The Work of Elsa Mora: How Love’s Tangled Branches Keep Growing

'Growing Woman'

C UBAN-BORN ARTIST Elsa Mora creates intricate, often profound, sometimes whimsical papercuts, paintings, drawings and sculptures.  When we first saw Elsita’s art, we were stunned by the way it spoke to the deep feelings we have for our sisters, our mothers and our children, and the way we each relate to the natural world.

We had to know where she finds her inspiration, but it wasn’t until we reached out to Elsita that we learned that it was her older sister, Ileana, we sensed in certain images, a sibling still living but lost to Elsita a decade ago in the complex tangle of schizophrenia. “She was my mentor,” says Elsita, but as Ileana’s illness progressed, there was always this acute awareness, too: “We had to deal with the possibility of her going away forever all the time.” Love, with impending loss. A story of two sisters.

THE TSP INTERVIEW WITH ELSITA

Elsa Mora

WE SPOKE TO Elsita from her Los Angeles home, where she lives with her husband, a film producer, their two young children, and her stepson. Elsita’s work, she says, “became my language,” and through it she is “rediscovering my whole life–with my mother, my sister, all of it.”

Q. “You know you’re a sister when…”

A. “I realize how much I can help other women who need my help, whether they are related to me or not.  I know that I am a sister when I relate to the pain or the joy that comes from other women.”

Q. Will you share a best of/worst of experience with your sister (whether biological or “sister-friends”)?

A. “The worst experience: when I had to leave my country and be geographically far away from my biological sister and sister-friends.

“The best experience:  Whenever my sister, Ileana, created something with her hands.  I was so proud of her, I wanted everybody to know how amazing she was. I always told my friends that she was a genius.”

Detail of 'The Wound'

Q. What does the word “sister” mean to you?

A. “It means a natural connection to other women, a sense of sympathy for the experiences that they have had that are similar to my own.  It is a universal connection and it goes beyond race, nationality, religion, age…every woman on earth, no matter how she looks or what her ideas are, has something in common with me, and somehow that makes her my sister.”

Q. What’s the most valuable lesson you’ve learned from your sister?

A. “One day, many years ago, before my sister, Ileana, became a victim of schizophrenia, she told me some simple words that I see as a great lesson now.  She was a genuine artist since a very early age and I just wanted to be like her.  So, one day, in one of our conversations, she told me: ‘Listen, Elsita, when it comes to art all you need to know is that you are free to do whatever you want because the only rule of creativity is freedom.  Don’t be afraid to be yourself and don’t feel that you have to follow anything written in the books.  Just do whatever makes you happy, and that’s it.’ ”

Postscript from TSP: Though Elsita still keeps tabs on her sister through their mother, she has had to let go of a direct relationship, she explains. For years, Elsa tried to be a caretaker to her much older sister, but Ileana felt tremendous guilt about her illness and its impact upon the family.  Finally, says Elsa, “I realized that the more I did for her the more imperfect she felt. I wrote her a letter and did something very unexpected–I pretended I was mad at her. I said, ‘I’m going to stop talking to you.’ It was so hard for me, but I knew it was going to change her life….I cut the umbilical cord connecting her to me and finally she was free.” And she shared this: “Sometimes, by not giving, you are giving a lot.”

A GALLERY OF ELSITA’S ART

To read more about Elsita, visit her blog.  On her newer special papercut blog, Elsita tells you all about that work (and how you might try it, too, with your own X-Acto knife). Elsita’s work, including prints made from the papercuts, is available in her Etsy store.
__________
(TSP’s curator of gallery shows like this one is Paige Smith Orloff, one of our founding sisters. Learn more about Paige on her blog, “Hey, Little Sister.”)

No related posts.