Last year I was approached by Winter Williams Productions to create a labyrinth in their backyard. Using materials found in the neighborhood by the Oakland Hills, like bricks and slabs of different shapes,  we worked over the course of 6 days flattening the yard, arranging the bricks, painting them and filling the gaps with decomposed granite.

Ariadne, in Greek mythology, daughter of Pasiphae and the Cretan king Minos. She fell in love with the Athenian hero Theseus and, with a thread helped him escape the Labyrinth after he slew the Minotaur, a beast half bull and half man that Minos kept in the Labyrinth.

But since labyrinths are unicursal paths and no-one can get lost in them, Ariadne’s thread would seem useless. But if we think metaphorically the story has a different meaning. Ariadne could be offering Theseus the challenge to enter the labyrinth and face his own fears.  The thread is the path or journey through the labyrinth, in fact it’s an actual labyrinth itself.

With these ideas I decided to design a labyrinth in the shape of the thread that follows the path of the Cretan Classical 7 Circuit Labyrinth, also known as Minoan Labyrinth. To learn more about this project watch the video below:

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Art for social and personal transformation
“My intricate lines and geometric patterns summon the contemplative realm where we can embrace new dreams and stories.” — Paz de la Calzada

My work has always called upon the healing power of plants and the elements to facilitate transformations. My art, infused with plant-based healing energy, invokes a liminal space where you can connect your inner source to infinite possibility.

Step into my world.
In my short behind-the-scenes video I show you the magic that inspires all of my art.
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See my behind-the-scenes video below
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​Happy New Year!

Do you know that the month of January is a perfect time to check with your dreams and come up with the way to manifest them? I feel the critical moments that we are living, specially with a past full whole year of profound changes, are an incentive to put our dreams into action.

With this in mind,  I have created a body of work that brings together art, which is the language of the unconscious mind, and the healing power of plants. My intention is to create art that offers a transformative experience and that accompanies you in the process of projecting your values ​​and your dreams.
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Fierce Dreamer ARTEMISIA KIT



This powerful kit contains:

- A Painting on vintage Map of The Olympic National Forest. Acrylic and herbal pigments. 21" x 16" 

- “Follow your Dreams” Mugwort Tincture. (artemisia douglasiana and brandy) 1oz.

- A Postcard with Invocation to Artemis 4" x 6"

BUY IT HERE

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​​January is the perfect month to invoque Artemisia, who has a special way to touch us with her magic helping us to dream high and project our vision for this year. But Artemisia is not only one of the most revered of dreaming herbs in the western materia medica, She is also the Goddess Hunter that fights for justice casting a spell around systems of oppression, specially the ones that affect women.

These paintings are made using pigments and herbal extract from Artemisia and it features her home on Mount Olympus.

This resentment free potion is the ultimate medicine to cast 2020 out and facilitate the transition to the New Year. Inspired by the ancient principles of alchemy and shadow integration work, this sweet elixir connects you with this year’s dramatic energy so you can have a complete experience and be prepared to let it go. By making friends with this dark year you’ll be able to transform the poison into potion, the shadow into the light.

Buy this item here

Ingredients: 20 plants collected from our diverse Bay Area Flora, with no discrimination whatsoever of their origins, including native, invasive, adapted, naturalized, domesticated and wild. (Yerbabuena, yerba santa, eucalyptus, cleavers, grindelia, nettles, oak, thyme, elderberry, sage, california poppy, california sagebrush, lavender, mint, elm bark, redwood sorrel, lemon balm, rose, california bay and rosemary). Brandy and Honey.​

Novena*: Take one dropper a day for 9 days starting the day of The Great Conjunction** (Winter Solstice Day on December 21, 2020) and ending on the last Full Moon of the Year (December 29, 2020).  Read the 2020 spell simultaneously. It can be used in 2021 to alleviate any remaining  PTSD from 2020.

STUDIO SALE for one week only starting next Thursday September 24 (link to online sale will be active that day). It's been a while since the last one I had in 2014! Plus I'd like to celebrate that I'll be working with Seattle's Sound Transit in a public art project for a new train station! :)
I'll have limited artworks and I anticipate some will go fast. But I have a temporary secret link for you if you are interested in a preview or a virtual studio visit. This is a great opportunity to buy my work at a great discount prices. Let me know and I'll send you the link. Look forward to hearing from you!

I'll be collecting plants till the end of the lock down in the San Francisco Bay Area. If you have any plant or herb that you would like to add please contact me directly at pazdelacalzada@yahoo.com

This site-specific drawing is an intervention that transforms the way we experience the space in relationship to the inner landscape of our psyche. For me a mural is not just an individual action in a pre-defined surface but an inclusion of other elements, both physical and metaphorical, that contribute to change that unidirectional relationship between artist and object.

For 838M space I mapped secret herbs that grow in the urban landscape around the location, and claimed their potential to contribute with a story. For a couple of days I walked and collected hidden herbs, following a path of healing that would connect the gallery space with the surround urban flora. The plants, Mint, Mugwort and Fennel, have unique stories, from myth and healing properties to their own origins.

By mixing the paint with the herbal remedies and pigments from those plants,  I created a particular blend or “potion” to infuse a sense of flow into the space. 

836M
836 Montgomery St
San Francisco

This project will be on view till the end of May, 2020
Learn more about this project here

Botanica “La Mirada”, a research based project developed during my art residency at the Monterey Museum of Art La Mirada, combines traditional herbalism, social critique and personal cartography.

Inspired in the syncretic folk medicine and spiritual traditions of Spanish and Indian cultures, this art project offers an alternative way of looking at issues of colonization, power dynamics and cultural assimilation. 

Having the city of Monterey as the background, I embarked on a pilgrimage to map gardens from the Spanish and Mexican period, incorporating native, invasive and naturalized plants into herbal remedies that will be shared with the public.

This project is informed not only by historic data, but it also incorporates myths and legends that shaped the history of Monterey, from its past forms of colonialism to the present ones.
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DISCLAIMER: The medicines in this project are all made with natural ingredients grown in Monterey, California. They carry all the healing properties attributed by ancestral knowledge. However, they don’t intend to offer any solution to current health care problems but a playful 
way to reclaim herbalism as a form of institutional critique and resistance towards our capitalistic culture.