Art and Emotion: The Transformative Journey of Artist Fernando Porras
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artist fernando porras | photo by robert magnum
You might call it lore, or a fish story, but so it goes that, once upon a time, a writer and a painter teamed up on a quest to find a magic door. While living in a small town in the mountains of North Carolina—a beautiful little town that once was home to many toymakers and woodcarvers —their (already rather unusual) lives were upended by a curious discovery: a tattered old journal lying at the bottom of a dusty, wooden box in one of the many antique shops in the area. This journal led them circuitously around the globe in pursuit of a magic door—a “Porta Magicae”— promising phenomena you can only describe as bridges across time and space.
That is the story behind the story, and although it was written to create a following on social media about the making of a new children’s book series, it sounds very much like Allie Snyder and Fernando Porras’ true story. Much of it was actually inspired by their move to Tryon two years ago. Allie works as the Polk County Public Libraries' Program Coordinator; Fernando paints wherever he finds a surface—and their projects are spread all around the world.
Fernando Porras was born in Venezuela, in a small town bordering rainforests that extend all the way to the Amazon. Before moving to the United States, he made contact and became friends with a very small indigenous group living a nomadic life along the Orinoco River. For over thirty years, he recorded everything he could about these beautiful people—mostly communicating through pencil sketches. He never imagined, though, that those drawings would one day become large canvases that would earn him his first solo exhibit, 'The Children of the Rainforest,' in Charlotte, NC. The show sold out within the first 40 minutes. New York and Paris followed.
Almost 100 exhausting exhibits later—London, Beirut, Chicago, Basel, Miami, Istanbul—the idea of traveling at a slower pace while writing and illustrating a children's book series suddenly started to take shape, and the Porta Magicae began to feel very real. “Growing up, I received my education in public schools that were microcosms of the world. I had friends from Italy, Spain, Colombia, Turkey, the U.S., Algeria, Nigeria, Argentina, Sweden—from everywhere, and as a child, I always thought that’s what all schools looked like. Now, living in a world that technology increasingly shrinks, it seems like instead of coming together, we are growing apart. The stories we put down on paper while ‘searching for a disappearing door’ are the keys to a dream I’ve had for years: ‘The creation of a series of illustrated adventure stories for children, designed to bridge cultural divides.’ In the upcoming book series, a magic door opens for children from countries around the world to travel through time and space, introducing them to other cultures and to the idea that we are all more alike than we might believe—that the more we learn about each other and the places we come from, the better our experience will be navigating this incredible world of ours.”
Bosphorus and Istanbul Skyline, Turkey
The project is ambitious and very challenging, not solely in its scope, but in its embrace of stories that come from everywhere and "everywhen." "One of the things I like the most about our work," Fernando says, "is that the stories are not simply invented; they are collected—I am a collector of memories. As the travels unfold, the narrative is shaped by our encounters: the coffee grower from Minca reminiscing about childhood rabbit chases along coffee fields; the kids in Rio Negro improvising shelter out of pieces of cardboard so a drawing can be finished amidst a downpour. In these shared moments, 'we'—including all those people we meet —emerge. A collective authorship that transcends a singular experience. 'We' is the voice you'll often encounter in everything Porta Magicae related—a chorus of all their stories coalescing into the pages of the books we are working on."
“Tryon,” says Fernando, “is not far from magical; it is our base—the perfect place to sit down and write the stories. Yet, the Porta Magicae support team comprises designers, copywriters, photographers, and illustrators who, as you might have guessed, are scattered through many time zones. An idea might be born at 4 p.m. on a Monday in Mexico City; approved at 6 p.m. on the same Monday in Tryon; illustrated from 8:30 a.m. until 6 p.m. Tuesday in Pune, India; prepared for the internet from 1 to 2 p.m. the same Tuesday in Barcelona, Spain; and published on social media at 8 a.m. on Tuesday, back in Tryon. The creator of the idea in Mexico now wakes up at 8 a.m., without losing one hour of sleep, to find his idea has been on social media already for two hours. How’s that for time travel!”
Tryon and the books anchor all that the team does, but Porta Magicae, as a project, is so much more. The Porta Magicae Project is an expansive universe that encompasses the entire creative process behind every facet of the making of the books. The research for the books is conducted by actually visiting the places from which the stories originate. They have explored most of Europe, parts of Asia, and Africa, and driven over 9,000 miles zig-zagging across the U.S., from Key West, FL, to Forks, WA, up into Canada, and back. South America took five months—the Andes, the Amazon rainforest, the Galapagos Islands, Lake Titicaca. "We try to engage with the locals as much as possible, take thousands of photographs and videos, draw perspectives to find the most interesting angles, and do watercolors of the locations at different times of the day to study their light —it's a lot of work, but the results we are getting are incredibly rewarding, and it's so much fun!" says Fernando. That has accumulated into a vast image library with thousands of photographs, drawings, and watercolors that is available to collectors. Interactive Zoom art classes (seat in your studio at home and Zoom to a drawing workshop in Florence or the Galapagos Islands), engaging lectures, and exhibitions hosted around the world cover the travel expenses, so investors don’t spend a dime on their traveling adventures. Yet the making of the books themselves is funded mainly by collectors of Fernando’s artwork, who purchase the studies created during the travels for the books.
He has curated his work into Collectible Art Series representing different parts of the world. Collectors can purchase them by city, country, continent, or opt for a compilation of artworks from all over. A collector of his work and patron of the project recently acquired a package of thirty pieces featuring America, Africa, Asia, and Europe, which included an original illustration that will be featured in one of the stories, providing substantial support to kickstart the studio and cover initial expenses for the first book. They hope that these first books — with originals painstakingly illustrated by hand, not generated by artificial intelligence or spawned from random internet lore — will one day be cherished as collectibles in their own right. “However, we are not going to bury our heads in the sand. It took a while to go from the clay tablets of Mesopotamia to today’s Kindle tablets. Yet, is the evolutionary process of the book industry about to exponentially accelerate? We believe so, and we are getting ready. Our team also includes computer animators, app developers, and experts in AI development who are already working on that next stage—one that we know will extend well beyond enhanced ebooks, but will be rooted in stories born from passionate searching and in-depth research. When that inevitable change comes, we want all those stories we’ve collected over the years—we want Porta Magicae—to be part of that next generation of storytelling that is yet to emerge, one that is firmly based on our original body of work—adapted to the times, yet maintaining our original core.”
So far most of this has been done privately, but soon a Porta Magicae website and a crowdfunding page will be ready for those interested in becoming part of the story. Seven stories are being produced, all to be published simultaneously, so we’ll have to wait a bit before we see them on the shelves. However, the tales collected as they travel, the out-of- the-way places visited, the people they meet, the hoops they have to jump through, and the adventures lived during the making of the books are something to write a separate book about. Engage with them through social media, recommend your favorite places to visit, and share your stories; you are a crucial part of that collective 'we' for the making of the books and to everything that is planned after that (whether it comes on paper or as part of the Porta Magicae of the future). 'The elusive door is somewhere out there, closer to you than you might believe—have you checked up in your attic lately? I’ve heard about some sightings in Mongolia, Egypt, and Antarctica,' says Fernando. ‘I’m gonna have to go check it out!’
Fernando is at the moment in Wellington, Florida, working on a series of commissions related to the books, and from there is going to Italy, with the idea to opening a second studio in the mountains south of Rome. “I plan to jump between studios during the year”, Fernando says, “It will be easy, I’m certain I’ll find the Porta Magicae before then!”
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