Arts

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A Conversation with Daniel Martin Diaz

by Anne Seidler

ystery of Faith”, Daniel Martin Diaz’s upcoming solo exhibition at the Arizona State Museum, seems long overdue. Anyone even vaguely familiar with the local arts scene might recognize Diaz’s mysterious, austere paintings and drawings that present a dark, visionary new take on the traditional subject matter of religious art. Aside from a piece in the permanent collection of the Tucson Museum of Art and a display of prints at Hotel Congress last summer, however, Diaz hasn’t shown much of his work in Tucson. Instead, his art has been on display in California, New York, and even Australia. Diaz has also been busy creating music with his band Blind Divine, who recently released their first album and have played twice at Club Congress this summer.

The upcoming show at the State Museum will feature both older work and more recent creations, among them a series of three linoleum carvings entitled “EXORCISM: De Exorcismus et Supplicationibus Quibusdam” (“Concerning Exorcisms and certain Supplications”). Like many of Diaz’s pieces, the carvings feature mysterious Latin text written in gothic script and images that look like they would be more at home in Dr. Faust’s library than a contemporary art gallery. I met with Diaz to discuss the upcoming exhibition, as well as his music.

AS: Is there a certain unifying theme for this show?

DD: There’s really never really a theme to my shows. I feel that there’s a “big picture” or theme to all of my work. It all deals with faith and religion.

AS: What inspired you to address the subject of exorcism?

DD: I’ve just always been really fascinated by old block prints, and I wanted to show the steps of exorcism in a very traditional way. The concept was to present it as it would have been presented in the medieval age.

AS: Did you do any research on exorcism?

DD: Oh yeah. The guy who published those – his business is called Pressure Printing – he and I had actually been talking about this for the last two years. I was looking for someone to write something to go with the images; a kind of summary. I had a show up in Phoenix, and a Catholic newspaper there contacted me. The guy who interviewed me, he and I became friends. I said, “Hey, would you write something for me?” He’s actually a theologian, and it was really great to get a theologian to actually write about those pieces, and to write about exorcism throughout the history of the Catholic Church.

AS: It’s nice that you got such a positive response from a catholic paper, because I know you’ve said there are sometimes very mixed responses to your work.

DD: Yeah. It’s ironic, because I was just contacted a couple weeks ago by a woman at this magazine who wanted to do an interview. I researched it and it was actually a really cool magazine. She ended up calling back and saying, “You know, we can’t do the interview because my editor thinks your work is too religious.” It just blew my mind that, here’s this art magazine censoring art, you know what I mean? One thing that I’m learning is that the work that I’m doing is the alternative. It’s alternative in that I’m not depicting religion in a negative way. It’s actually in a positive way. A lot of magazines are very guarded about that. The Catholic Church has always had all this negative energy coming towards it, and my work isn’t about that.

AS: Do you ever have negative reactions from Catholic people because you use religious images in unorthodox ways?

DD: I can’t remember any Catholic individual being upset by it. One time a magazine used one of my paintings on their cover – it was an image of Christ. I had a couple Evangelicals who contacted me and were really angry, saying things like “That’s not my Christ.” To be honest, I find all of this crazy. I’m just doing my thing, and people are going to think what they want. It all comes from a positive place. It’s not being sacrilegious or negative towards anybody or anything…I think most of the great art we have was created for the Church, and I like to think that in a strange way I’m part of that tradition.

AS: I remember seeing a show at the Etherton gallery several years ago where some of your paintings were shown alongside Joel-Peter Witkin’s photographs. I thought that your work was complementary to his in a really interesting way.

DD: Yeah; I’ve been a fan of his for a long time, and I think there are a lot of similarities in what we create. When you look at one of his photographs, at first you just see this beautiful image, but when you look closer you realize that there’s actually something really disturbing going on. I think my art sometimes has the same effect.

AS: So tell me a little bit about Blind Divine, your musical project.

DD: It’s coming from the same place as my artwork. We’re just playing music that we love and wish that we could hear on the radio.

AS: I’ve heard it described as trip-hop.

DD: The CD that we put out, our first CD, I guess you could label it as trip-hop if you want to label it. To me it’s the way I’ve always imagined Arizona and Tucson - the sound of it. Our live shows are a little bit more guitar-oriented, but it’s still the same aesthetic.

AS: When you say it’s the sound of Tucson, do you mean the music scene here, or more just the sounds that the place brings to mind?

DD: I see all this artwork coming out of Arizona: really colorful stuff, cactuses that are yellow and purple…I’ve never imagined Arizona like that. I’ve always thought of it more in the colors that I use, that are really distressed. It’s really a pretty harsh environment, and I’ve always imagined the music in that same realm. There’s always this stigma attached to Arizona of having this country sound; this kind of twangy, desert rock sound. But I’ve never thought of it like that growing up here. What we’re doing is really inspired by the sunsets and the stillness of the nighttime: just the scenery here.

“Mystery of Faith” will show at the Arizona State Museum from September 15 to November 15, with an opening celebration and wine reception Thursday, September 15 from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. You can hear Blind Divine’s music and order their CD, “Devouring the Beautiful”, at www.blinddivine.com.

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