Front Cover: Scherezade García, The Dominican York, from the series Island of Many Gods, 2006, acrylic, charcoal, ink, and sequins on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase made possible by the R. P. Whitty Company and the Cooperating Committee on Architecture © 2006, Scherezade García.
This intriguing image of a saintly child combines elements of the old and new into an eloquent contemporary icon. There is an echo of the portrait heads of saints that could adorn the walls of a chapel, but the halo involves what might be traces of jet trails on the sky or the wakes of dolphins or manatees through water, or circling giant mosquitoes. The color choice of background might be the blue of Caribbean seas and tinges of seaweed, or a shaded daylight portrait beneath an island sky, with hints of moss, or mold. Born in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, Garcia is a founding member of the printmaking collective Dominican York Proyecto Grafica, a group of artists of Dominican descent who live and work in the New York City area. She says that her “work inhabits a baroque universe of different worlds of aesthetics planes” and mentions her attraction to “the inversion of traditional beliefs of salvation, and the questioning of religious and social uses of the notion of paradise.”
