VISITOR SPREADS WORD: ART IS VITAL TO LIVING
Stickney, Dane. 2008. A conversation with Enrique Martínez Celaya.


Enrique Martínez Celaya is all over the map.

Born in Cuba, he was raised in Puerto Rico and Spain. He's studied physics in New York, quantum electronics in California and painting in Maine. He holds patents, has written books and has created artwork.

He hopes his eclectic background reaches a wide range of people in Omaha. Through a decade-long connection with the University of Nebraska and its president, J.B. Milliken, Martínez Celaya is spending the week in Omaha interacting with educators, students and the public through events at the University of Nebraska at Omaha and the Kaneko creativity center.

While relocating his studio from California to Florida, organizing a new exhibit of his work and preparing for his Omaha visit, Martínez Celaya found time to answer a few questions via e-mail.

Dane Stickney: What do you hope to accomplish by coming to Omaha?

Enrique Martínez Celaya: I am hoping my visit can serve as a further connection between the University of Nebraska, the Omaha community and ideas that sometimes appear in the arts and sometimes in other places, like religion and philosophy. That's the spirit President Milliken and I have for my involvement. It also would be nice if I could convey that art - literature, music, theater, visual art - rather than being an amusement of sophisticates, can be more vital to living than Dr. Phil.

DS: Given your background, it's obvious art or at least creative thought can have positive power. How has it helped guide you, how could it help others?

EMC: Art for me is a form of ethical utility. Without it, ethical questions would be harder to face. It is not that I do a great job at living because I am an artist, but, without art, I would do it worse.

DS: You'll be working with, talking to many different kinds of people here in Omaha. Are there different things you want to teach each one?

EMC: I try to make each encounter what it wants to be. When I work with students I begin someplace, and when I talk to faculty I begin someplace different. I try not to predict what will happen. But I do prepare.

DS: You work in a bunch of different media - various arts and sciences. Why? They don't seem naturally linked, but are they?

EMC: I am interested in the world, and I would like to know how it works. The simplest questions are difficult to answer: Why do things change? How do I choose between similar goods? What is time? I don't see any intrinsic difference between philosophy, literature, art, math and physics. They are just ways of relating to what is and what might be. So, to answer your question, yes, they are linked, and the link is the world.

DS: I'd definitely call you a Renaissance man. How does that phrase sit with you? Is it a compliment or does it make you cringe?

EMC: I don't feel I'm doing anything special but merely trying to understand things better. I see my involvement in science, art and even construction of my studios and finance not as glamorous but as desperate gestures. Some people walk through life either knowing or thinking they know, but I neither know nor think I know. Does that sound like a Renaissance man?

DS: What can we expect from your Kaneko talk? They've already had some interesting folks talk over there - Christo and Jeanne-Claude, a National Geographic explorer, among others - and they've all done different things.

EMC: I will scale down Christo by wrapping a toilet stall. Also, in the Kaneko lecture I will talk about some ideas that matter to me and offer two slide shows, which will include songs by Leonard Cohen. The songs under the images might sound improper, but they offer a context for the presentation.

DS: What is your connection with the university?

EMC: My association with the University of Nebraska is deep and has been a part of my work for the past 10 years. Also, the two people I most admire, Dan Siedell and President Milliken, are here. Dan Siedell, who used to be chief curator at the Sheldon and now is a UNO faculty member, bought my work very early - in 1997 - for the museum. He introduced me to President Milliken. And since 2003, the University of Nebraska Press has been distributing the books of Whale and Star, my publishing house.

DS: There's a saying about jounalists, that we know a little about a lot but not a lot about one thing. Do you ever feel like that, that you've cast so wide a net that it's hard to capture anything in depth?

EMC: Much of life seems to me to be about choosing or not choosing. We tend to feel anxious in front of dualities and wish to simplify them at the cost of truth and parts of ourselves. It is not easy to decide between being a father or an artist, which is often an unconscious question; or between being a visceral artist or a thoughtful one. To me, life consists of infinite choices. To walk any path is to have missed on others.