Serra Victoria Bothwell Fels
Meteorologies

Bothwell Fels creates the fantastical blueprints that extend and inform her physical triangular installations.

“As above, so below.” So said the medieval European alchemists and astrologers. The idea that the lives of ordinary people reflect broader universal patterns harks back to the earliest beliefs of the Hindus, Buddhists and Hebrews among others for whom the triangle was an important symbol… Echoes of the Hindu Shri Yantra, their sacred mandala for the origins of time and space, as well as the geometric Hebrew Kabbala, appear everywhere in Bothwell Fels’s works, which the artist says reflect all of the people whose personal and social histories, as well as DNA, go into the making of a single individual. Painted with a thin pigment wash on antique French meteorological tables, they suggest mysterious diagrams, perhaps of the arcane secrets of the soul, or maybe mystical alchemical algorithms of how many angels can fit on an atom of DNA. While visually intriguing, their effectiveness reflects the way they resonate an aura of concealed yet extensive esoteric knowledge.”

- Bookhardt, D. Eric. “Between You and the Mountains: New Sculpture and Paintings by Serra Victoria Bothwell Fels at Parse., 2012, insidenola.org