The Canto Series
 
For a full list of performances please see resume
Jaguars and Angels - Canto XXVI
April 13 - May 18, 2018
Part Two
 

Installation | July 6 - August 12, 2018
with Video of Solo Pro Arts Window Performance
Gallery Route One, Point Reyes Station, CA

Performance | May 10, 2018
with Benjie Lasseau and Stuart Rabinowitsh
Pro Arts Gallery, Oakland, CA

Performance, Solo| May 4, 2018
Pro Arts Gallery, Oakland, CA

Installation | April 13 - May 18, 2018
Pro Arts Gallery, Oakland, CA

Call of the wild,
call of the light,
call to be a warrior in the face
of global and personal upheaval.
You may wonder about my title, Jaguars and Angels before Christmas in 2016, during a sound healing in the jungle in Guatemala, I experienced a jaguar inhabiting my body. At the time I was learning to sing Hildegard of Bingen’s celestial songs. So I became immersed in both potencies. Time passed and then the culture of misinformation tsunamied us.
 
 
Diana Marto
Jaguars and Angels Canto XXVI Part Two, Installation with Performances in Pro Arts Window, Oakland, CA, May 4, 2018.
Video credit: Stuart Rabinowitsh
 
This Canto is a ritual of renewal, ignited by the intense political climate we live in. Here, I am taring away illusion to arrive at truth. The libretto for this Paper Opera combines paper sounds and sung written words. The two destroyed paintings were from my Fukushima Daichi Series and Diving Deep Series. The ensemble performance with Benjie Lasseau, performance artist and Stuart Rabinowitsh, musician took place along Broadway Street, Frank Ogawa Plaza, on the walkway in front of Pro Arts and inside the narrow windows. Benjie’s and my masks were cast from our faces. Stuart played a Scarlatti Sonata and improvised on the accordion. Ann Moss played cymbals.
 
 
 

 
Jaguars and Angels - Canto XXVI
March 24 - April 9, 2017
Part One
 

Installation | March 24 - April 9, 2017
Rhizosphere Exhibition, Midway Gallery, San Francisco, CA

Performance | April 1, 2017
for Rhizosphere at the Midway Gallery, San Francisco, CA, in conjunction with 100 Days Action

 
Sculpture installation with an interactive performance took place, during the 2017 Rhizosphere Exhibition at the Midway Gallery in San Francisco in conjunction with 100 Days of Action in the Bay Area. My audience became the chorus as I read the full page list of Truths published in the New York Times while standing on a soapbox, holding a large dried paint brush, the talking stick, in front of my 2 suspended paper sculptures. At the end of the performance, audience members stepped onto the soapbox, bearing the paint brush to declare their Truth.
 
You may wonder about my title, Jaguars and Angels before Christmas in 2016, during a sound healing in the jungle in Guatemala, I experienced a jaguar inhabiting my body. At the time I was learning to sing Hildegard of Bingen’s celestial songs. So I became immersed in both potencies. Time passed and then the culture of misinformation tsunamied us.
 
Diana Marto
Jaguars and Angels Canto XXVI Part One, Light, #7 & 8, Midway Gallery, San Francisco, CA, 2017
Video credit: Stuart Rabinowitsh
 
 

 
 
Jaguars and Angels - Canto XXVI
June 30 - August 6, 2017
Part One
 
Installation
Gallery Route One
Point Reyes Station, CA
 
I’ve written Truth at least 100 times
on paper fragments from my
Golden Room Series.

I’ve scratched the letters and traced over them with my finger dipped in sumi ink.

Every time I write truth, I strip skin, marrow, tissue from bone.

Every time I write truth I feel it’s essence, it’s energy making it’s way
through darkness.


80 Truths were installed with the soapbox and paintbrush at Gallery Route One. Viewers were invited to step onto the soapbox to declare their truth and document their declarations.
 
 
Photo: Stuart Rabinowitsh
 
 
 

 
 
Golden Room - Canto XXV
2014 - 2016

 

Exhibition | September 23 - October 30, 2016
Gallery Route One, Point Reyes Station, CA

Performance | October 23, 2016
In the installation
Gallery Route One, Point Reyes Station, CA

Performance | Wave | October 16, 2016
The Grandi Building, Wave Mural
Point Reyes Station, CA

 
 

Performance | In The Rubble | October 9, 2016
The Grandi Building, Rubble Courtyard,
Point Reyes Station, CA

Performance | October 2, 2016
In the installation
Gallery Route One, Point Reyes Station, CA

Performance | Bird Song | September 25, 2016
Gallery Route One, Point Reyes Station, CA

 
 
An immersive experience of saturated yellow paintings, sculptures and cut-outs, inspired by Chinese spirit paper used in funereal practices, “Golden Room” is the culmination of a process of discovery from 2014-2016. My heart strung out on a clothes-line when tragedy collided into my extended family. I stepped onto a long roll of paper on my studio floor and drew an irregular rectangle using a fat yellow oil paint crayon. My studio became a yellow jungle. Forms liberated from the rectangle became sails, calalilies, whales’ beaks, fins, the sun’s path. All in a dance of shadow, light, empty space. I installed this series for my solo show in Gallery Route One. For the opening performance, Terry Sendgraff’s Improvisation/Performance Group, consisting of Ruth Ichinaga, Hilary Cadwell, Linda Aron-Cort, Jeannine Chappell, Marilyn Scholze, Benjie Lasseau, Jan Deder, Nancy Leatzow, and myself sang my “Bird Song” throughout the installation.
 
