double paper: the printed one and the protective one. In turn, they are folded in the same way that a diamond wrapper or folder is folded: a specific way to protect the precious stones so that when they are opened they do not fall out and are always protected.

This piece is the result of a collaboration with the poet Mariano Zaro, born in Borja (Zaragoza) and residing in Santa Monica (California) since 1994. With a PhD in Linguistics and a degree in Hispanic Philology, he currently teaches Spanish at Rio Hondo Community College (Whittier, California). He is the author of six books of poetry, and his poems and short stories have won several prizes and have been included in numerous publications. This was based on my selection of three poems from his entire oeuvre. These poems speak of his childhood in Borja through the attentive gaze of that child Mariano and of all the lessons of life in a small town that unwittingly filtered into him and turned into what appears to be simple work but which is loaded with meaning and feeling that fits in perfectly with the concept of the exhibition of which they form part.