My Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in Brackenridge Park
by Julene Franki
Original - Not For Sale
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Dimensions
48.000 x 24.000 x 1.500 inches
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Title
My Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in Brackenridge Park
Artist
Julene Franki
Medium
Painting - Acrylic On Canvas
Description
(Available as a signed archival giclee print (framed or not) 10 x 20 inch or 24 x 48 inch from the artist only: contact at the bottom of this page). In 2018 the Hausmann Millworks Studios, where I have my studio, announced a Frida and Diego themed exhibit scheduled for Southtown Credit Human and asked studio artists to contribute. The Studios also joined a plein air Paint the Park Day in May, spearheaded by Ricardo Romo, Lynn Bobbit, and Rex Hausmann to support the Brackenridge Park Conservancy.
I painted St. Mary’s Bridge, the Pump House and the Rodriguez Faux Wood Bridge using palette knives and deeply impasto acrylic on panels and donated them to the Conservancy. I decided to paint these sites again on a 2 x 4 foot canvas in plein air for the Frida/Diego project. The inspiration was the 50-foot mural, “A Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in Alameda Park” in Mexico City by Diego Rivera. I painted Frida Kahlo as the spiritual Catrina figure in Diego’s painting.
Diego Rivera’s art was very informed by history and politics. 2018 was the 300 year of the founding of the city of San Antonio and also regarded as the Year of the Woman. Around the tableau of Pump House Number One, I painted women historical figures of the City of San Antonio, although there are not many of them personally identified from the early days, starting with Payaya women around the gushing Blue Hole Springs.
Frida’s art was highly personal and so I painted a personal story of my art supporters, primarily women, starting with my mother. I am depicted as I was in 1991 when I saw the “Mexico: Splendors of Thirty Centuries,” at the San Antonio Museum of Art, down the River This Frida is inspired by my favorite painting in that exhibit. I sought and received permission to use Bernard Silberstein’s full length photo of Frida in Tehuana Costume. Frida and I exchange flowers that we paint. Cala lilies, favored by Rivera, also float in the River.
The painting is a dreamscape vision of the Conservancy’s mission of restoration, including the gondolas that once connected the Park to the ‘68 Hemisfair, the paddle boats that once filled the River in the Park, and Frida standing on a diving board, which was removed around 1950 when swimming ceased at Lambert Beach. Zoo animals, Frida’s parrots and monkeys, and the cowbirds that occupy the Pump House area in the summer, are in the trees.
In another nod to Frida’s very personal and feminist art and Diego’s political art, the historical women walking to the bridge and across the River is a metaphor of the progress to equality for all genders and races and ethnic groups. The women of my generation are in boats with their mothers and other women mentors who inspired them, a faster means across the River. The people in the park train, which I rode as a visiting child, racing across the bridge are my millennial-ish generation nephew, nieces and their friends who are breaking free of stereotypes, with their mothers. Above in the gondolas, floating over it all are the children of the millennials born and unborn of all colors, ethnicities, sexualities and gender identification. These children live as Frida did: authentically.
A very interesting note on the people in the paddle boats is about my friend Irma Rios, an early supporter of my art, who is right below the little train on the far left in a blue shirt. After I asked her to be in my painting she told me that her great grandfather, Ignacio Ramirez known as el Nigromante, is in Diego’s famous mural. He is the white haired bearded man under Benito Juarez.
Because I could not fit everyone who has supported my art in, the edge of a paddle boat coming under the bridge represents all those I could not include.
I speak to Frida and Diego in this poem I wrote for the Hausman/Credit Human Exhibit---Frida:: I see you clearly ahead as feminist, artist, former Spanish colony native, natal Catholic, obsessionist, and anthophilous. In the year of the woman, can we rise and claim past and future triumphs of our sex, a sisterhood, wellness, prosperity, and self-actualization? The millennials and their children are our hope, as the earth, mother of lilies and scorpions, ever renews our carnal manifestation and the invisible, indivisible Spirit calls us to Its Own Perfection. I embrace your flowers, artistic striving, visions of equality and love, and seek joy and freedom from blood, pain, and darkness. Thank you to Bernard Silberstein for your photo (referenced with permission) of Frida in the Tehuana Costume; and, for the dream and the 300 plus year history lessons, thank you: Diego. (Final in 2018)
Uploaded
June 21st, 2020
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