Golden Room, Canto XXV, 2016 | September 25, October 2, 9, 2016
Exploration of freeing forms from rectangles and sadness and grief from the heart. Installation and compiled performances with suspended and free-standing paper sculptures in Gallery Route One, Point Reyes Station, CA. Sept. 25, Oct. 2, 9, 2016.
Video credit: Stuart Rabinowitsh
 
Free-Standing Paper Sculptures used in Performances
Photo: Stuart Rabinowitsh
 
 
The Wave | October 16, 2016
Live improvisation with silver mylar on a sidewalk in front of a wave mural in Point Reyes Station.
Excerpt from Golden Room. Canto XXV.
Video credit: Stuart Rabinowitsh
 
 
 
Performance Images
In the Rubble | October 9, 2016
  Photo: Elizabeth Fenwick
 
Bird Song | September 25, 2016
Video: Stuart Rabinowitsh
 
 

 
 
 
Lighthouse
A suspended paper sculpture investigating nuances of form, light, shadow and sound within a small space.
Video credit: Stuart Rabinowitsh
 
A simple piece of paper
My lines are a wordless language found in sound.
They spur me onto their destiny.
Mother Tongue
Paper is my semaphore
 
I loved creating this sculpture for the space, at Gallery Route One in Point Reyes Station. It worked perfectly. How yellow fills space, bouncing off of walls and onto viewers and how you can’t entirely encounter the piece. I began by unraveling a long role of rag paper onto my studio floor. Holding colored pencils in both hands I made random lines that became a wordless language found in sound. They spur me onto their destiny. I think of the slit in the sculpture as the place for the voice to be heard and for spirit to come through. Lighthouse consists of a suspended yellow sculpture with a sound track of recorded elements: Sandhill Cranes recorded at dusk in the Delta; wind harp recorded at the Exploratorium; stream recorded at Passing Cloud Lake in the Mendocino National Forest; waves and sand recorded at a beach near Timber Cove; and myself singing my Arroyan Song.
 
Diana Marto Lighthouse Installation
Video credit: Stuart Rabinowitsh
 
 
 

 
 
  The Canto Series
Diana Marto's Epic Spirit Play with Paper & Dance
   
In the late 70’s to mid 80’s I lived in Japan and Hong Kong. I discovered the traditional uses of handmade paper in spiritual practices, and learned the ancient practice of papermaking without the use of machinery. During that time Kei Takei, the world renown choreographer and dancer named me one of Japan’s young choreographers for the American Dance Festival, Tokyo. While touring papermakers and papermaking villages in Japan I paid my respects to the Paper Goddess at her shrine in the mountains. It began to snow and I had a vision of the Paper Goddess “snowing” paper all over the land to bring healing to the people. From this experience I developed my Canto Series, my epic spirit play with paper and dance. They are visual journals of the teachings I receive from the land, both performance art rituals and installations of related art works. My first Canto took place in a Kyoto gallery and on a jetty in the Kamo River where I danced with 40 feet of paper, making a sculpture garden.

The Cantos explore the themes of the mythos of place, the sea, and life passages. They are site-specific solo and group performances which incorporate storytelling, dance, and live sound scores for voice and musical instruments.

For instance "Canto XIX, Whale Guardian," is a site-specific performance with cast paper whale bones and an installation which is presented in out-door venues and art centers. The installation consists of suspended cast paper whale bones, cast wall relief sculptures with embedded sea kelp and a film of mother and baby whales cavorting in the birthing lagoons.

 

 
2010
Dying Seal
End Game, Canto XX
The Cheese Factory
Petaluma, CA
Installation and Solo Performance
which includes a film of a decaying whale documented for 5 months.
2006
Whale Guardian
Canto XIX, SOMArts, CA
Solo Performance with Whale sounds & Stuart Rabinowitsh playing Waterphone.
Video credit: Stuart Rabinowitsh
2005
Honoring the Whales
Canto XVIII, Sausalito, CA
Whale Bone Path created by the audience & performers.
2005
Honoring the Whales
Canto XVIII, Sausalito, CA
Sounding the Conch as the Whale Guardian is born aloft.