PATRICK'S PEOPLE: Marianne Evans-Lombe began an uplifting art project

The death of a friend in the Joplin tornado has inspired visual performance artist Marianne Evans-Lombe, Pittsburg, to create an art project that has involved hundreds of people around the world.

Called “I Love Jose,” it commemorates the life of Jose Olimpo Alvarez, 59, an assistant professor of Spanish at Missouri Southern State University. His apartment near 20th Street and Rhode Island was in the path of the May 2011 tornado, and it was several days before he was found.

“On the Memorial Day after the Joplin tornado, I, my children and some friends were going to make art for Joplin and we heard that Jose had died,” said Evans-Lombe, a PIttsburg State University graduate who has also taught at PSU.

She recalled that Alvarez had attended a Pittsburg Artwalk in 2009 when she performed a piece titled “The Origin of Painting.” It was based on a Greek legend that the first artist was a woman and the first image created was a silhouette that Dibutade, a Corinthian maid, drew around her departing lover’s shadow cast on a wall.

After  Evans-Lombe performed, those present were invited to have their silhouettes traced. Alvarez did, and Evans-Lombe had a photo of it.

“I made a picture of his shadow shape,” she said. “At first I was going to must make lots of shapes, but Jeremy Johnson and Linden Little wanted to make something, too.”

Then she had the idea of mailing a “little Jose” image of his shadow shape and a template to people. They were invited to trace around the template on paper of their choice and mail their Jose and the template back to her, while keeping the shape she had sent them.

“In the United States I mailed people a Jose shape and instructions, and in Colombia I did the project in more of a workshop form,” she said. “I did it with people with developmental disabilities, with teens and others.”

Evans-Lombe’s involvement with Colombia started in September 2010, when she was invited to perform “The Origin of Painting” in Ojo al Sancocho, a community-based festival held in Ciudad Bolivar, a poor section of Bogota.

She was invited by Natali Rojas, a PSU international student who was in a women’s studies class that Evans-Lombe taught.

“Natali’s internship was to help put the festival together, and she invited me to submit a proposal,” Evans-Lombe said.

That visit went very well and she was more than willing to return to Colombia with the “I Love Jose” project.

Now she has hundreds of little Joses.

“I’m going to give the ones that were made in the United States to Jose’s family in Colombia, and the ones made in Colombia to his family in the United States,” Evans-Lombe said.

Another part of the project involves pasting red Jose shapes at special locations in the United States, Colombia and around the world.

“The first shape I pasted on the same wall where Jose’s silhouette was traced, on the side of Eddie Battitori’s building at Fifth and Broadway,” Evans-Lombe said.

She has also pasted them at several locations around the PSU campus, at the grassy knoll and Dealey Plaza in Dallas, the place where President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, as well as at a friend’s house in Lawrence, the art district of Kansas City and in several locations in Colorado. Other little Joses have been pasted in Finland, Brazil and Iceland.

Plans are in the works for a much bigger Jose shape, with Evans-Lombe and artist Janet Lewis collaborating on a lifesize sculpture of Jose in copper from the Pittsburg Public Library’s old roof.

“We’d like to mount it in Joplin and perform ‘The Origin of Painting’ around it,” Evans-Lombe said. “Janet also wants to make a small copper butterfly for each person who died in the Joplin tornado.”

She’s also working on three other performance pieces. One of them, which she calls “Please Mind,” tells the story of her reaction to her son’s illness. She said it is something of a return to the body drawings, a combination of shadow drawing and body movement that she did several years ago.

“But this has context, a story,” Evans-Lombe said. “I filmed myself telling the story of how I felt to have my son get sick, then abstracted it into a dance.”

This piece also involves the use of shadow puppets in the form of swallows, which she said are a Roman symbol of a mother living with sorrow. Dan Albertini is doing music for this piece.

Another piece, “Arbol Ahorcado” or “The Hanged Tree,” originates from an actual tree in Ciudad Bolivar which Evans-Lombe has seen. According to local legend, someone was hung from the tree years ago to intimidate people. She plans to trace the shadow of the tree in hearts that she has cut from military uniforms.

Her third upcoming project, called “Beauty of Speed,” is based on a Tori Amos song. She will perform it with Linden Little.

“Right now we’re making a pole sculpture with spokes at the top, and we’ll wear clean room suits, all white,” Evans-Lombe said. “There will be light boxes around us with buttons, and the audience will call out which buttons should be pressed.”

She’s also going to have some artwork available for purchase at Art in the Park on May 12.

“I’m planning on working on performance pieces in the spring and summer, and in the winter I’ll do more on my I Love Jose website at i-love-jose.tumblr.com,” Evans-Lombe said.