By Steve Kash
TERRE HAUTE — Photographic artist Alexandra McNichols of Bogotá, Colombia, passed years wandering the four corners of the globe from South America to England, Spain, Egypt and Indonesia as she sought to find a satisfying purpose for her life. But she says that it was not until making her way to Terre Haute that she found her Promised Land — the place where she was able to develop her talent for photography.
Now McNichols’ shots in black and white of a fascinating cross-section of Terre Haute’s populace have been transferred by modern alchemy (a liquid photographic emulsion hand-applied in the darkroom) onto onyx and marble surfaces — many works are displayed atop stone pedestals, giving them something of the character of monumental ancient Maya stele.
“There is a magic to this kind of work because I never know exactly how any given photograph will transform onto the stone,” McNichols said. “In a way, the process seems to X-ray the spirits of my subjects. Each person has been petrified in time and motion as a sculpture. The stones tell stories the observer has to discover.”
The sensual, beautiful, tragic artworks have garnered the critical appreciation and downright amazement of people who have had the opportunity to see them during the past year in Vigo County art galleries at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, Indiana State University, and currently, in the front lobby of downtown Terre Haute’s Halcyon Gallery, where four of McNichols’ most powerful works in stone are currently on display.
“Terre Haute is very much a city in transition,” said McNichols. “My new body of work seeks to reveal the diversity and identity of the city through casting pictures of its people into stone. Currently, there is great economic difficulty here; at the same time, the local population mix is changing from primarily European and African-American into a melting pot of humanity from all around the world and all walks of life.”
The creative photographer’s collection of 45 onyx and marble photographic subjects taken in Vigo County includes Eva Kor, a concentration camp survivor; then there is “Persian Lady,” a smiling and happy wealthy person displayed on green onyx; conversely, “America” is a sad-eyed street woman; “Sarah” was discovered by McNichols at the Light House Mission. Another haunting image on onyx is of an alcoholic Navajo woman living in Terre Haute. One of the current Halcyon images is of a Terre Haute resident of Italian-American heritage memorialized on Rosa Verona stone.
Journey to Terre Haute
McNichols, whose father was a full-blooded Inca, grew up in a family that fought for Colombia’s economic underclass while also working in the arts. (Her Inca grandfather was a restorer of damaged artwork.) She was also exposed to European heritage because her mother is of German descent.
Around the time she was born, McNichols’ father worked while going to law school as a political activist on behalf of Colombia’s impoverished millions during the social upheaval of the ’60s and ’70s. He ended up on the political wrong side. After being arrested, he was effectively banned from becoming a lawyer by not being permitted to take his exams to finish law school. He went on to become a legal secretary and raised all six of his children to become college graduates.
As a city of 15 million, Bogotá offered people of wealth and intellect access to college, so, McNichols and her five brothers and sisters were all able to get university degrees while being exposed to European and North American political ideas and values. She started school at age 4. At 16, she entered into a large university in Bogotá about the size of Indiana University to study communications and journalism, and eventually she took classes in theater and visual communication, putting on one-woman performance artist shows employing dance and visual creativity to change the moods of people in her audiences.
Immediately after college, McNichols worked in radio and TV for stations promoting her political beliefs, but eventually the leader of her political party was assassinated. The movement was then deemed illegal and banned. After this, she lost interest in politics and became deeply involved with literature, creating a literary/arts magazine and a small publishing company. Her works were distributed by a Colombian commercial chain, National Bookstores, but after a few years in operation her startup company went bankrupt.
Unhappy, McNichols moved to London to learn English for a year, and then she went to Spain. “I was learning a lot about culture, but I was basically lost as I tried to establish myself,” recalled McNichols. “I supported myself by teaching salsa, doing waitress work, or whatever I could find just to get by. In my free time, I visited the museums (she was most interested in abstract art) and historical sites. Always I was taking in what I could from the buffet of the world. During this time I had no feeling to marry. From England and Spain, I traveled on to Egypt and many other countries. I am glad my parents were progressive-minded and supportive of me.”
After working her way around the world for a few years, McNichols managed to get a six-month visa to the United States to visit her brother in Los Angeles. Naturally, she took as many trips around the U.S. as she could: New York, Chicago, the West Coast and points in between.
“The only real problem I had in America during my first stay here was that there is so little public transportation in America as compared to Europe and Bogotá,” McNichols said. “Often I was totally dependent on my brother to take me places.”
Not long before McNichols’ U.S. visa was to expire, while she was still in Los Angeles living with her brother, she met artist Matthew McNichols, who was from Terre Haute. He came to see her after she returned to Colombia, where she was supporting herself on an award of money she had won to do a series of biographies in Spanish on such historical personages as St. Augustine, St. Francis of Assisi and Mahatma Gandhi. Once this body of literary work was completed, she returned to Terre Haute to be with Matt. They married, and during this time he became an art curator for Rose-Hulman. Then some years later, she became an American citizen.
“At first, I had difficulty in this city,” McNichols acknowledged. “I was not used to such a small population area. For the next seven years, I often felt unfulfilled because the only work I could do was to teach Spanish at ISU.”
She began working on a master’s degree in Hispanic literature while teaching Spanish. A series of papers that she wrote about the connection between Hispanic literature and visual art got her an invitation to give lectures on her subject in New York.
