I used to make altars.

I used to make altars*; Personal, intentional little arrangements of objects and images, set up with care, designed to hypnotize, gather intention, replay the comedy of syncretic folklore for the unknown between everything. A found thing, a made thing, ephemera of memory, mirrors, colorful rocks, everything placed just so. 

I don't really do that anymore. At some point, the whole room became the altar and I stopped drawing a border around it.

Let me show you what I mean.

The Queen of Hearts painting on my wall is four feet tall. I painted her to feel like a playing card that ate a stained glass window with interdimensional powers, and as an interior mirror of a way of feeling, or a way I'd like to feel, like an affirmation that sometimes you are what you see. Next to her, there are four smaller canvases: some California poppies in the sun, a painting of rose quartz, a study from my ‘jawbreaker’ series, which is designed specifically to remind you of the taste of hard candy, and a painting of a jade plant. None of these "go together". The collection spans from brand new to made years ago. Taped to the window are more risographs from my riso practice; an Owl, a fox, and two more Queens. There's a Queen of Diamonds surrounded by bees and honey, and a queen of hearts holding a flower instead of a cup. They go together because they're mine, and they ended up on the same wall, and now they're in conversation. See? The altars make themselves.

Many anthropologists have noted that the idea of art as a special category is a very recent and distinct western invention. There's Balinese saying that goes 'We have no art, we do everything as beautiful as possible." and while my life doesn't meet the standard of this quote, my work as a lifelong maker of altars private and public has expanded past altar making into my entire surroundings. Now the made things are physical, and the found things are inside them.

There was a heat wave in the Bay Area last week, and as a result of that, there's now a little strawberry painting on my wall. Below it is a landscape with little gold fireflies in memory of a beautiful scene I saw in Northern California last summer. Above both of those, a small purple canvas with light refracting circles on it, the first painting I made in the year 2024. I put all my intentions for the year in it, and I had a great 2024. Therefore the little purple painting will never be for sale. It’s imbued with intentions that I keep with me while I work. The little spaceman Buddha I got from a vending machine at AREA 15 in Las Vegas. The ideas and intentions and memories find their own harmony on the wall. 

On my desk you will find two ceramic fish, some cherry blossoms, an apple that I should really eat before it goes bad. Cam the cat bluetooth speakers. A bottle of Coke. Riso prints of Sriracha and Coke Zero, Cafe Bustelo and an Edamame bag, because I love food and I love product design so that series is an homage to both. There's also two more landscapes from last summer. There's a sign that says "You are the art piece, dumb ass," that I got from the free art box downstairs. It keeps me humble.

None of this is curated. All of it is deliberate. Where I could tape something to the wall and lean a wet canvas against a fire extinguisher and leave a half-finished drawing next to a soda can and have it all feel like one continuous thought. Because it is. *I still have altars.

Until next we meet,

Robin Ziiro