Exhibition ‘Self Care’ Is A Window Into Artist’s Soul

Ignacio Font’s “travel: Paramaribo – Tennesssee-Maryland,” diptych, mixed media on gessoed canvas, May 2024, is one of the works in the solo exhibition “Self Care: Mineral Spirits, Elixirs and Other Home Remedies” through Friday, Aug. 9 at the Steven and Dorethea Green Library at Florida International University. (Photo courtesy of Jean Blackwell Font)

Growing up in Puerto Rico, Ignacio “Iggy” Font remembers taking a trip to New York with his parents. It was the year before his family moved to the United States. He was 10 years old, he says, when the family took a stroll through the Museum of Modern Art.

“I’ve loved art since then. My parents with my sister in a stroller kept walking through the museum,” he recalls. “I had stopped. I saw this painting and I looked up and it was this large piece by Jackson Pollock. It was the first time I felt goosebumps and, it was the first time I felt like I was entirely accepted and was given the permission to be who I am.”

Font says he got lost in the work and that feeling never left him. The feeling shows through in the works in his solo exhibition. which features a variety of media including painting, pastel and photography, on the second floor of the Steven and Dorethea Green Library at Florida International University.

The unusual title tells the story — “Self Care: Mineral Spirits, Elixirs and Other Home Remedies,” which opened on Thursday, June 20 and closes on Friday, Aug. 9. Font says it is his art that is his self-care and his elixir.

Ignacio Font, “13 Steps,” mixed media on paper, July 2020 to June 2024. (Photo courtesy of Jean Blackwell Font)

“This is where I land,” he says while walking past each piece. “Every one of the works has some sort of relationship to something going on in my life or something important to me. So, I think that’s where the title came from – this idea that these are the ways that I deal with difficulties and walk through them. These are the places where I put it all down and then I can walk away without feeling like I haven’t dealt with something.”

It’s the first time he’s exhibited “13 Steps,” which, Font says, took four years to complete. Thirteen individual pieces, 12 X 9 inches each, in this case are shown to represent a staircase – seven to the left, then six to the right each (45 X 129 inches). While existing as a whole, each stands individually in a portrayal of struggle and energy.

“I finished it the day before we opened the show and it’s just been, well, it’s been a very difficult piece for me, so it just took a long time to make.”

His partner in work and in life, his wife, Jean, suffered a serious injury after she fell down a flight of stairs at their art studio in 2020. Some of the individual pieces mix words within the paint, which he says relate to the night of the fall – “how the night started and how it ended.” Another has lyrics from a classic Commodores song, an ode to his wife’s strength: “She’s a brick house,” he says.

Words from a song by the group The The, “Love Is Stronger Than Death,” are infused in one of Font’s works about his father’s death, part of a series of brightly colored works. “It is probably one of the brightest . . . the most colorful that I have . . . because I did come to terms with his passing away that he was part of my life, so not a loss.”

“epitapth: ten paintings about you,” Ignacio Font, mixed media on canvas, March 2022,  is a series of works that the artist says have to do with his father’s death and are some of the most colorful in the exhibition, “Self Care: Mineral Spirits, Elixirs and Other Home Remedies.” (Photo courtesy of Jean Michel Andre)

The oil on canvas, “Saint Judas Tadeo,” full of vibrant blue and green is reminiscent of a garden, another of Font’s meditative passions. The painting is an ode to Saint Jude Thaddeus, the most popular patron saint of impossible causes.  “We light a candle to him all the time in the studio and at the house,” says Font.

Ignacio Font, “Saint Judas Tadeo,” oil on canvas, July 2018, 20 X 24 inches (Photo courtesy of Jean Michel Andre)

One of the largest and most intricate is “journal,” created during COVID from June 2020 to January 2021. The 72 by 144 mixed media on canvas is a whirl of energy with much to take in. Near the bottom with the word “distrust” in cursive writing is a yellow cone with smoke billowing out of the top. On the right is a child with something resembling a pillowcase over their head and in the middle is a large tree. On the left is the suggestion of a man’s head, maybe a self portrait? It is one of the most fascinating of all the works in the show.

Font points out different areas of the piece. “There were the protests. So, you see that cone with the tear gas? One of the things that you can do to dissipate that kind of aggressive action of tear gas is you put it in a cone or a case, put water in it and shake it and it renders it null and void.” He says the child depicted is his granddaughter, with whom he plays games of peekaboo. “And I was thinking about her and her future.” The words scattered throughout are influenced by the poet laureate of New York state from 2012 to 2014, Marie Howe.

The most intricate in the exhibition is “journal,” mixed media on canvas, June 2020 to January 2021, 72 X 144 inches. (Photo courtesy of Jean Michel Andre)

“I was driving and listening to NPR and she was reading a poem.” The poem was from her book “Magdalene.”

“I fell in love with her words and had to find any book by her.” The one he picked up reflected on sorrow. “It’s about if we take on sorrow, what we do with our lives.”

The tree, he says, represents a pendant that he received from his most “difficult” stepdaughter. “But we had come to terms by then and we have grown and that was a very giving thing.”

The artist stands in front of his work “epitaph: ten paintings about you” at the Fridge Fair in Coconut Grove in 2023.  (Photo courtesy of Jean Blackwell Font)

He isn’t afraid to speak emotions in his work – to lay them bare.

“I think that’s part of healing. Part of healing is coming to terms with it, to being transparent.”

Font says all of his works are a reflection of his life. “I’m not a political person, I’m not overly religious, what I know is my life.”

WHAT: Ignacio Font: “Self Care: Mineral Spirits, Elixirs & Other Home Remedies”

WHERE: Steven and Dorothea Green Library, Florida International University, 11200 SW 8th St., Miami

WHEN: Library hours, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Through Friday, Aug. 9.

COST: Free

INFORMATION: (305) 348-2451 or library.fiu.edu.

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